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Ryan McGee, ESPN Senior Writer
OMAHA, Neb. — Texas A&M and Tennessee have waited 73 years to finally win a Men’s College World Series championship. So what’s another day? The day when this year’s series could end with a celebration for the Aggies ended with a 1-1 push that pushed them into a decisive Game 3 contest on Monday night, thanks to a last-inning push for a 4-1 win by the top seed. Vol.
“To think you’re only going to play in two games, that’s going to be nice,” admitted Texas A&M head coach Jim Schlossnagle, grinning. “But now we can play. We don’t have to play. We can play, in the last college baseball game of the season, and it’s amazing.”
“There were no trophies or rings or belts awarded today,” said Tennessee’s Tony Vitello. “But what we can do is one more chance to have one more game with this team, and it happens to be a national championship.”
In the ballpark’s outdoor tunnel where the two head coaches held press conferences, the teams crossed paths in the hallways, the Aggies waited to board the bus, the Volunteers walked off the field after post-win Q&As. SEC rivals, in sweat-stained uniforms and black eyes messily smeared down their faces, shook hands and nodded to each other to acknowledge their shared experience.
One player shouted to another, “People in the arena! I don’t know about you, but I’m tired!”
Diamonds are made using pressure, tension and heat, and while there are no jewels awarded on the diamond from the Men’s College World Series on Friday afternoon, there is certainly an excess of Nebraska-sized pressure, tension and heat. A game that sits at 1-0 for six-plus rounds. A standing room only crowd of 25,987 had crawled and climbed into every corner of Charles Schwab Stadium that provided a view. All in the kiln of a cloudless Omaha afternoon, with an air temperature of 90, humidity of 80% and field conditions that felt like the number two had been multiplied by two.
The whole day was played through the visible glass and in the heat. Texas A&M’s depleted pitching staff (“It’s going to take a village,” Schlossnagle said entering the weekend) kept Tennessee’s supposedly ferocious offense at bay. At one point the Vols’ bats went a brutal 0-for-16 with runners on base and 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position. The Aggies were able to protect a 1-0 lead generated by a solo first-inning homer through a series of highwire-act defensive plays. The most harrowingly memorable moment was a glove-empty slow throw from second baseman Kaeden Kent, shoveled to first base to come half a shoelace ahead of the runners, stranding three Vols on base.
But when Tennessee finally did the statistics of 1-for-17, it was very Big Orange “1” in the form of a two-run homer from left Dylan Dreiling. It was the first time that A&M, previously undefeated in the NCAA tournament, had trailed a game in the MCWS this year, and never regained the lead. Although, the characteristic of the contest, the Aggies have the potential to win the game on the deck without going out in the bottom of the ninth, only to end the game with a runner in the corner, left hanging after the 372-foot warning track flyball also hung, possibly slowed by the wind that suddenly blew from Iowa .
“We live in the idea of ​​one play at a time, one inning at a time, one game at a time, and I think we did a great job with that,” said A&M pitcher Chris Cortez, who kept Tennessee at bay for the rest. of four innings in the middle of the game. “But there’s no way you can’t help but feel the tension, especially since the 1-0 score didn’t change for a long time. It felt like something had to give. And it did.
“There are times when it’s like, ‘Hey, we need to relax or change our mojo a little bit,'” Vitello agreed. “It’s a tension that we’ve probably seen once or twice since we got here, obviously it doesn’t work.”
A few minutes later, as the coach came off the stage and was about to rejoin the team, he added: “You could feel the tension, couldn’t you? Like, in the whole stadium.”
That’s right. A stroll through the grandstand packed with a strange silence, ballpark organ and occasional cheering section stand out from the normal. Even when Tennessee rushed the field to celebrate the victory, the uproar was short-lived.
It is understandable. There’s still work to be done, and no one knows that better than those in maroon or the Big Orange. Neither program has won a baseball national title. They shared their first MCWS appearance in 1951, A&M went home early and Tennessee suffered a title game loss to Oklahoma. In the seven-plus decades since, the two have endured years of baseball irrelevance, despite a good budget and even better in-state high school talent. Over the past decade the two have become baseball powerhouses, but the two have still never been dogpiled in June.
In other words, hot hardball is nothing new in College Station or Knoxville.
“I’d be very happy to have it all done tonight,” Schlossnagle said, involuntarily flicking his eyes to the paperwork in his hand, no doubt already sorting out the pitching staff’s availability. “But there’s something I think, poetically, about the season that started in February and the postseason that started last month, the players who have worked for this in their lives, and all of our fans are waiting for a chance to win. Everything, if it all comes down to Game 3 tomorrow.”
The 26 hours in between will be filled with all the players looking for ways to stay loose, the coach sifting through stats, trends and pitch counts, and fans from both sides having discussions over beer.
“I left one of my Air Pods on, so I only had one on (Friday night) and I could hear the party down the street, so it was hard to sleep tonight,” Vitello said, laughing. “I’ll put both of them. You just move the sound machine, brown noise instead of white noise for me personally. But yes, you have to eat. You have to rest. I have friends and family. In the city, but I can’t enjoy Omaha tonight as possible, I think you should be a man, because the team is probably going to go back to the backyard baseball game.
Everybody. After all, it’s been a long wait.
