University of North Carolina Athletics
Photo by: Jeffrey A. Camarati
Lucas: Beavers Bring Back 2006 Memories
June 13, 2018 | Baseball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Saturday's game rekindles memories of one of Carolina baseball's most memorable seasons.
By Adam Lucas
From the outside, perhaps Carolina's 2006 memories of Oregon State are supposed to be painful.
That will be the storyline this week, of course. The Tar Heels and Beavers will meet on Saturday in the opening game of the College World Series, the first time the two programs have met on the diamond since Oregon State won back-to-back championship matchups in 2006 and 2007.
We'll get to 2007 in tomorrow's story. For today, we're focused strictly on 2006. You certainly know the basics: Carolina won the first game of the best-of-three series 4-3. But Oregon State came back from a 5-0 deficit in game two and took an 11-7 win. The Beavers won the third and decisive game 3-2, taking advantage of four UNC errors.
The numbers, though, obscure one detail everyone involved agrees upon when reminiscing about 2006: how much darn fun it was.
Remember, this wasn't the Carolina baseball program that we know today, the one that has made seven trips to Omaha in the past 13 years. This was a very different Tar Heel program, one that was largely known for finding a way to consistently be matched up with South Carolina in the NCAA Tournament…with the Gamecocks usually prevailing. South Carolina ended Carolina's season in 2002, 2003 and 2004. It was almost a relief in 2005 when Carolina was eliminated by Notre Dame in the regional rather than host Florida. At least there was some variety (we can chuckle about it now, but it was maddening at the time).
When the Tar Heels went to Alabama for the 2006 super-regional, no one knew one of the best moments in modern UNC sports history—Chad Flack's walk-off home run—was about to happen. It looked like just another situation where an SEC opponent would frustratingly prevail.
Instead, Flack's homer sent the Tar Heels to Omaha for the first time since 1989, and most of the traveling party walked around Rosenblatt Stadium and the city at large intent on soaking in what they were certain was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
"I tell people all the time that I would give up all my pro ball years to go back and relive those two weeks with that team," says pitcher Jonathan Hovis, who got the victory in game one against Oregon State.
Carolina won a completely improbable CWS opener, outlasting perennial power Cal State Fullerton 7-5 in 13 innings. At the time, it was the second-longest College World Series game ever played. They followed that win with one of the best pitching performances in program history, a Robert Woodard gem in a 2-0 decision over powerful Clemson, and then beat Fullerton again, 6-5, to earn a berth in the finals.
And then they sat. For days.
In the 2006 format, the Tar Heels beat Fullerton on June 21, and didn't play again until June 24. That gave the players and coaches plenty of time to enjoy a whiskey filet at the Drover, pick their favorite milkshake flavor at Zesto, and revel in the Midwestern hospitality from the citizens of Omaha. By that point in the season, two full days off, plus a long third day waiting for an evening first pitch, seems like eons.
Remember, this was a different era of College World Series play. The 2006 series was held at Rosenblatt Stadium, which was nowhere near as sparkly as TD Ameritrade Park…but had significantly more character. And keep in mind, this was what many Tar Heels believed might be a singular opportunity. That first trip, in 2006, was the first and only opportunity to enjoy the College World Series experience with absolutely no expectations. Sure, it would be nice to go back...but better make the most of this trip, just in case. No one even dreamed the program would become an Omaha regular. Everyone made a conscious effort to enjoy every possible second of the stay, including the quirky stadium on the hill.
"I loved Rosenblatt and wished they never would have moved locations," says Flack. "The atmosphere and tradition in that park is something that is hard to explain to anyone who hasn't attended a CWS game there. The best way I can explain it is like attending a game at Fenway Park as compared to the new Yankee Stadium. They are both awesome. But there is something different as a fan and player about the tradition and history at Fenway."
The same was true at Rosenblatt, where many of the fans had returned to the park every year and sat in the same seats they'd held for decades. They cheered and booed ballboys and ballgirls who tried to catch foul balls off the net behind home plate. They lined up for general admission outfield seats. They tossed beach balls around the bleachers.
Thirteen years later, so many images are still fresh from that first stay in Omaha. The multi-colored Rosenblatt seats. The dome of the Omaha Zoo (people in Omaha are really, really proud of their zoo) rising beyond right field. The tiny tunnels that led to the team dugouts, and kids tossing baseballs over the side of the dugouts to be signed by the players and tossed back over.
