Lucas: Baseball

By Adam Lucas

Baseball is the worst.

This time yesterday, it felt like Carolina baseball was channeling the 1927 New York Yankees.

Twenty-four hours later, the season feels very tenuous and it's Arizona that had a relentless offensive day.

Carolina won Friday's game 18-2 and a sellout crowd walked out of Boshamer Stadium smelling the Drover. The offense was unstoppable and the pitching was nearly spotless.

Then the Tar Heels went out and lost, 10-8, on Saturday behind an offense that missed some opportunities and pitching that couldn't lock down many zeroes.

It's honestly surprising that anyone who spends significant time in this game still has their sanity. If you buy a ticket to watch Omarion Hampton play football, he's probably going to pile up yards and score a touchdown. RJ Davis is going to get his points.

There are no similar guarantees in baseball. The Carolina offense went 9-for-15 with runners in scoring position on Friday, a gaudy .600 batting average. Those very same hitters went 2-for-14 in that exact same situation on Saturday.

The one consistent thread so far this weekend has been the Arizona offense, which is pounding out hits at a .371 clip. You can safely assume the Wildcats are going to get some hits and score some runs on Sunday.

As for what else might happen: it could be anything. Scott Forbes indicated freshman Ryan Lynch will start on Sunday at noon. After him? "Everybody is available," the head coach said, which has to be the mandate when it's win or go home.

Fellow freshman Walker McDuffie wasn't great on Saturday. He gave up four runs in two-thirds of an inning, more runs that he'd allowed combined in his previous seven outings. This is where coaches diverge from fans, who more heavily weigh the one outlying performance. Coaches and teammates have seen him day after day since August and have more faith in the seven great performances than the one shaky one.

"He'll throw better tomorrow than he did today," Forbes said, already planning to use the freshman on Sunday. "A lot of times you feel better on that second of back to back days and that's what I expect tomorrow."

All the uncertainty is why baseball is not a single elimination game. It's a game of series, a game of a very long season, a game of tens of thousands of repetitions. It is also indisputably a game of failure and of coming back the next day after that failure completely and illogically assured of impending success.

Carolina's 2-14 mark with runners in scoring position is no more predictive of tomorrow's outcome than yesterday's great success in that category was for today.

Which is why baseball can be the worst. But Carolina has worked the entire school year to have the opportunity to play Sunday's game at Boshamer Stadium, to sit in the third base dugout and watch the fans raise their Lion King stuffed animals. If the Heels are going to play one decisive game, they've earned the chance to play that one game in a place where they haven't lost games on consecutive days since April of 2023. Baseball is a series game. But if that series is going to be decided by just one game, you want to play that one game at home.

And if tomorrow's outcome is positive—if the barrel hits exactly the right millimeter on the ball and no errant rocks cause a bad bounce and every pitcher's arm and stuff feel lively—there will be only one possible conclusion:

Baseball is the best.

Players Mentioned

Ryan Lynch

Walker McDuffie

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