Improbable, but not impossible.
The Virginia baseball team, in danger of missing the postseason altogether in mid-April, finished off an amazing run to the National Championship on Wednesday night. UVa defeated Vanderbilt 4-2 in the final game of the College World Series to secure the first title in program history. The road to championship glory began as a cross-country three seed in California and ended with a celebration in Omaha as the Hoos wrapped up a 10-2 run through the NCAA Tournament.
“I’ve never tried to predict the future and coach your team by predicting the future,” Cavalier coach Brian O’Connor said. “I and the other coaches know what these guys that wear our uniform are made of. We were confident that they weren’t going to go away and they weren’t going to stop fighting. And we certainly found a way to get ourselves in the NCAA Tournament. And we talked a lot about it as a team, about just having the opportunity to compete again, that they earned this right, and just tried to simplify it as much as possible, because I think if you think about it, a big thing like trying to get to Omaha, trying to win a National Championship, it’s just way too much. This game is just incredibly hard to play. And if you put those kind of pressures on you, it’s tough. And hey, not many people thought that this could happen. I think my brother told me this afternoon the odds in Vegas today were 310 to 1 that we’d win this thing. So I don’t know, I’m just proud of these guys that they just hung in there. And it’s an unbelievable example to people that if you stay together as a group, if you’ve got a group of guys that work hard, a group of guys that really love each other and care about each other and are passionate about what they’re trying to accomplish and just fight and won’t go away – certainly you need some breaks, and we had breaks in this, in Omaha. But I’m proud of them and couldn’t have forecasted it, but we’re darned glad we’re sitting up here with this trophy.”
For the final game of the best-of-three CWS championship series, Virginia turned to ‘Big Game’ Brandon Waddell as its starting pitcher. He delivered. Again. For the third time this season in Omaha, he logged at least five innings on the mound and gave his team a chance to win. Over those three games, Waddell pitched 19 innings and allowed 12 hits with six earned runs to go with eight strikeouts. In all, Waddell has started five games at the College World Series in his career and the Wahoos won all five times.
Against Vanderbilt with the National Championship on the line, Waddell pitched seven innings and allowed two runs on four hits. He had two strikeouts and gave up two walks. Waddell limited the Commodores by mixing up his pitches and hitting his spots, particularly at key moments. In fact, after Vandy scored its two runs in the first inning courtesy of a walk and two doubles, Waddell shut down the opposing offense. Vanderbilt had just two more hits off of Waddell the rest of the way.
“It’s just a matter of taking a breath, getting your mind right, kind of simplifying things,” Waddell said of bouncing back after the first inning. “I knew what I had to do. So it’s a matter of going out there and executing. So I got focused back on those things. I knew 2-0 wasn’t going to be the final score. I knew our offense was going to score, you know they were going to put up some runs. So at that point it was a matter of trying to keep them to two, keeping our team in the ballgame as long as I could.”
That’s a strong outing for someone that pitching coach Karl Kuhn planned to use for three innings, but told reporters that “you let the warrior tell you when he’s done fighting.”
It was the program-record 53rd start of his career and likely his last after being selected by the Pirates in the fifth round of the MLB Draft. Waddell retired the final 11 batters he faced and grasped the championship trophy on the field afterward with a giant grin on his face. Now, that’s a swan song.
“First of all, coming into this game I knew we’d get his best,” O’Connor said. “How he’s pitched in this championship two years in a row is pretty special and doesn’t really happen. And so I knew he was going to give us everything he had. Certainly the first inning you could tell that he was up in the zone. And they did a nice job of executing and getting the hits that it took to score a couple of runs. And he made an adjustment. He made an adjustment immediately in the second inning to get the ball down in the zone, and he went back to doing what he’s done since he’s been here in changing speeds and locating the ball. And I was just amazed that he was able to give us seven innings, but that was it. He had done his job. He had done everything that he could do. And certainly he’ll go down as one of the great ones that’s ever pitched in this program, and as big a game pitcher as you get.”
With the team in a 2-0 hole after the first inning, Waddell needed his team to rally in order for his adjustments to pay dividends. The Cavaliers trailed until the middle innings when they came up with three runs in the fourth and fifth frames.