The fans who packed Rosenblatt saw some great baseball. Carolina and Oregon State were stacked with talent; six players on the Carolina roster eventually made it to the major leagues and several others worked their way into the high minors. The three-game series saw virtually every possible play you can see on a baseball field, from outstanding defense to timely hitting to big plays on the basepaths.
The programs were very different. Oregon State played a much more deliberate style of baseball native to the West Coast that seemed to occasionally frustrate the Tar Heels. Several Beavers had recorded a rap song during the season called "O-State Ballaz." Mike Fox's team had not spent any time in the recording studio. There were also some differing philosophies on pitcher usage, best illustrated when the Tar Heels pulled ace Andrew Miller after a 71-minute rain delay in game one despite the fact that he had thrown just 77 pitches.
The tightly fought series carried over into the next levels of baseball. Reliever Rob Wooten was teammates on the Milwaukee Brewers with Oregon State standout Cole Gillespie. As Wooten says, Gillespie "rubbed it in a little bit." But it's a meeting with Beaver poster child Darwin Barney that the pitcher still remembers. In 2006 terms, Barney was the baseball equivalent of J.J. Redick, with proportionally equal amounts of fawning national media coverage.
"My first game pitching at Wrigley Field against the Cubs I faced Barney," Wooten says. "And instead of being so hyped up about pitching in the big leagues in a park like Wrigley, all I wanted to do was strike him out on three pitches."
Barney worked a walk on several borderline calls. But the story does have a happy ending, as Wooten retired him in a rematch a few weeks later in Milwaukee. "It felt," Wooten says with the gleam that anyone would have who remembers how much time Barney spent on ESPN, "so good."
It was even worse for Hovis, who began his pro career immediately after the defeat in game three. He arrived for duty with the Staten Island Yankees to discover his assigned roommate was another player just beginning his pro career—Oregon State second baseman Chris Kunda, who made several sparkling plays during the 2006 series. That's when Hovis found out he had a little more in common than he might have thought with his adversaries.
"My last college pitch and Chris' last college at bat were against each other," Hovis said. "Obviously, this could have made for an awkward first hello, but I quickly learned it's not in Chris' character to boast."
Hovis and Kunda would go on to be roommates for three years, and were groomsmen in each other's weddings. This weekend, though, they're adversaries again.
"We have already," Hovis says, "exchanged messages about who is going to come out on top this time around."
From the outside, perhaps Carolina's 2006 memories of Oregon State are supposed to be painful.
That will be the storyline this week, of course. The Tar Heels and Beavers will meet on Saturday in the opening game of the College World Series, the first time the two programs have met on the diamond since Oregon State won back-to-back championship matchups in 2006 and 2007.
We'll get to 2007 in tomorrow's story. For today, we're focused strictly on 2006. You certainly know the basics: Carolina won the first game of the best-of-three series 4-3. But Oregon State came back from a 5-0 deficit in game two and took an 11-7 win. The Beavers won the third and decisive game 3-2, taking advantage of four UNC errors.
The numbers, though, obscure one detail everyone involved agrees upon when reminiscing about 2006: how much darn fun it was.
Remember, this wasn't the Carolina baseball program that we know today, the one that has made seven trips to Omaha in the past 13 years. This was a very different Tar Heel program, one that was largely known for finding a way to consistently be matched up with South Carolina in the NCAA Tournament…with the Gamecocks usually prevailing. South Carolina ended Carolina's season in 2002, 2003 and 2004. It was almost a relief in 2005 when Carolina was eliminated by Notre Dame in the regional rather than host Florida. At least there was some variety (we can chuckle about it now, but it was maddening at the time).
When the Tar Heels went to Alabama for the 2006 super-regional, no one knew one of the best moments in modern UNC sports history—Chad Flack's walk-off home run—was about to happen. It looked like just another situation where an SEC opponent would frustratingly prevail.
Instead, Flack's homer sent the Tar Heels to Omaha for the first time since 1989, and most of the traveling party walked around Rosenblatt Stadium and the city at large intent on soaking in what they were certain was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
"I tell people all the time that I would give up all my pro ball years to go back and relive those two weeks with that team," says pitcher Jonathan Hovis, who got the victory in game one against Oregon State.
Carolina won a completely improbable CWS opener, outlasting perennial power Cal State Fullerton 7-5 in 13 innings. At the time, it was the second-longest College World Series game ever played. They followed that win with one of the best pitching performances in program history, a Robert Woodard gem in a 2-0 decision over powerful Clemson, and then beat Fullerton again, 6-5, to earn a berth in the finals.
