MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – I’m old, and watching college baseball games these last couple of days has made me feel much older.
My high systolic and diastolic numbers aside, what a weekend for Steve Sabins‘ West Virginia University baseball program! I’d say the 11th-ranked Mountaineers have picked up some more college baseball fans, not that decade-old Kendrick Family Ballpark can handle the additional onslaught that is headed its way this weekend for the NCAA Tournament Super Regionals.
Write that down and underline it … NCAA Tournament Super Regionals!
“That was fun,” Sabins said afterward. “Everything that you love about coaching and everything that you love about the players was on full display this weekend. It’s cinema.”
There was no such thing as Super Regionals 35 years ago when I was a graduate student writing my good buddy Eric Petho’s name into the scorebook at catcher for the Mountaineers’ midweek game against Alderson-Broaddus.
Sadly, A-B is no longer a school these days, and West Virginia no longer schedules D-IIs during the midweek either.
“Hooch,” as we called him, was a team favorite whose funniest remarks always seemed to come at the worst possible moments.
The late Dale Ramsburg used to get so annoyed listening to Hooch cracking jokes at the other end of the dugout that he would send him out into the neighborhood to chase foul balls.
“Come back in the eighth inning,” the Rammer would say.
Ramsburg always struggled to find competent umpires during weekday afternoon games. One year, an ump showed up at home plate to take the lineup cards and asked the two coaches if there were any new rules that he should be aware of.
Another time, while Ramsburg was visiting with Pitt coach Bobby Lewis before a game, down from the Shell Building walked West Virginia assistant basketball coach Butch Haswell to call balls and strikes.
Lewis, seeing Haswell, turned to Ramsburg and said, ‘Jesus Dale, who do you have calling the bases, Gale Catlett?”
Back then, I used to cover the team during my sports information days, and I can remember sitting in the equipment room next to the visiting dugout keeping track of the games at Hawley Field. This was before the 1,000-seat bleachers were constructed behind home plate, so I’ve got some perspective.
I can remember Ramsburg walking past us from the third base coaching box to the dugout between innings and barking out, “Passed balls are not errors!”
The catcher that day did more missing than catching, but thanks to the coach, we were able to avoid a revolt by removing all those Es that we were erroneously displaying on the scoreboard.
I can remember Duquesne coach Rich Spear coming to games at Hawley wearing a bright red pullover with khaki pants and sitting in a fold-out lawn chair outside the dugout along the third base line.
With that information now handy, it’s much easier to understand how West Virginia went 73-10 against the Dukes, including a 45-3 record versus them when the two played in the same conference.
Former coach Randy Mazey loves to joke about sitting in the home dugout at Hawley Field and watching poor Texas coach Augie Garrido get out of his climate-controlled tour bus that took the team from their charter plane in Bridgeport up to Morgantown, and then having to lumber down to the dugout from the Shell Building to play a conference game against the Mountaineers.
And then in the third inning, when Augie’s bladder couldn’t take it anymore, stand in line amongst the fans waiting to use one of the two functioning toilets in the restroom.
Well, I can remember when there were no restrooms down there and you either had to hold it, open the fence behind the dugout and knock on someone’s door in the sliver of houses next to the field, or hightail it down toward the river and find a big tree.
That’s the college baseball people my age remember.
Don’t get me wrong, there were some damned good baseball players here at West Virginia University in those days – they just had zero support and very little outside interest.
They played because they loved to play.
Things have changed quite a bit through the years, thanks to Oliver Luck’s vision and the cooperation of the West Virginia Legislature, which was required to go into extra innings to get what is today known as Kendrick Family Ballpark constructed because that’s usually how politics work around here.
What seemed so big and adequate back in 2014 is already being taxed to its limits, sort of like those on-ramps coming off I-79.
But I digress.
I occasionally think about these things when I see 4,000+ fans jump to their feet to celebrate Paul Schoenfeld’s dramatic two-run homer in the ninth inning of Sunday night’s 11-9 victory over Kentucky, or Armani Guzman’s 10th-inning single to center to walk-off the Wildcats during last night’s unforgettable 6-5 triumph.
I occasionally think about these things, too, when I watch an ESPN clip posted on X of the entire stadium swaying and singing in unison to “Take Me Home, Country Roads.”
Now, a Super Regional is coming to Morgantown, West Virginia, for the right to advance to the College World Series.
It’s the third straight year West Virginia has advanced to the Super Regionals. Who else had that on their bingo cards back in, say, 2012, a year before Mazey was hired and four years before he brought Sabins here as an assistant coach?
If you think the atmosphere at the ballpark was bananas these last four days, just wait until everyone gets rehydrated for next weekend. Just like the FBI and the IRS, Mountaineer tailgates are still undefeated!
“I think it’s been cemented that this is the best college baseball atmosphere in the country,” Sabins observed. “There is nowhere that can provide the energy than what just happened in Morgantown. The place was sold out, and there are more and more people going up on that hill when we play, and we’re bringing a Super Regional to Morgantown.”
The biggest baseball celebration I can ever recall around here was when the Mountaineers walked off Temple in the 10th inning of the 1985 Atlantic 10 Tournament, and the 500 or so people at the game taking their party to Mario’s Fishbowl afterward.
There would have been a big celebration after reliever Rodney Allen shut down Connecticut’s ninth-inning rally to win the 1996 Big East regular season title, but a thunderstorm was lurking beyond Granville, and everyone had already hightailed it to their cars before the skies opened up.
Yes, these are much different times today.
Enjoy it!
Savor these special moments.
I certainly am.