I don’t take for granted seeing UVA Baseball shipping off for another College World Series. Because I saw the other side of UVA Baseball, back when I was a student on Grounds in the early 1990s.
Two of my first-year dormmates were members of the UVA Baseball team, so a group of us would go to home games on weekends to see them do their thing.
This is 1991 I’m talking about here.
The field was a mishmash – the infield was artificial turf recycled from Scott Stadium, a faded green; the outfield was natural grass.
The look was what you’d expect – just, odd.
Nobody went to the games, but for whatever reason, there were still a full complement of ushers in the bright orange blazers there working them, to the point that they almost outnumbered those of us there to watch the game.
You had to be careful when heckling; one Friday afternoon, I called the NC State first baseman, an unfortunately portly young man, “Spanky,” and he glared at me, because it wasn’t hard to tell who it was giving him the business.
It was for good reason that the University strongly considered the recommendation of a task force in 2001 to basically defund the baseball program.
Sadly, no one would have noticed.
UVA Athletics, instead, went in the other direction, putting money into baseball for the first time, the most visible results of that being the renovation of the field and the move to hire Notre Dame pitching coach Brian O’Connor as the new head coach.
The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
“I remember taking this job 21 years ago, and really believed that it could be a special program. But it’s, you know, there were some barriers that needed to be knocked down,” O’Connor told reporters on Saturday, after his team had defeated Kansas State, 10-4, to clinch the program’s seventh College World Series berth, and third in the past four years.
O’Connor thanked, you know, everybody – from “the elderly couple that comes to every game, even the games in February, and are so into what these guys do,” to “the people in the luxury suites that made our expansion happen,” and right on down the line, to all the people “that believed in what could be accomplished here, and then just all the overflowing amount of fans and kids that just love being a part of this.”
We used to get, maybe, 30, 40 people for those afternoon games back in the 1990s – before the 2001-2002 renovations, what is now Disharoon Park at Davenport Field didn’t have lights.
The past two weekends, we’ve been at capacity, which is 5,919 people, with the energy of several times that number.
The weekends in May and June at The Dish are special for the coaches and players who make them happen, but O’Connor acknowledges that they’re just as special, if not more so, for the UVA Baseball community.
“It’s a special opportunity when you get to host, just because it’s as great as it is for these guys and the coaches, it’s just as great for our fan base and everybody that’s so passionate about it,” O’Connor said. “And this won’t stop, you know. We’ll continue to build. I’ve made it a priority that we can’t stay where we’re at. Like, you know, college baseball is very, very competitive for players, facilities and everything that it takes to be successful, and we’ll keep pushing this thing forward as the years go on.”
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Chris Graham
