Omaha, Neb. – Here comes the North Carolina State team bus. But first, a flashback to the day the Omaha caved in on Wolfpack baseball.
It is 2021 and COVID has trespassed at the College World Series. The North Carolina State Wolfpack have had a sensational first few days in Omaha, winning two games and needing but one more victory to get to the championship finals, where the program has never been. Seems like there might be a N.C. State fairy tale in the making that would make Jim Valvano proud.
Then a nightmare unfolds.
These are still the days when the virus can change everything. One player comes back with a positive test, others have been exposed. North Carolina State is told it must play Vanderbilt with only 13 players available, while 14 stay back at the hotel. It seems a surreal and hopeless task; some of the names in the lineup are seldom-used reserves, others are playing out of position. Still, the Wolfpack with a skeleton crew nearly pull it off, losing 3-1 and stranding 12 runners, seven the last three innings. It is one of the most bizarre games ever played at the Men's College World Series.
North Carolina State is to get another chance at Vandy the next day and is hoping to have more players. But the next day never comes. More positive tests return, and late that night the word comes down that the Wolfpack must go home. It’s like standing in the sunlight on the brink of a dream, and then suddenly being pushed into a dark abyss. They return to Raleigh crushed, sad, bitter. It’s so hard to get to Omaha. Who knows when the program would ever be back?
Now we know.
It is 2024. Thursday, to be exact. The North Carolina State bus pulls up to Charles Schwab Field and the players roll out, first for pictures in front of the Road to Omaha statue, then inside for practice. The Wolfpack have come back to the College World Series, and a couple of those with scars from 2021 are trying not to remember what it felt like the last time they left.
“There’s still some demons, sure,” pitcher Sam Highfill is saying. “But when you’re driving by this stadium it’s hard not to smile.”
Same for coach Elliott Avent.
“I remember being in that room at 1:30 in the morning telling the players we were going home. I didn't see a dry eye or smile the entire bus ride to the airport, entire flight home,” he says. “When we got back to the stadium, there was, like, 2,000 people waiting for us, unbeknownst to us. Total surprise. As the players walked on the field and we saw 2,000 people in the stands, they had a microphone, and I spoke, and some players spoke. It's the first time I saw the healing process begin and the smiles come back on their faces.
“Nobody will ever understand how difficult (it was), and I've had some difficult conversations in my career with players over many things. The hardest thing I've ever done is having to sit 27 players who gave their heart and soul and blood and sweat to achieve a goal of a lifetime and tell them we're going home.”
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Four players in Omaha this week were there in 2021 to hear Avent’s words. Highfill is one. “We didn’t get much sleep the night before. We were all up late just kind of hanging around each other and being there for each other,” he says. “We got up really early the next morning and just left.”
But that is the past and Avent wants to leave it there.
“I think you have to get over things. In baseball, if you don’t put bad losses and bad things in your past behind you, then you can’t get to where you want to go,” he says. “So I put that behind me. No flashbacks. I haven’t forgotten and I’ve never forgiven. But I don’t live with it a day of my life.
“We don’t talk about it. I don’t talk about ’21 to the ’21 team, I don’t talk about ’21 to this year’s team. This is a whole different team.”
Still, there is something to cherish from that star-crossed weekend. That’s why Highfill still occasionally pulls up YouTube to revisit. He’ll look at the screen and it will be June 25, 2021 all over again.
NC State baseball in the 2021 Men's College World Series. In the June 25 contest against Vanderbilt, the Wolfpack had just 13 eligible players due to a COVID-19 outbreak, known as Pack13.
He will see North Carolina State getting ready to play Vanderbilt with only the remnants of a team. Pack13 they will later be remembered in lore. The pitcher that day is a freshman who has never started a game in his career. The bottom half of the lineup has a combined zero RBI, three hits and 27 at-bats for the season. Four days before, Highfill had pitched 7.1 strong innings to beat Vanderbilt 1-0. But on this day he has to play first base and swing a bat, which he hasn’t done in years.
“I just remember that it didn’t feel real,” he says now. “Because of that, no nerves whatsoever. It was like, I don’t even know what’s happening right now. So why not play hard and see what happens?
Vanderbilt starts ace Kumar Rocker who strikes out the first six North Carolina State batters. Was anyone surprised? But in the third inning Highfill – who can’t even remember the last time he came to the plate – doubles down the right field line. He singles in the fifth to move a runner to third base. Soon after, the Wolfpack get a run on DeAngelo Giles’ sacrifice fly, his only RBI of the season.
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The Wolfpack trail only 2-1. Vanderbilt adds a run in the sixth for a 3-1 lead, but North Carolina State loads the bases in the seventh. Avent recalled how “I looked at Sam and said, `if we take this lead, you’re closing this thing, I’ll find somebody else to play first.’ Sam said, `you bet you will.’”
But the Wolfpack never scored, leaving the bases loaded in the seventh and two men on in the eighth and ninth. Still, it has been an extraordinary effort that would those 13 legend. Highfill goes 3-for-4. “I wasn’t expecting that at all,” he says now.
“Everybody making plays, people playing out of position, those are the things I remember for sure,” Avent says. “I will always love that game.”
Two years later, Highfill has never been to the plate again.
“We just walked down by the batting cages,” he says Thursday, “and I was like, man, this is the last batting cage I ever took BP in.”
To this day, that Friday comes back him in many tones.
“It was a roller coaster of a day. So many good and bad memories from that 24-hour period.
“It’s special but it also hurts because of all the guys who should have been out there. It sucks for guys like Matt Willadsen, who was supposed to start that game and now he’s hurt this year. In two years we’ve been to Omaha, I hate it for him. I can’t imagine what that’s like for him.”
Amid such mixed feelings, North Carolina State now takes aim at Omaha again. Avent loves the College World Series too much to let the past cloud this moment, saying that the first time he came here, “I thought it was the most special place in the whole wide world. When we came here in ’21 I thought It was the most special place in the whole wide world, and as I’m looking out on this field today I think it’s the most special pace in the whole wide world.
“Herb Sendek, the old basketball coach at N.C. State, once told me quit building things up because you can only let people down when you paint a picture so good. Don’t do that. But Omaha is different. No matter how great I paint this picture, when the players get here, they say `Coach, it’s even better than you told me.’”
It would seem total justice, then, that a guy who feels that way about Omaha should not have had 2021 as his last memory of being here.
Same for Highfill, who this June has but one request how the Wolfpack exit the next fortnight if they can’t win the championship.
“I want somebody to beat us.”
There is one thing Highfill, Avent and North Carolina State understand. Defeat is much less painful than expulsion by a cotton swab.
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