OMAHA, Neb. – The baseball coach at Tennessee was getting ready to go to bed Thursday night when he checked his cell phone one last time. Know how past photos occasionally pop up on the screen to rekindle memories? There was a shot of Tony Vitello and his father standing on the diamond in Knoxville years ago.
Suddenly, the long road from there to this weekend became very real. “It’s fun to make progress,” Vitello said. “As they say, the journey is kind of what it’s about.”
The baseball coach at Texas A&M was talking about recruiting and the key pieces he brought in for this special season, but also one who got away.
“We had to convince those guys,” Jim Schlossnagle said. “We lost out on some other guys. Had a guy go to another school saying, `Hey, if I was in high school I would be coming to A&M but I want a chance to win next year, so I'm going to go to somewhere else in our conference.’ And that was disappointing because we played in a regional final last year. We did play in the SEC Tournament championship game. It wasn't like they were coming to a JV program. But, yeah, you're trying to break that stigma and join the club of teams that are on TV at the very, very end.”
Well, it’s the very, very end, and his Aggies will be on TV, the last team standing in the way of the No. 1 team in the nation.
What if it’s Tennessee in the Men’s College World Series? The tradition, all those orange shirts in the stands at every game, the aura of Pat Summit keeping pace with every sport, no matter what the program? The memories of some tough days not that long ago.
And, still, no national championship in baseball.
“I wish people would have kept track of our first year,” Vitello said, meaning 2018, when he did everything to connect with the fans including operating his own lemonade stand at a game when he had been suspended. “We took a lot of abuse on our field and other fields, too. We were bullied is the easiest way to say it. And no one wanted that feeling again, not just in SEC but in nonconference play
“We wanted to play with some attitude and a chip on our shoulder, because look at who we're going up against.”
What if it’s Texas A&M? The 12th Man, the fervor, the unity.
And still, no national championship in baseball.
“To do it for this university, with what I've been able to experience this year, would be life-changing.” designated hitter Hayden Schott said. “It makes me cry just thinking about it.”
So both teams should enter the best-of-three Championship Series fully loaded with incentive, and a deep urge to reward the fan bases who have followed them so ardently.
“The 12th Man is so special. If I start talking about it too much I'll start crying because they really are a unique, special group of people that are so supportive. And it would be awesome to reward that,” Schlossnagle said.
“It's been pretty incredible how positive people are and how loyal they are, for being in the SEC, because most people are only as loyal as the wins go by,” Vitello said.
Both teams should be fully loaded with confidence. The Aggies have never trailed in this College World Series. They have been tied for only six innings. Since falling behind 9-4 in its first game here – an orange herring, it turned out -- Tennessee has outscored its three opponents 21-5. And the Vols are the No. 1 seed for a reason.
Texas A&M is 8-0 in the NCAA Tournament and its last loss was May 23. Who beat the Aggies that day? Right, Tennessee in the SEC Tournament, 7-4.
“I don’t think it carries a lot of weight,” Vitello said.
“Tennessee is far and away the best team I've seen outside of our team this year -- pitching, defense, so physical, so well-coached,” Schlossnagle said.
It will begin Saturday night with Tennessee in the field and Texas A&M at bat. Then in the bottom of the innings, things should really get interesting.
Nobody has done much against the Aggies pitching in Omaha. Three runs scored in three games, 37 strikeouts. That means 34 percent of the plate appearances so far against Texas A&M have ended with a whiff, or else looking as the umpire’s right arm goes up. The starting pitchers have not been scored upon in 14.2 innings and have 13 more strikeouts than hits allowed. Opponents are 2-for-29 with runners in scoring position. Kaeden Kent, batting eighth in the Aggies’ batting order, has driven in as many runs in three games as all of Texas A&M’s opponents combined. It goes on and on.
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“I think I say it every time, it’s unbelievable to watch these guys work,” Kent said. “It’s such a joy to watch. I think it just brings momentum to us. They’re taking care of their business so we have to help them out, right?”
Nobody has been able to stop the Volunteers’ bats much all season. Tennessee has motored along scoring nine runs a game since February, the home run count now 178. The Vols have put up at least 11 runs in five of nine NCAA Tournament games and their low is six. Also, what do the numbers .571, .500 .308 and .500 mean? That’s the Omaha batting averages of the first four hitters in the Vols lineup. The first belongs to Christian Moore. Should he keep that up and Tennessee win, he’d have an excellent chance to be only the second non-pitcher named Most Outstanding Player in the MCWS in 10 years. The other, Oregon State’s Adley Rutschman, is now an All-Star catcher for the Baltimore Orioles.
Tennessee reliever Kirby Connell was describing Friday what it was like last fall in intrasquad games pitching against his teammates. Not easy. “You've got a lot of guys, 1 through 9, and you've got all the guys that helped them get to where they're at right now,” he said. “It was tricky. You can't throw them anything because you know they can leave the yard whenever they want.”
So with both similarities and contrasts, Tennessee and Texas A&M now face what Connell called, “a three-round fight this weekend.”
Tennessee is hitting .321 in the MCWS. Texas A&M’s opponents are hitting .168.
Schlossnagle badly wants a first championship. So does Vitello, who used to work for him at TCU.
“Most teams don't know when their season is going to end. We're pretty sure when ours is going to end, one way or the other,” Schlossnagle said. “That's a gift. That's a blessing we should be thankful for.”
Both understand that as hard as it will be to get two wins this weekend, it would be exponentially tougher in the other team’s boisterous park. That's how life on the road is in the SEC. “I don't mean to speak for anybody else, but both sides are probably pretty happy it's at a neutral site,” Vitello said.
And both understand they play not only for themselves, but those who came before them in two successful, popular, proud, but so far titleless programs.
From Tennessee’s side, Moore: “For us, this is what we all dreamed of, Now that we get to live it I think it’s super cool.”
From Texas A&M’s side, Ryan Prager, who likely will be the one throwing to Moore Saturday night: “I think it would mean a lot because everybody comes and joins this program because you want to win a championship. You want to be the best. You want to beat the best. You want to play against the best. That's why you come to a place like this. And it would mean a ton, just (for) the guys that played before us, you see the support that they still bring back. They care. They really do care beyond their tenure as a player here. I think just to be able to do it for them, give them a sense of accomplishment.”
So one side gets that sense of accomplishment very soon. The other side doesn’t. It’s as simple as S-E-C.
