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O’Gara: Love ’em or hate ’em, Tennessee’s first baseball national title felt inevitable … or as close to that as possible
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Even as Aaron Combs uncorked that final breaking ball to Ted Burton, it was fair for Tennessee fans to wonder.
Is this really our destiny? Are we really about to win our first national title in program history?
After all, nothing is a given in baseball. At that moment, it didn’t matter that no SEC team had ever won more games than Tennessee in 2024. Shoot, no program had won more games in the past 4 years than Tony Vitello’s squad. But did that matter? Or was that dubious No. 1 overall seed stat — 1999 Miami was the last such team to win it all — somehow going to rear its ugly head yet again?
For all Vols fans knew, a banged-up Texas A&M team that got to a deciding Game 3 of the College World Series final by scratching and clawing would once again find a way. Never mind the fact that the Aggies had climbed back into the game with 4 consecutive runs to cut the Tennessee lead to 1.
But destiny, it was. At least whatever version of destiny exists in baseball.
As Burton’s 2-strike swing came up empty and Combs’ breaking ball faded into the glove of Cal Stark, destiny became reality. Tennessee’s first CWS title? Check.
It felt about as close as one could get to being inevitable.
I know, I know. Great programs like Florida State, Arkansas and Texas A&M know all too well that baseball national titles are frustratingly elusive. It’s disrespectful to those teams to say that a title is ever inevitable. You can be within 1 pitch of history and watch it fade away, just as Arkansas did in 2018.
Sorry. Too soon.
Tennessee’s emergence during the 2020s has frustrated many of those proud programs in part because of how dominant the program has been under Vitello … and because of how polarizing the program has been under Vitello. Once upon a time, “Daddy” hats and fur coats were the talk of the sport. There was a “you haven’t earned that kind of cockiness” vibe from skeptics.
The Vols won a title their way, albeit with a bit less of the drama that came with the 2022 squad.
Everything about this 2024 squad screamed “champion.” It wasn’t just that the Vols hit more home runs than all but 1 Division 1 program in the sport’s history (1997 LSU), nor was it that they had a sub-4.00 team ERA that was loaded with veteran arms. Tennessee always got off the mat after a loss, which was why it didn’t get beat in consecutive games once the calendar turned to May.
Sure, it helped when Christian Moore became the second player in the College World Series final to hit a leadoff home run, and Dylan Dreiling going deep in all 3 CWS final games made a massive difference (he earned MVP honors). But the little things were everything.
Blake Burke somehow always made the right play no matter where he was on the field (him taking third on a ground ball at the third baseman and scoring on a sacrifice fly on the next at bat proved to be monumental). Zander Sechrist developed into the series-closing starter who embraced the big moment. Hunter Ensley and Kavares Tears patrolled the outfield like their lives depended on it.
Speaking of Ensley, he made perhaps the smartest, most impressive play in the history of Tennessee baseball. With the Vols looking to add to their lead, Ensley had to adjust at the last second to avoid getting tagged out at the plate.
What he did will live in Tennessee lore.
You’ll never see a better slide than what Hunter Ensley just did pic.twitter.com/T8JmyR0Pus
— Connor O’Gara (@cjogara) June 25, 2024
Absurd. That’s a hard move to pull off on a backyard slip-and-slide, much less in Game 3 of the College World Series final.
Anything less than a Houdini act by the Vols’ center fielder and they’re stuck on that 5th run. You could say that maybe Combs wouldn’t have been so casual in the 9th about letting that 5th A&M run score with wild pitches and a balk, but still. You win titles when you make a play like Ensley did. You win titles when you do the things that Tennessee did.
Well, you’re at least supposed to win titles when you do the things that Tennessee did.
This is the same sport that can turn the most potent lineup in America into a shell of itself without any warning. That’s what the Vols were when they started 0-for-16 with runners on base while facing elimination down 1-0 in Game 2. Maybe that game would’ve ended differently if Evan Aschenbeck had gotten the ball to close out those final 7 outs instead of Jim Schlossnagle opting to save him for Game 3. We’ll never know. Impressive start to Omaha or not — the Aggies still hadn’t lost a postseason game and hadn’t trailed in the CWS to that point — A&M wasn’t guaranteed to have a lead to give to Aschenbeck in Game 3.
As it turned out, the Aggies never led in that deciding game. The aforementioned Moore blast to start things off meant that A&M trailed from the jump. It was an uphill climb, which nearly saw the Aggies reach the top of the mountain. But finally, they ran out of answers.
For the Vitello skeptics, they ran out of ammo. No longer can they point to someone with just 1 victory in Omaha like the Tennessee coach had entering 2024, nor can they claim that the fiery, big-swinging lineup he coached will never produce a champion.
The Vols completed an all-time season. In a year in which the SEC had arguably its best season of baseball ever — it produced a record 11 NCAA Tournament teams with 3 of the 4 semifinalists and an all-SEC CWS final — Tennessee swept it all. When the championship confetti settles, there’ll be a healthy discussion about just how high this 2024 Tennessee squad ranked among the all-time greats.
For now, though, Rocky Top can breathe a giant sigh of relief. Finally.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
