Gamecocks win 2011 College World Series
Ray Tanner sat inside Rosenblatt Stadium after his South Carolina Gamecocks had won the 2010 College World Series — the last that would ever be played inside the hallowed ballpark in Omaha, Neb. — and struggled to come up with words to describe the improbable and historic journey his team had just completed.
“You start in February with 300 teams, and you get a chance to go to the postseason and maybe to a Super Regional,” he said. “And then you have things go right for you when you get to Omaha. And you get to play in the national championship series. And you’re the last team standing.”
Imagine what Tanner felt a year later, when he sat inside TD Ameritrade Park after his Gamecocks had won the 2011 College World Series, the first to be played inside the $128 million successor to Rosenblatt.
“It’s hard for me to understand it all right now,” Tanner told reporters after USC’s 5-2 win over Florida in Game 2 of the 2011 College World Series finals to clinch its second consecutive national title. “I’ll have to let it sink in a little bit.”
Baseball is a strange and humbling game. Everything can go spectacularly wrong one day and astonishingly right the next. It is a sport built on ebbs and flows, streaks and droughts. To survive and advance all the way to the final game of the season, and to then leave that game victorious with the designation of champion, is an astounding feat.
To do it two years in a row? Few, if any, would take that bet.
“The statistics, the percentages of doing that are stacked against you,” Tanner said.
So, Tanner never talked about repeating. Sure, it was in the back of his mind, as it was with his players, coaches and the fans who support his team. But he didn’t focus on it, instead choosing to take it day by day, game by game, inning by inning, pitch by pitch.
“I never think about, ‘Well, we’re good enough to go win the whole thing.’ Let’s just try to win the next game,” Tanner said. “And I’ve never told these guys our goals are to do this and do that and we’ve got to win this championship.”
His Gamecocks did just that. Battered and bruised most of the season, South Carolina valiantly hung tough all season long, scrapping its way to a three-way share of the Southeastern Conference regular season title with more-talented Vanderbilt and Florida teams simply on guile and the pride that comes with being a defending champion. And when the calendar turned to the postseason, the script remained the same: USC won 10 straight games, many by the skin of its teeth, to win a second national championship in fill-in-whatever-adjective-you-prefer fashion.
They never outclassed opponents. They never overwhelmed them, either. They just got down to the end, got down to when it was all on the line, and found a way.
“When the opportunity would present itself, we could try to find a way late in the game to win some games,” Tanner said. “And not often we go double-digit hits or double-digit runs, but these guys believed they could win, and they got in the position to do that a lot.”
In a somewhat unfitting manner to the tale of its season, though, Carolina didn’t need late-inning dramatics or walk-off heroics to take its place as only the sixth repeat champion in College World Series history.
The clinching win, USC’s 16th straight in NCAA postseason play and 11th consecutive in College World Series games, was uncharacteristically ho-hum for the Gamecocks. Three runs in the third inning gave ace left-hander Michael Roth all he would need. The Gators would make it a bit interesting in the later innings, pulling the score to within 4-2 in the top of the eighth, but the final outcome was already a bridge too far for UF.
An RBI off the bat of then-soon-to-be Most Outstanding Player Scott Wingo in the bottom half of the frame and the arrival of USC’s All-American closer Matt Price in the ninth both worked quickly to end Florida’s season.
With the final out of the game recorded, a soft fly-out to Jackie Bradley Jr. in center field, the celebration began. But this one was a subdued one, at least compared to 2010’s. After all, the Gamecocks had been there before and now were right back in the same place again — one that few thought they could reach again, not out of disrespect, but out of respect for the difficulty of the achievement.
“You get a little luck shining on you, and it works out for the best,” Tanner said. “And that’s what happened for us. These guys are play-makers, they’ve done a good job between the lines and we had some good fortune.”
Good fortune then in the old place, and just now in the new building. And since the change of year and change of address did nothing to alter the mojo, it clearly was no fluke. In fact, as improbable as it seemed for USC to win two straight nationals titles, maybe it should’ve been expected.
At least one guy felt that way.
“I had a feeling we would get back and win this thing, and we did,” Wingo said.