University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Brave New World
June 22, 2008 | Baseball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
June 22, 2008
By Adam Lucas
OMAHA--I am not willing to let you write the legacy of Carolina's 2008 senior class.
Not if you are going to paint them as the group that made it to three straight College World Series without winning a national championship. Not if your description includes the word, "never," as in, "Never won a national title."
That will be the short-sighted verdict, of course. Three times, the Diamond Heels came to Omaha during this class's four-year reign. Three times, they got close without winning.
One local paper already compared this group to the Buffalo Bills. Get it? Three Super Bowls, three losses. Three College World Series, three losses.
I do not get it. Also, I do not appreciate it. So you will need to get your "nevers" elsewhere, unless you want to read them in the context of, "This is one group that absolutely never embarrassed the University of North Carolina."
Some perspective on this group of seniors, which included Chad Flack, Tyler Trice, Seth Williams, Kyle Shelton, Mike Facchinei, and Rob Wooten:
When they arrived at Carolina, the center of the UNC baseball universe was Chapel Hill and the outermost geographic limit was Columbia, South Carolina. Temperature-wise, Columbia is located just north of Hades, but baseball-wise, it wasn't much of a domain. The Diamond Heels couldn't talk about owning the college baseball world--or even the ACC baseball world--until they owned the Carolinas.
The season had ended in Columbia for three straight years when these seniors enrolled in the fall of 2004. Most of those games were close, but some--like a 14-4 demolition in the 2003 super-regionals--weren't. But the outcome, with South Carolina moving on and Carolina boarding a bus to ponder such painful geographic misfortune, was constant.
It is possible that you do not remember those games, or even that you weren't aware they were being played. Four years ago, college baseball at Carolina occupied a distinct world inhabited mostly by those who made an effort to dwell within it. The roof of the coaches' offices in Boshamer Stadium leaked with any substantial rainstorm, requiring them to strategically place buckets around the room to catch the water--which did not exactly impress recruits. Players walked Franklin Street in anonymity.
To get a score, you had to exert some effort. Weekday games were not even consistently carried live on the radio in their entirety. Coaching decisions were not debated the next morning at the office. Important at-bats were not rehashed over family cookouts. Erin Andrews did not hang out in the dugout, and ESPN did not seem to know the Diamond Heels existed (OK, some things haven't changed).
Compare that to where we are now. We are in the world of a new generation of baseball fans. The radio network has three affiliates, including the Triangle's largest sports station. During a recent baseball broadcast, fans on four different continents emailed the booth to say they were following the action. Carolina baseball doesn't just stretch to Columbia, the city. Now it goes to Colombia, the country--and beyond.
In minor league locker rooms across the nation, former players followed games over the internet and sent text messages to the current Tar Heels, creating that same family pride that has made UNC basketball so special. Crowds are measured in thousands rather than hundreds. Enough people care about Carolina baseball to fund a $25 million renovation to Boshamer Stadium, which will open next season and instantly become one of the finest facilities in the country.
Let that marinate for a moment. Twenty-five million dollars. In the early 1980s, the Rams Club raised $34 million for the Dean Smith Center, which was considered revolutionary. Even with twenty years of inflation, I'd put baseball's $25 million in the same category. Not so much for the total, but for what it represents: the structure rising now on Ridge Road is the brick-and-mortar affirmation that baseball is a big deal at the University of North Carolina.
Maybe it would have been built anyway if Chad Flack had gone to Clemson or Rob Wooten had let an arm injury end his career or Seth Williams had played football instead of baseball or Kyle Shelton had let the Tar Heel coaching staff's frank assessment--"You may not play much here"--deter him from Chapel Hill.
But I doubt it. And that is their legacy. Somehow, they figured out a way to move a program from the fringe of local importance onto the biggest national stage.
They'll never get to play in the new Boshamer. But they built it.
And now those seniors will go out into the world. What they'll find is something that they have created.
It's a world that knows them as Carolina baseball players--and that title now means something. It's a world that knows Carolina baseball.
And that is their legacy.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
