The first game of the CWS was a long and hot one. Are we on the beach? (Williams / WBR) $CLICK TO BUY$
Your friend says baseball is boring. Your friend also wears Affliction cutoff shirts and cargo shorts to formal occasions. It’s his evening wear. It’s his uniform. It’s his identity. You’re only friends with him because he saved your life back in the summer of ’01 when you accidentally fell in the river, not knowing how to swim. You owe your life to him, but you know he’s wrong. You know baseball isn’t boring because you know it’s the anticipation of every pitch can hold all the drama in the palm of its hand. It’s riveting if you understand the nuance.
Today’s baseball game was a disgusting measure in futility, stripping everything that we hold dear on the grandest stage of college ball. When Ray Tanner, former South Carolina coach and now chair of the D-1 baseball committee, spoke about picking up the pace of the game, I was perturbed.
There isn’t a problem here. I’ve watched college baseball all season!
“…there’s a lot of discussions to be had, but the no-huddle offense — let’s play. Let’s keep the game moving. We don’t want to take out the purity of the game, a little cat and mouse that goes on between managers or guy in the bullpen or guy on deck. We’ve got to leave that part in the game. But we’ve got to keep playing. We’ve got to keep the game moving whether they’re staying in the box or putting the limit on a coaching visit to the mound or all the players, we’ve really got to sit down and tweak it.
We have to have more action.” – Ray Tanner
What? That can’t be — how could one be so obtuse? Has he seen what I’ve seen?
Living in the Ed Servais bubble, as it turns out, is a college baseball paradise. The atrocity that took place upon Servais’s home field was evident when you stack it in comparison to the April 11th midweek game between Creighton and Kansas – a 13-11 ballgame with 10 pitching changes – lasted three hours and thirty five minutes. It was brutally long, but packed with offense and a late inning surge from the Jayhawks.
Too many throws to first? Nah. Just a long hot game. (Williams / WBR) $CLICK TO BUY$
Three hours and thirty five minutes and Ed Servais was calling the ballgame a travesty.
As of this writing, in the top of the 9th inning, this game has lasted 4 hours and 20 minutes with six outs still left to record. The record for a CWS game in terms of length is four hours and twenty one minutes. We’re almost there.
…and we made it.
Four hours and twenty four minutes after the first pitch, North Carolina triumphed over Oregon State. It was a battle fraught with pitching changes, including one in the first inning after injury-laden Tar Heel starter Gianluca Dialtri exited after throwing just fifteen pitches, citing a discomfort with every pitch.
On the other side, discomfort washed over the stadium as Luke Heimlich – the pitcher who, at 15 years old, plead guilty of a sexual assault charge against his 6 year old niece, the pitcher who then denied every committing the vile act in the New York Times, the pitcher whose story about the subject has changed more times than innings he pitched tonight, the pitcher who is undoubtedly and statistically one of the most dominating pitchers in the college game – only lasted 2 1/3 innings after allowing four hits, six earned, a walk, and two hit batsmen.
From then on it was a game of dueling bullpens, with Oregon State seemingly having the upper hand as just two more Tar Heels would score in the affair. Unfortunately, the deficit was far too much for the ultra powerful Beavers to overcome.
As the heat of the day arrived and the game continued to roll along like a marathon of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, everyone wondered how these guys were continuing to do it, in triple digit heat, in a seemingly never ending ballgame. Well, UNC reliever Cooper Criswell had a little something to say about it:
It was hot. But believe it or not, I think it might be a
little more humid down in North Carolina at times. I
think that helped us just be able to fight through the hot
weather. Super Regional and Regional, we were super
hot down there in North Carolina. So I think that
helped us prepare and perform today.
Like going to a tanning booth before that vacation to Cancun, the Tar Heels have dipped their toe in a high dew point, high temperature environment before, coming out the other end without breaking quite as many droplets of sweat as the Corvallis kids.
The starters were out early and it was the battle of the bullpens for most of the game (Williams / WBR) $CLICK TO BUY$
Right fielder Taylor Larnach didn’t mince words when it came to experiences in this heat in Omaha, noting, “Definitely don’t remember it being this hot last year. But it is what it is. You’ve got to deal with it. You’ve got to play through it.”
June in Omaha, baby.
As for other elements in this one, there was the particular existence of the third base umpire, Barry Chambers that drew quite a bit of ire from everyone watching baseball. UNC’s 2nd baseman Zack Gahagan roped a 3-1 fastball from Heimlich down the third base line, a sure double, only for the ball to bound off a leaping Chambers’s leg, saving a run for the Beavers.
It was in the 7th where Chambers would make an impact again, calling a late-sliding Brandon Martorano safe on a play where he was clearly out.
Though the cosmic balance of baseball seemed to tilt back towards neutral, it was a crucial call in a game that was still relatively close. Michael Gretler, the third baseman for OSU, made a phenomenal tag and managed to stick with Martorano throughout the entire play, tagging him out on multiple occasions, yet Chambers let it go.
With the latter, the need for more extensive replay is a paramount to the integrity of the game, especially when clashed against its use in professional baseball.
Wait, wouldn’t that make the game longer?
Shut up.
No, you just spent a quarter of this recap complaining about it.
Shut. Up.
It seems like you’re sho-
Cooper Criswell would slam the door on the Beavers with 2.1 innings of 1-hit ball, sealing the win for the Tar Heels, 8-6. They’ll face the winner of Mississippi State and Washington on Monday night, with Oregon State getting the loser.
See more photos from this game courtesy of WBR Photographer Brad Williams.