University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: The Absence Of Anxiety
June 11, 2011 | Baseball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
June 11, 2011
By Adam Lucas
Late Friday afternoon, a sweltering crowd of 3,489 had just persevered through a 5-2 Carolina win over Stanford in the first game of a best-of-three series for the right to go to Omaha. From about the third inning forward, every pitch felt decisive. In this game, you heard the best kind of silence--the sound of an entire crowd holding its breath in unison, afraid to make a sound for fear of upsetting whatever it was in the baseball universe that had given the Tar Heels the lead.
Take the moment when Patrick Johnson delivered an 0-2 pitch to pinch hitter Dave Giuliani in the top of the seventh inning. The Tar Heels held a 1-0 lead--it's gotten to the point with Johnson that 1-0 feels almost impenetrable--but a single and a walk put two runners on base for the first time all day.
The senior righty jumped out to the 0-2 count on Giuliani, and the crowd began to clap rhythmically. Clap...clap...clap...and then, as the pitch was delivered, near stillness. That's what separates the very best athletes from the rest of us. While we're wondering how they manage to perform under the weighty pressure, they're wondering why we're so worked about it. Last weekend, when he was away taking care of his family after the death of his mother, Mike Fox loosely echoed the sentiments of Dean Smith, who said after his retirement that he didn't realize how stressful it was to simply watch a game until he wasn't coaching them anymore.
When Giuliani swung, it sounded immediately like solid contact. That was the one sound this crowd did not want to hear, and if possible, they got quieter than silence. You could almost hear Ben Bunting's spikes tearing through the Boshamer grass. Positioned perfectly by assistant coach Scott Jackson just before the pitch, the Tar Heel center fielder had just enough time to glide under the ball, haul it in a couple steps short of the wall, and retire the side.
Oh, right. Remember to breathe.
That's just 30 seconds of a game that lasted three hours and six minutes. But it was one of those afternoons when you walked away with a headache and then realized it's because you were gritting your teeth for most of the game.
That's postseason anxiety, and it felt good to have it back in Boshamer Stadium after a one-year hiatus. Of course, that should read that it felt good in hindsight. Not at the time. Not when you couldn't decide if this was deliriously fun or overwhelmingly stressful...or maybe a little bit of both.
That's how it felt in the stadium and away from field level. So it felt reasonable to ask Fox, who started a lineup with five players who had never played in a super regional and closed the game out with a sixth, if it felt the same in his dugout.
The Tar Heel head coach just grinned.
"It's crazy to me," he said, gesturing at an empty dugout. "I looked in here during the game, and you would've thought it was our 15th game of the year and it was March. This team has got something. I don't know what it is, but they don't sweat much of anything."
You hear that? If even the head coach can't describe exactly what it is about the intangibles of the 2011 Diamond Heels that has them one win from the College World Series, then what's the point in the rest of us trying?
Friday was yet another case of contributions from everywhere on the roster. Johnson and Michael Morin controlled the mound. Bunting--who, remember, might be in center field instead of a corner outfield spot because the Tar Heels lost Brian Goodwin, the player with the most raw talent on the roster, before the season began--made a series of run-saving catches in center. After falling behind 0-2, Seth Baldwin delivered a timely two-run home run that was crushed the opposite way.
Oh, and how did he fall behind 0-2? Because he was given the bunt sign. With a runner on first and nobody out, Fox wanted Baldwin to move Brian Holberton to second base. But the right fielder's sacrificing skills aren't especially sharp, which turned out to be fortuitous.
That's not the first time an unsuccessful bunt attempt has been beneficial for the Tar Heels. It also happened in 2008 against Fresno State in the College World Series, when Chad Flack turned an unsuccessful bunt attempt into a go-ahead home run.
"That flashed in my mind," Fox said. "But that's what Seth can do. He can mishit a ball and hit it out to left."
Ever since 2006's near-miss against Oregon State, the Carolina head coach has repeated a familiar mantra: don't count outs. He'll have to rely on it again on Saturday, when a young Tar Heel team may have to be reminded that although they're one step closer to seeing Rosenblatt Stadium's successor, trying to coast in will be fruitless.
"We played well today," Fox said, "but we can play better. And we will have to on Saturday, in almost all phases of the game."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of six books on Carolina basketball, including the official chronicle of the first 100 years of Tar Heel hoops, A Century of Excellence, which is available now. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter.
