University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: A Different Kind Of Fun
June 21, 2008 | Baseball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
June 21, 2008
By Adam Lucas
OMAHA--Players are different from you and me.
Perhaps this is obvious. I can't throw 90 miles per hour like Alex White and you can't hit the ball on the barrel of the bat every single time like Dustin Ackley. Those are physical gifts and it is our job as fans to marvel at them.
But when you reach the end of the college baseball season and a sellout crowd is gathered at Rosenblatt Stadium, it's not always the physical gifts that make the biggest difference.
How would you describe watching Carolina's 7-3 victory over LSU on Friday night? Excruciating, perhaps? Stressful, certainly.
This is where we find out that players are built very differently from you and me.
White entered the tie game in the eighth inning and was immediately faced with the heart of the Tiger order. Three, four, five. Blake Dean, Micah Gibbs, and Matt Clark. Between them, that trio had 49 home runs and 170 RBI. Oh, and there also happened to be a speedster, Jared Mitchell, on first base. Nobody out.
Earlier this week, on LSU's official website, Dean was called, "the best postseason clutch hitter at LSU since Todd Walker." Walker played in Baton Rouge 15 years ago.
Gibbs is merely the cleanup hitter.
Clark is only the nation's leading home run hitter who had tied the game with a monster two-run shot just two innings earlier.
Did I say excruciating? Maybe agonizing would be more appropriate.
This is how White described that exact moment:
"It was a lot of fun coming in in a big situation."
A lot of fun? Alex, a lot of fun is taking a nap in the hammock in the middle of a workday while the ocean laps on the beach a few feet in front of you. That is fun.
Fun is not facing three of the hottest hitters in America with the season on the line.
White, of course, pitched the Tar Heels out of the jam by striking out Dean, walking Gibbs and Clark, and then retiring D.J. LeMaheiu and Leon Landry without letting them hit the ball out of the infield.
In the top of the ninth, Carolina managed to piece together some baserunners--thanks largely to a leadoff opposite-field double by Ryan Graepel, who paired that big hit with one of the best at-bats of the game in the fifth inning, when he coaxed a nine-pitch walk and eventually scored a run--against ace Tiger reliever Louis Coleman, who was undefeated in 2008 and had given up just one home run in 55 innings pitched.
LSU made the correct play by intentionally walking Tim Fedroff to pitch to Federowicz with two outs. Force at any base. The season--again--on the line. And a pitcher on the mound who had made Federowicz look bad just two innings earlier, sending the Tar Heel catcher down on a strikeout.
And what did the Apex native think of this situation, with over twenty thousand fans and a national television audience focused on him?
"It was a great feeling being up with the bases loaded in the College World Series," he said.
Really? A great feeling? Because it made me a little nauseous, and all I had to do was sit there and watch it. Federowicz had to live it.
You can recruit skill. You can time a runner from home to first base, and use a radar gun to gauge a pitcher's fastball, and watch a hitter take batting practice. That's when you know you have a talent.
You don't know if you have a player until you see how he responds to pressure. Does he shrink or does he shine?
That's when the fun starts.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