In the fourth inning, Kenny Towns drew a lead-off walk from Vanderbilt starter Walker Buehler. That brought freshman Pavin Smith to the plate and he slammed a 1-0 pitch into the right field bleachers for a two-run homer that tied the game.
“I wasn’t thinking about trying to hit a home run,” Smith said. “I was just trying to get on base, trying to extend the inning, trying to keep the rally going. When I hit it, I knew the wind was blowing out and I was just, like, telling it to go.”
In the fifth inning, Smith was in the middle of things again when he came up with another clutch hit. With two out and two on (Adam Haseley walked and Matt Thaiss was hit by a pitch), Smith saw a 2-0 pitch that he pushed through the left side of the infield for an RBI single. That’s the last run Virginia would need, though the Hoos tacked one on in the seventh when Towns singled for an RBI (program record 28 career postseason RBIs).
Smith finished 2-for-3 batting with three RBIs. Towns went 1-3 with one RBI and one run scored. The two players also teamed up for a critical defensive play in a game full of them. With two outs and the go-ahead run on third base in the fourth inning, Vanderbilt’s Tyler Campbell drilled a shot down the third base line. Towns dove to his right and rolled to his feet to make the throw across the field. Smith stretched out to keep the ball from sailing away. That got Campbell out to save a run and end the inning.
“I just really want to congratulate Virginia,” Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin said. “I mean, I think that’s first and foremost. It was a very, very gutty performance by their team, their pitching staff, to allow them to get to this point and be successful. I thought Waddell, in a lot of ways, was left for dead but he just got himself up in the fifth, sixth and seventh, he turned the game around. He went one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. … You have to give them a lot of credit.”
With the 4-2 lead and Waddell done after throwing 104 pitches, the Cavaliers still needed six outs from their pitching staff. If the entire season and postseason run was about resilience, the final two innings turned out to be about redemption.
Josh Sborz, the Most Outstanding Player of the CWS, was not available after throwing 77 pitches on Tuesday night. Sborz had recorded three wins and a save in Omaha without allowing a single earned run in 13 innings of work. As a result, the Cavaliers called on Nathan Kirby, their other All-ACC pitcher, to close out the game. It was a bold move.
Kirby, of course, had pitched just once after missing two months of action (April 17 to June 19) with a lat muscle injury. In his return last Friday, Kirby took the loss as Virginia fell 10-5 against Florida in double-elimination pool play. In that outing, Kirby managed to make it through just 2.2 innings while throwing 53 pitches. He allowed three earned runs and was a little inconsistent with his location. He didn’t throw many sliders as a secondary pitch against the Gators either.
Kirby also was the losing pitcher in the first game of the 2014 College World Series Finals against Vanderbilt. In that contest, Kirby lasted 2.1 innings as he allowed five earned runs. He threw 62 pitches and issued five walks in a tough-to-watch struggle on the mound in the third inning. Virginia eventually rallied, but lost 9-8 and went on to lose the series after a gut-wrenching 3-2 loss in game three.
That history journeyed to the mound with Kirby on Wednesday as he made his first relief appearance since June 8, 2013. He was up to the task. He connected with fastballs and sliders and remained calm after walking the second batter he faced. Kirby eventually struck out five of the eight batters he faced, including pinch hitter Kyle Smith to seal the victory. That final freeze frame strikeout sent the Hoos into celebration mode with Kirby in the middle of it all.
A storybook finish to an improbable National Championship run just one year after heartbreak. That’s not what was on Kirby’s mind with reporters, though.
“I think last year it was sad to see the guys that had put three years and four years before us go,” Kirby said. “And I think the thing that was really gratifying to me was knowing that we were playing not only for the guys on the team and the coaching staff and the fans but for everyone that’s walked between the lines before us in this program. And I think that was probably the most gratifying thing is knowing that all our hard work and their hard work paid off because they passed down a lot what we’ve learned and a lot of what the experiences the coaches have had and gone through have taught us, so I think that was probably the most gratifying thing.”
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