OMAHA, Neb. —We'd like to think the most well-played game every season will come at the very end of the season, when the two teams left standing compete for a championship. It makes sense, at least on the surface. Championship games should, in theory, be played at a championship level. This isn't always the case, though. Every team is banged up to one degree or another by the tail end of the season, and it's relying on adrenaline and vibes to get the thing home and hosed. Nerves that time of year can be problematic, as well. This can especially be true in baseball, when every single play begins with the ball in the hands of a pitcher who's probably tired and fighting frayed nerves.
Most championship games are some form of exciting, at least at the beginning, when anything seems possible. Many go wire-to-wire with the issue very much in the balance. But many of those games are considered classics because of the closeness of the scores and the chips on the table, not for their display of ball being played as well as it can be played. That takes nothing away from the moment and absolutely nothing away from the team that emerges with the win. In some cases, it arguably makes things more impressive, because of the way fatigue and injuries and nerves must be overcome in those moments.
But several moments Monday night at Charles Schwab Field featured college baseball being played arguably as well as it could be played, and one moment in the bottom of the seventh inning inarguably met that standard.
With senior All-American and National Stopper of the Year Evan Aschenbeck on the mound, Tennessee sophom*ore right fielder Kavares Tears barreled a ball off the top of the right center field wall. Vols junior center fielder Hunter Ensley —a player fighting a significant hamstring injury and general body soreness after running full-speed into the wall to rob an extra-base hit in the Vols' first game at the College World Series —wasn't at full speed because his body wouldn't allow it, but he never stopped running from first base on the hit, and third-base coach Josh Elander waved him home.
Initially it looked like Ensley would score with relative comfort, but an absolutely perfect relay from A&M changed that. Center fielder Jace LaViolette —a player also fighting a significant hamstring injury —barehanded the ball off the wall and threw an absolute missing to shortstop Ali Camarillo, who turned and burned at pace and threw a dart toward catcher Jackson Appel, a player fighting torn ligaments in a toe, torn ligaments in a shoulder and a knee that swells after every game. The hard throw to the plate one-hopped to Appel, who barely needed to move his feet and extend his glove to the left to pick it.
Ensley should have been out, but he did the most amazing thing on the all-around amazing play. Without hesitation, Ensley juked from the outside of the baseline to the inside of the baseline, avoided Appel's tag and slapped his left hand on home plate. Umpire Grady Smith had a great view and correctly called Ensley safe, and the fiery Alaska native and former Huntingdon (Tenn.) High School star spiked his helmet and screamed in celebration. The former All-State high school quarterback had made a ridiculous move at the goal-line to score a touchdown, but he had no ball to spike. So he spiked his helmet. As one does.
That run gave Tennessee a 6-1 lead in the winner-take-all College World Series Finals game, and that run was the ultimate separator in a 6-5 win that gave the Vols their first national championship in program history.
Monday's game wasn't consistently played at the absolute highest level those two incredible teams could have produced. Two of Texas A&M's best players (outfielder Braden Montgomery and pitcher Shane Sdao) were too injured to play, and Tennessee's best pitcher (AJ Russell) had been hurt all season and just undergone Tommy John surgery. Some of the best players on both teams —including Tennessee superstar junior second baseman Christian Moore—played through injuries that probably would have sidelined them during the regular season. Both pitching staffs had been stretched at least a bit beyond the limit with arms their coaches were comfortable placing on the bump in that environment.
After getting 6.1 great innings from senior left-hander Zander Sechrist —a longtime midweek pitcher who seized his chance late in his final season and ended his college career with an unforgettable string of six brilliant starts in six big games —the Vols stuck to the script and gave the ball to hard-throwing sophom*ore righty Nate Snead. The plan was to ride Snead as long as possible, keeping him on the mound until results dictated otherwise. Snead was stout throughout the business end of the season, but he admittedly was gassed by the number of days he'd thrown in weather that consistently crept toward and occasionally reached triple digits. That meant he didn't have the triple-digit fastball that's usually in his arsenal, but he got the Vols five big outs before giving way after allowing a leadoff single to Appel in the top of the eighth.
