University of North Carolina Athletics
Turner's Take: A Night to Remember
April 27, 2014 | Baseball, Featured Writers, Turner Walston
By Turner Walston
Sometimes, there's magic in a stadium. Sometimes, all the right elements come together to make for a perfect night at the ballpark. Saturday night was one of those nights in Boshamer Stadium.
The Diamond Heels entered Saturday's game looking to take Game Two of the series with Virginia Tech, to claim the series and claw themselves above .500 in ACC play. On the mound for Carolina was junior Benton Moss, a Morehead-Cain Scholar who has been steady –with a glitch here or there– but who has at times not gotten the run support he would like.
Moss ran into trouble in the first, surrendering a pair of two-out runs to get behind the eight-ball early, but his team picked him up in the bottom half. Back-to-back doubles from Landon Lassiter and Tom Zengel were followed by a Parks Jordan single to knot things up.
Moss and Virginia Tech's Brad Markey put up zeroes for the next three innings before the Hokies plated two more in the fifth, again with two outs. Moss doesn't like two-out runs, but he kept his composure. “I never look at the score,” he said afterward. “I look at it as plus-two or minus-two. When they score, and we tie back up or go ahead, it's an 0-0 ballgame or a 1-0 ball game at the bottom of the fifth.”
Carolina made it 1-0 (in Moss's mind anyway; it was 5-4) with three runs in the fifth by piecing together singles and with smart base running. Moss didn't allow a Hokie to reach base after that; he exited after seven with five hits and four runs allowed. Trevor Kelley and Reilly Hovis kept Virginia Tech at bay and the Tar Heels added an insurance run in the eighth to make it a 6-4 final. Hovis got a strikeout, a groundout, worked around a walk and got Mike Zagunis to fly out to right field to end it.
While the win was critical, the storyline that will resonate from Saturday night was the play of Alex Raburn. Tar Heel freshman second baseman Wood Myers was hit by a pitch on Friday and broke a bone in his right hand; he's out indefinitely. Raburn, a sophomore and high school teammate of Myers', got the call. He responded by going 3-4 at the plate with a run scored, a run driven in and three infield assists. Raburn is only the latest entry in the well-worn book of Tar Heels who waited their turn and then stepped up to the plate both literally and figuratively. “I came to the stadium hoping I was going to play,” he said later. “I knew maybe I might get an opportunity tonight, but I just came like I do every other day, just ready, and fortunately for me I was in the lineup tonight and just went from there.”
“You never know when you're opportunity is going to present itself. The only thing you can do is be ready,” Tar Heel head coach Mike Fox said of Raburn. “That takes commitment and coming in here every day trying to get better, not feeling sorry for yourself because you're not playing, and Alex is that type. He's tough. He comes in and works, and he wants to do well because he wants to help our team.”
“He just had a day,” Moss added. “Stepped right up, seized the moment. That's what you've got to do. It's awesome.”
But the result on the field was only a part of Saturday night's magic. The weather was perfect; the skies were clear and the temperature hung around the high 60s through the afternoon and into the evening. The crowd was phenomenal. Carolina honored the 1964 ACC champions and the 1989 College World Series teams during breaks in the action to standing ovations from the 3,720 fans in attendance. The current Tar Heels, well-versed in the history of their program, took their hats off to their predecessors. “There's something special about that you can't really put your finger on,” Fox said, noting that Todd Nichols made the trip from Australia to be at Boshamer with his teammates.
The Diamond Heels aren't having the same successes as they did a year ago, when the team won a school record 59 games. The 2014 Tar Heels are a different team with a different dynamic and need to win in different ways. But Saturday night's win was exemplary of how they have to do it. “Every game is our biggest game right now,” Raburn said. “Tonight we just knew we could win a series and take the first two games, and that's what we tried to do. We didn't worry about next week, the midweek game, whatever . . . we just tried to win tonight, and that's what we did.”
The weather, the crowd, the postgame fireworks with fans wearing glow necklaces, the recognition of two great teams, and this win by this team at this time all made for a little Boshamer magic on Saturday. “It was one of those nights where if you couldn't get into it, then you just don't have a pulse. It was electric. It was awesome.” Moss said. “We had a great game, a close game, we both battled hard and the Tar Heels came out on top. That's what you want.”
