University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: One Of Those Nights
June 17, 2006 | Baseball
June 17, 2006
By Adam Lucas
OMAHA--Sometimes being a head coach is thankless.
Sometimes the players don't listen and the hits don't drop and the umpire is blind and the kid on second just missed a sign and why did you ever want to go into this maddening profession anyway?
Know when those nights are worth it? Nights like Friday in Omaha.
A night when every string the Carolina coaching stuff pulled was attached to the right move. A night when every pitching change came at the right time and with the right arm. A night when every intentional walk was perfectly timed. A night when a daring hit-and-run produced the only bad hop of the night and helped contribute to Carolina's 7-5 win over Cal State Fullerton in 13 excruciating innings.
Just one of those nights.
And this is what you say when everything you did went exactly right and you just coached a masterpiece on national television in prime time in front of over 23,000 fans: you give credit to the players.
"Our kids hung in there and dodged a number of bullets big-time in extra innings," Tar Heel head coach Mike Fox said. "I'm not quite sure how they did it."
Bullets? They were more like cannon shots.
Here is the deal: in college baseball, when a team gets runners on first and second with nobody out in the 11th inning, and gets five baserunners in that same inning--including runners reaching first on two different dropped third strikes--they score.
Five baserunners. One inning. The mathematics makes it almost impossible for them not to score.
Especially when that team is big bad Cal State Fullerton, the team that's so at home in Omaha they rent a house across the street from Rosenblatt Stadium to have a place to party.
Somehow, on Friday night, they couldn't find the plate.
One of Fox's assistant coaches nudged him and suggested a pickoff play at third base with runners on first and third and one out.
How many times have you seen that play in your baseball life? Hundreds? Thousands?
This time, it worked. This time Fullerton's Cory Vanderhook fell asleep on third base, Matt Danford executed a brilliant move that still had Titan coach George Horton grumbling after the game, and the Tar Heels got a game-saving second out.
That's where the story will end when it's told several years from now. Tar Heel baseball fans will recount how Tim Federowicz and Reid Fronk smoothly executed the rundown, the Titans were retired, and Carolina went on to win.
But that's not exactly how it ended. Fox then had to make the cagey decision to intentionally pass Danny Dorn, who had already been on base four times, in order to get to David Cooper. Dorn was walked, Cooper was retired, and it was still a winnable game.
Fox has often talked this season about how he makes some of his third-base coaching decisions on the spur of the moment. That's what happened after Mike Cavasinni led off the 13th inning with a single.
Inside the mind of a head coach:
"I was thinking about hitting and running initially," Fox said. "Then I decided let's just get a run, let's don't be greedy. When it went to 2-0 we felt like he had to come in and we slashed. The ball took a tough bounce. We got lucky on that ball because it took a wicked hop or it could've been an out. That's the kind of break we were looking for."
Do you understand why coaches go prematurely gray? Do you understand why they stand in the dugout or on the sidelines and slap their hands together or rub their temples or scream at the top of their lungs?
In just one at-bat, Fox went from thinking about a hit-and-run to planning to bunt to back to the hit-and-run. That's about 30 seconds, and three different decisions. You spend hours and days and months and years trying to get to this point and it all hinges on what sign you give in just a few heart-pounding seconds.
Those decisions won't always pan out, and most people will remember the ones that didn't, not the ones that did. Fronk's hit-and-run, and the two game-clinching runs that followed, were ones that did.
It wasn't done, of course. With Carolina baseball it never is. Not until the last out is made, and even then you want to make sure the umpires walk off the field and the lights go out before you are completely confident.
Fox had one last decision: stay with Danford, he of the two hitless innings, or go with closer Andrew Carignan, who has had some struggles over the last month.
The choice: Carignan is the closer. Go with Carignan.
The sophomore fireballer rewarded his head coach's faith with two strikeouts in the 13th, and even though the potential game-winning run came to the plate with two outs, Carignan ended his night with a big bear hug from Federowicz.
That's the way it went for the Tar Heels in their first College World Series game in 17 years. Walking a fine line between joy and disaster and eventually motoring through to that first key victory in the double-elimination bracket.
Fox accepted congratulations from Roy Williams, who made the trip to Omaha just to cheer on a baseball team he has greatly enjoyed watching this season, near the Tar Heel dugout. Then he shook a few hands. Then he congratulated his team. Then he started thinking about a winner's bracket game with Clemson.
Sometimes being a head coach is thankless.
Friday night wasn't one of those nights.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. He is the coauthor of the official book of the 2005 championship season, Led By Their Dreams, and his book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about Going Home Again, click here.