And then they sat. For days.
In the 2006 format, the Tar Heels beat Fullerton on June 21, and didn't play again until June 24. That gave the players and coaches plenty of time to enjoy a whiskey filet at the Drover, pick their favorite milkshake flavor at Zesto, and revel in the Midwestern hospitality from the citizens of Omaha. By that point in the season, two full days off, plus a long third day waiting for an evening first pitch, seems like eons.
Remember, this was a different era of College World Series play. The 2006 series was held at Rosenblatt Stadium, which was nowhere near as sparkly as TD Ameritrade Park…but had significantly more character. And keep in mind, this was what many Tar Heels believed might be a singular opportunity. That first trip, in 2006, was the first and only opportunity to enjoy the College World Series experience with absolutely no expectations. Sure, it would be nice to go back...but better make the most of this trip, just in case. No one even dreamed the program would become an Omaha regular. Everyone made a conscious effort to enjoy every possible second of the stay, including the quirky stadium on the hill.
"I loved Rosenblatt and wished they never would have moved locations," says Flack. "The atmosphere and tradition in that park is something that is hard to explain to anyone who hasn't attended a CWS game there. The best way I can explain it is like attending a game at Fenway Park as compared to the new Yankee Stadium. They are both awesome. But there is something different as a fan and player about the tradition and history at Fenway."
The same was true at Rosenblatt, where many of the fans had returned to the park every year and sat in the same seats they'd held for decades. They cheered and booed ballboys and ballgirls who tried to catch foul balls off the net behind home plate. They lined up for general admission outfield seats. They tossed beach balls around the bleachers.
Thirteen years later, so many images are still fresh from that first stay in Omaha. The multi-colored Rosenblatt seats. The dome of the Omaha Zoo (people in Omaha are really, really proud of their zoo) rising beyond right field. The tiny tunnels that led to the team dugouts, and kids tossing baseballs over the side of the dugouts to be signed by the players and tossed back over.
The fans who packed Rosenblatt saw some great baseball. Carolina and Oregon State were stacked with talent; six players on the Carolina roster eventually made it to the major leagues and several others worked their way into the high minors. The three-game series saw virtually every possible play you can see on a baseball field, from outstanding defense to timely hitting to big plays on the basepaths.
The programs were very different. Oregon State played a much more deliberate style of baseball native to the West Coast that seemed to occasionally frustrate the Tar Heels. Several Beavers had recorded a rap song during the season called "O-State Ballaz." Mike Fox's team had not spent any time in the recording studio. There were also some differing philosophies on pitcher usage, best illustrated when the Tar Heels pulled ace Andrew Miller after a 71-minute rain delay in game one despite the fact that he had thrown just 77 pitches.
The tightly fought series carried over into the next levels of baseball. Reliever Rob Wooten was teammates on the Milwaukee Brewers with Oregon State standout Cole Gillespie. As Wooten says, Gillespie "rubbed it in a little bit." But it's a meeting with Beaver poster child Darwin Barney that the pitcher still remembers. In 2006 terms, Barney was the baseball equivalent of J.J. Redick, with proportionally equal amounts of fawning national media coverage.
"My first game pitching at Wrigley Field against the Cubs I faced Barney," Wooten says. "And instead of being so hyped up about pitching in the big leagues in a park like Wrigley, all I wanted to do was strike him out on three pitches."
Barney worked a walk on several borderline calls. But the story does have a happy ending, as Wooten retired him in a rematch a few weeks later in Milwaukee. "It felt," Wooten says with the gleam that anyone would have who remembers how much time Barney spent on ESPN, "so good."
It was even worse for Hovis, who began his pro career immediately after the defeat in game three. He arrived for duty with the Staten Island Yankees to discover his assigned roommate was another player just beginning his pro career—Oregon State second baseman Chris Kunda, who made several sparkling plays during the 2006 series. That's when Hovis found out he had a little more in common than he might have thought with his adversaries.
"My last college pitch and Chris' last college at bat were against each other," Hovis said. "Obviously, this could have made for an awkward first hello, but I quickly learned it's not in Chris' character to boast."
Hovis and Kunda would go on to be roommates for three years, and were groomsmen in each other's weddings. This weekend, though, they're adversaries again.
"We have already," Hovis says, "exchanged messages about who is going to come out on top this time around."
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