OMAHA, Neb. – Before all the magic, there was a simple sign this season was going to be something special for the Texas Longhorns.
Before Texas’ heartbreaking loss to LSU left them just short of the national championship on Wednesday.
Before freshman Taylor Jungmann pitched his first career complete game at the College World Series, keeping the Longhorns’ national title hopes alive.
Before Cameron Rupp blasted a home run into orbit and before Connor Rowe followed with a walk-off homer. Before Texas beheaded Goliath by scoring 6 runs against a pitcher who only lost one game all season.
Before the walk-off walk and the record seven sacrifice bunts. Before Preston Clark’s walk-off grand slam capped an eight-run bottom of the ninth comeback and even before Austin Wood’s heroic pitching performance carried Texas to a win in the longest game in the history of college baseball.
Before all of this, they won. And they kept winning, rolling off 11 straight wins to start the season.
It had been four years since their last trip to Omaha, four years since they even won a regional. The past postseason failures were all they heard about. That was until their coach, who happened to be the all-time winningest in college baseball, was arrested for driving while intoxicated.
After that, the Longhorns responded like champions. They won. It wasn’t always easy, but it was always dramatic. The run ended Wednesday with Texas one win short of being the champions.
“It has been unbelievable,” Clark said, who capped a rocky, injury-filled Texas career with a strong showing in the NCAA tournament. “It has been everything I have ever dreamed of as a ballplayer. But to come this far and fall this short, it hurts that much more.”
With the focus from the beginning on the absence of coach Augie Garrido, who served a four-game suspension after his arrest, Texas began a winning streak that became the longest since it started 2005 at 16-0, the last time the Longhorns captured a national title.
“It has been amazing, every guy pulled for each other,” Clark said. “We love one another.”
The Longhorns’ NCAA tournament run was nothing short of amazing. They looked destined to become the champions of college baseball. Texas never dominated, but they always found a magical way to escape with a win at the end.
Garrido joked that he had hired a new assistant coach: David Copperfield.
In Omaha, while opponents were busy practicing, Garrido and Texas were continually recovering from their last miracle win.
“People ask me why we don’t practice,” he said. “Practice. How the hell do you practice the way we win?”
They believed.
“We love each other. This team is my family, we are all brothers,” second baseman Travis Tucker said.
Tucker’s bat, which poked the game-winning RBI in the 25-inning win against Boston College, will be enshrined in Cooperstown, New York, in the National Baseball Hall of Fame along with Wood’s hat and glove.
“We believe in each other,” Tucker said.
They had no reason to not believe. All year they picked each other up.
It wasn’t always pretty, but they continually found a way to pick up another win.
Sloppy play in its second game of the College World Series found Texas behind Arizona State 6-0 with the Sun Devils’ ace, Mike Leake, who was 16-1 for the year on the mound. But Texas wasn’t ready to give up.
“We have too much confidence in each other to not prepare to lose,” Garrido said after the game.
Garrido’s confidence in his team was contagious.
“[Garrido] stays with us, he never gives up on us,” Rupp said after crushing two homers in the huge first comeback against Arizona State. “It is so late in the season, there is no reason to give up now.”
Three days later, Texas mounted another dramatic comeback to topple Arizona State again. Three days later, it was another Rupp blast that sparked the rally, tying the game in the bottom of the ninth before Rowe deposited his walk-off home run into the first row of the left-field bleachers.
Rupp’s home run, which cleared the 22-foot wall in center field, may be the longest homer ever hit at the College World Series. The ball even cleared over a walkway behind the huge wall, landing in a small, fenced-in area underneath the structure of Rosenblatt’s bleachers. It was there in its inconspicuous resting place that a little-leaguer from Houston spotted it.
Like Rupp a decade before, the young Texan was in Omaha playing in one of the many tournaments coinciding with the College World Series. As he walked out of the stadium, excited about another dramatic win, the little Longhorn fan climbed down into the fenced in area and retrieved Rupp’s ball — with cover surprisingly still intact.
He had found the best possible souvenir in Omaha, but as a baseball player, he knew the ball didn’t belong to him.
“On Saturday he brought the ball to the team hotel, but we weren’t there so he left a note,” Rupp recounted on Sunday before the Championship Series started. “So when I got back, they gave me the note and I called his dad to arrange an exchange for the ball.”
The exchange was an autographed ball for Rupp’s memorable 450-foot moon-shot ball.
“I am excited to have it back,” Rupp said, a huge grin growing over his face. “I don’t know what I am going to do with it, I am sure my dad will do something nice.”
While it may take a while for the sting of Wednesday’s loss to wear off, the memories of the Longhorns’ magical run will linger forever.
For the young Texan who found the ball, there will be dreams of becoming the next Cameron Rupp — hitting the heroic homer in Omaha.
The dream doesn’t die because Texas came up short of the championship.
For Rupp, there will always be the ball — a tactile reminder of the magic. An Omaha dream formed a decade earlier, fulfilled.
He’ll have next year, the last College World Series to be played in historic Rosenblatt Stadium, to capture the championship dream.
“I honestly believe this is the beginning of a new era for Texas baseball in Omaha,” Garrido said. The legacy for those who are leaving — Wood, Tucker, Clark, Michael Torres and Keith Shinaberry — is no consolation for the heartbreak of coming up just short.
They may not be national champions, but on a magical run toward the title they became legends; their names not soon forgotten. Their amazing performances don’t lose luster because they fell short.
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