That's when things started getting squirrelly for Tennessee. Vols coach Tony Vitello had all hands on deck to potentially finish the game, and he started with one of the freshest but least experienced of the lot. Freshman lefty Dylan Loy from Knoxville-area Pigeon Forge High School is a player Tennessee's staff has loved for years as a prospect, and his role in the program could be large the next couple of years, and he'd been outstanding in the SEC Tournament title game against red-hot LSU. Despite perhaps being a bit unlucky at times, Loy's outing was a rough one, and the gap had narrowed to 6-3 with a runner on second with Vitello went back to the mound and called on senior lefty Kirby Connell —who is Tennessee's all-time appearances leader but hadn't looked great his previous two times on the mound in the past week. Connell allowed an infield single that would have been an RBI single if not for an incredible play by freshman shortstop Ariel Antigua, and the Aggies and their fans were nearing a fever pitch.
Connell, with still only one out on the board, then fell behind 3-1 to Camarillo, and the air felt thicker and thicker for everyone in orange. But Connell then cemented his legacy by coming back to strikeout Camarillo and then strikeout Ryan Targac to put down the threat.
Tennessee then called on Aaron Combs —who to this writer has always been this team's best relief pitcher, and perhaps it's best pitcher — convinced the staff to let him take the mound and open the ninth, despite throwing 63 pitches in four innings the previous day.
Combs' inning was far from a flawless one, and A&M got two runs across the board to increase the pucker factor in the thick Omaha air, but the tying run never advanced from home plate to first base. Combs got three strikeouts —including one of the dangerous LaViolette —and that was that. Commence the celebrations.
Normally you see dogpiles from the national champions, but Tennessee's looked more like a flash mob in motion. Junior right-hander Drew Beam was the only player who seemed to hit the ground and trying to start a dogpile, but Beam quickly noticed he was the only man on the ground and immediately made the bright business decision to avoid becoming Mufasa'd.
Maybe it's fitting that these Vols didn't have a classic dogpile. They don't mind being different. They've never minded it. Vitello many times has said publicly and privately (so you know he means it) that the Freight Train 2022 Vols ran off the rails and lost the script, which arguably led to that historically awesome team —perhaps one of the best in the sport's history — getting sucker-punched one game short of the College World Series.
The nature of this program hasn't changed, and it didn't need to change, but the dial needed to be turned down just a bit. And it was. And here things stand, two years later, and a Tennessee team that wasn't as top-to-bottom brilliant as the 2022 Vols put together one of the most incredible seasons in the sport's history.
Sixty wins. SEC regular season champions. SEC Tournament Champions. National champions. First No. 1 overall seed to win the NCAA Tournament this century.
The Tennessee baseball program has been under a microscope for a while. It didn't start in 2022, but that's when it boiled, and every Baseball Guys Being Baseball Guys moment from this program will be scrutinized more than it will for others. When your program breaks that many eggs, you eat omelettes for a while. Those are the rules. Why Tennessee fans should care about that is something that's lost on this writer, though.
For the record, though, the 2024 Vols never produced the antics of the 2022 bunch. They approached the line a few times, for sure, but Vitello wasn't ejected a single time, and the only player ejection (junior first baseman Blake Burke) came in an early-season game against Illinois that was really chippy and reached a point where the umpires needed to sacrifice someone to cool things down. That was college baseball being college baseball, nothing more and nothing less. Anyone suggesting otherwise doesn't know college baseball.
Here's something everyone knows, though: Vitello's Vols are national champions. They took some punches but delivered many more, and they produced a series of iconic moments along the way.
Ensley's crash into the wall. Tears' crash into the wall. Moore's cycle. Big Burke hit after big Burke hit. Everything that came off the bat of sophom*ore left fielder Dylan Dreiling. The mound work from Sechrist, Beam, Snead, Combs, Connell and others. The slump-busting homer from senior catcher Cal Stark.
Then, of course, Ensley capping an all-around brilliant baseball play with a slide —or dive, or lunge, or shimmy, or Euro Step, or all of the above —to produce the run that ultimately separated Tennessee from Texas A&M and won a national championship. It was a classic championship play, a play of the highest order, and it completed the journey.
A seven-yeartrek fromrock bottom to the top of the mountain is no small thing, especially as a member of the most powerful conference in the most parity-riddled sport the NCAA has to offer, but Tennessee's hike under Vitello has been a relentlessly steady one. Stalls and slips occurred along the way, but the progressionhas never been in serious doubt. The higher you climb, the harder it gets,and every step near the summit can be a treacherous thing. You have to be fearless — borderline reckless, even — and you have to be special. These Vols were special. They never shrank from the moment. They weren't given this title. They earned it. And forever shall it be theirs.
The nature of the championshipgame only enhanced the legacy.It had a bit of everything. It was a classic, and an iconic moment — a bulletoff the bat of a small-town Tennessee kid that scored another small-town Tennessee kid — proved to be the difference.
