OMAHA, Nebraska — The Kentucky baseball team's flight to Omaha was delayed last week, giving the Wildcats more time to reflect on a serious issue.
Should they bring the cowboy hat or a stuffed animal with them?
The hat was a prop for the “Cowboy Up” ritual the Wildcats practiced when their hitters faced two strikes, but they weren't sure how effective it was in the super regionals, so they debated getting rid of it. Kentucky relief pitcher Ryan Hagenow has the final say in these matters because, as dugout captain, he is the arbiter of a vital initiative: “Get Weird.”
It was implemented by Wildcats captain Nick Mingione after Kentucky suffered a home series loss to Kennesaw State in March. Mingione thought his players were putting too much pressure on themselves. He wanted them to play with more energy, relax and have fun.
The Wildcats went on a six-game winning streak after that team meeting, winning a school-record 46 games and landing in the program's first Men's College World Series.
Saturday was extremely strange.
In the middle of his first MCWS game, a tied game with No. 10 North Carolina State, pitcher Mason Moore was in the dugout wearing a firefighter's hat and playing with a hand puppet. The game went to extra innings. Two Kentucky players placed more than a dozen rally caps on top of outfielder Nolan McCarthy's head. A few minutes later, Kentucky cruised to a 5-4 victory in the 10th inning.
Coincidence? Probably. But don't tell that to the Wildcats, who are having the season (and time) of their lives.
“I know it's not traditional or anything like that,” Hagenow said. “But at the same time, we're not a Major League Baseball team. We're college kids, and the reality is that most of us aren't going to play baseball after college. So we do what we can to enjoy it.” .
“I think if I was playing against us, I would be upset, but we do it all for ourselves. We are focused on ourselves and what makes us play well, and we know that keeping guys loose makes us play our best.”
Mingione obviously doesn't care what baseball traditionalists think either. He's as sentimental as he is analytical, stopping everything to individually congratulate each of his players after their super regional win over Oregon State earlier this month and kneeling in the third base training box to pray after the game-winning home run. Mitchell Daly cleared the left field fence on Saturday.
The Wildcats captain, whose first head coaching job was at Kentucky, likes to tell his players that they are responsible for two things: how they play and how they help the team win inside and outside of how they play. Or if they play at all. Mingione told the Wildcats in March that he could live with the results as long as they played hard and didn't scare people. He told them to decide who they were.
The Wildcats chose rarity.
Two days later, in a game against Murray State, one of Kentucky's pitchers began wearing a pink hat and soon, fans began wearing pink hats. Every game, when the first Wildcat runner reaches second base, the entire dugout imitates (corrects, mocks) every move Mingione makes in the coaches' box. A player once engaged in a long staring contest with a television camera, and it took Mingione by surprise, but only for a minute.
“They get weird,” Mingione said, “and there are times I have to admit it, though, when I'm in the third base coach's box and they're laughing and doing something and I'm afraid to look over my shoulder. Like , 'What are they doing now?'”
Mingione also gets weird. He gets oohs and aahs from the dugout for standing still as the lines make their way to third. There's a post on
We don't move it's a lifestyle, @ChrisBurke02! @Coach_Mingione x @NCAABaseball pic.twitter.com/trrPOuToMg
– Kentucky Baseball (@UKBaseball) May 19, 2024
“They stay in the box when the pitcher throws the ball to them and they don't move,” he said. “So I won't move. I'm in the fight with them.”
This fun approach may always seem natural to Hagenow, but it wasn't always that way.
He grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, and was a fairly introverted child. He thought that if he stayed home, he would probably stay in the same group of friends and never venture out. Hagenow was also one of the top-ranked high school pitchers in the country.
When he came to Kentucky, he wanted to live up to his expectations, help his team, and he put pressure on himself. He overthought everything.
“I went through some struggles and had some setbacks,” Hagenow said, “and I've been able, as I've gotten older, to separate my identity from the baseball field.”
His brothers, who also played college baseball, helped him realize he had an identity outside of baseball.
Now Hagenow is a cog, not the star, but he knows his role is important.
Even if that means carrying a Spider-Man doll on your shoulders. The stuffed Spidey belongs to Max May, the son of Matt May, a longtime Kentucky baseball publicist. Max lent his stuffed toy to the team, and last week, while the boy was in a hallway at Charles Schwab Field, he asked, “Is Ryan still taking good care of him?”
Hagenow sure is. But as far as that cowboy hat goes, he hasn't shown up in the Omaha dugout.
He's open to many suggestions to help the team get weird, but Hagenow has his limits. Sometimes a player will come up to him and ask, “Dude, why don't we all start singing this song?” But he is against singing: it is too corny for him.
“Eminem's 'Not Afraid' was something they wanted to do for a while,” Hagenow said. “A lot of ideas are thrown at me every day. Some of them depend on whether I feel them or not. It's random stuff. We have a lot of creative brains on the team, that's for sure.”
But if the Wildcats keep winning, who knows? Hagenow and Mingione are keeping an open mind.
“We love this,” Mingione said. “This is where we want to be. This is what we want to do right now, at this moment.”
