OMAHA, Neb. — Tennessee. Baseball school.
On Friday, three days before his Volunteers won their first Men's College World Series championship with a hot-as-Hades, suddenly too-tight, 6-5 Game 3 victory over Texas A&M, head coach Tony Vitello surprised when a question about his school's forever 0 title drought framed Tennessee as a “baseball school.”
“First of all, I appreciate you calling us a baseball school,” he said on the eve of Tennessee's second appearance in the MCWS finals and first since 1951. “But I think we're a do-it-all school.”
That seems fine to me. It is. It always has been. The school of Peyton Manning, who was present in “Omaha!” Monday night, sitting next to Vols football and basketball coaches Josh Heupel and Rick Barnes. The school of Pat Summitt, the coach who propelled women's basketball into the stratosphere where she lives today. The alma mater of Todd Helton, newly elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in January. Ernie and Bernie, Alan Houston, Johnny Majors, Reggie White… it's a list of all-time sports greats as long as the Tennessee River.
Team goals 🍊
Rick Barnes, Josh Heupel and Peyton Manning reached Game 3 in Omaha 👏 @Vol_Baseball | @Vol_Hoops @Vol_Football | #MCWS pic.twitter.com/QuZjqKobX1
— SEC Network (@SECNetwork) June 25, 2024
But Manning, the most famous of the school's four Heisman Trophy finalists, also fell one game short of winning the national title, losing badly to Big Red Nebraska school, just down the street from where he stood Monday. the night. Heupel has the Vols moving the ball, but he still has work to do. Barnes took his Vols to the Elite Eight in April, but that's as high as they've reached under him. Helton took his baseball team to Omaha in 1995, but had to settle for third place.
So good. Seemingly always so good at everything at a school of everything, with a building full of conference titles, but rarely good enough to win it all. The school's last national championship came in 2009, when the women's track team followed Summitt's eighth and final trophy the year before, seven years before her death. Those bumper stickers from the 1998 BCS National Championship, the last fancy one won by a Tennessee men's team, had long since faded from bright orange to a pale shade of pain.
Until Monday night. When a Big Orange championship cavalry marched across a green field on the edge of the Great Plains to finally hoist one of those monolithic wooden NCAA national championship trophies.
And it was the baseball team.
IT'S GREAT TO BE A TENNESSEE VOL 🍊 pic.twitter.com/YxD4UB1KXs
– Tennessee Athletics (@Vol_Sports) June 25, 2024
“I think that's the best part,” said Tennessee fifth-year pitcher Kirby Connell. The reliever, known as Vollie Fingers for his handlebar mustache, had just run in from the bullpen amid a chant of “Kir-by! Kir-by!” from the elated orange-clad fans. “They said our stadium wasn't big enough and we'd never have crazy SEC crowds like other places or win the big ones, but these people here stuck with us. They made all that happen. They believed and so did we.”
In defense of those who weren't in a hurry to jump on the Tennessee baseball bandwagon, there wasn't much reason to risk jumping on that caboose. This was a program that lost that 1951 Series via an upset to Oklahoma and then didn't return until Helton's team 44 years later. After a pair of visits in 2001 and 2005, it lost its Road to Omaha map for another 16 seasons. But this year was his third visit in four years. The only year he missed, 2022, was devastating, as the best team in the country lost at home in the NCAA tournament to Notre Dame.
The other two trips to Omaha ended too quickly. The third finished as the last team standing. All while I'm forced to watch every other team in the conference return home from Nebraska every June with rings.
“They've been knocking on the door the last few years, they've been there, and I've lived that,” Manning said on the field, after hugging Vitello as confetti cannons began firing behind him. “But what would you rather do? Be someone who loses or be knocking on the door and it hurts a lot? Which is true. That means you're doing something right.”
All those others who had also experienced that were on full, excruciating display in the concourse of Charles Schwab Field in the late innings of Monday night's game. Hundreds of orange-clad fans paced nervously after each pitch, some crouching against the wall, almost in the fetal position, their eyes closed and able only to listen to the game they had come a third of the way across the country for. look.
“I've got a seat, but I can't be down there, man,” said Drew Toth of Chattanooga, wringing his hands and rocking back and forth as he spoke. “Look at us, all walking around back here. We got that PTSD, man.”
Tennessee began the eighth inning with a 6-1 lead, having doubled that lead with a three-run seventh. Then the Aggies singled. There were two wild pitches. Another single. A double. The eighth ended with a 6-3 lead.
“Damn it! Don't do this to us!” shouted a woman wearing a T-shirt that said “We Back Pat” and featured a portrait of Summitt.
“Get away from that table! You're going to curse this!” barked a man in a Todd Helton Tennessee No. 5 jersey, pointing to a group of Tennessee fans already lined up at the souvenir stand, eager to purchase the national champion's first official apparel that was waiting in sealed, visible boxes. Just around the corner.
In the ninth, A&M led off with a double. Another wild pitch. Another single. An obstacle? ANOTHER WILD LAUNCH. They were 6-5.
A gentleman in his 2023 Sweet 16 jersey quietly stood up and walked off to God knows where. He just knew his previous location wasn't working.
Then, finally, 1951, 1998, No. 1 ranking failure, losing Heismans, horribly timed injuries, worst-time tantrums, all those things that almost made it and will get them next time. They disappeared into the ether of the Great Orange.
This is what winning a natty sounds like. #MCWS pic.twitter.com/EmEbS14uF7
-Ryan McGee (@ESPNMcGee) June 25, 2024
Then, just as quickly as they had begun to applaud, many of the Tennessee fans began to see the dejected people in Texas A&M gear solemnly heading toward the doors, still seeking their first MCWS title and their first men's national championship. any kind since 2009. The same scene played out on the field and in the tunnels after the game, where several Vols players ran to console their SEC foes.
“You've got to get close first to get over the hump,” said UT outfielder Dylan Dreiling, who earned Most Outstanding Player honors after going 2-for-2 with a home run, a double and three RBIs. He was asked what he had told the Aggies. The sophomore said it's the same thing Tennessee has spent the last five years telling itself, as it eroded with each visit (and heartbreaking lack of visits) to Omaha. “Nothing makes you focus more than being that close and not closing it. And closing it feels really good.”
So let's get back to the original question about the identity of the show, shall we?
“Are we a baseball school?” Vitello said, laughing, remembering Friday's conversation and then looking around to recognize Heupel and Barnes, with whom he had just posed for a photo. “No, we're still an everything school. That's why those guys were here and all these people were here.”
“Tony has shown us the whole way,” Manning added. “But this won't be the last. And I'm not just talking about baseball. Tennessee is coming.”
Finally.
