Championship Gold: Vanderbilt baseball wins national title, beats Michigan

Vanderbilt baseball won its second national championship Wednesday, beating Michigan 8-2 in the winner-take-all title game.

Hendersonville native Mason Hickman pitched a gem. New Yorker Pat DeMarco crushed the critical home run. And Floridian Jake Eder closed out the win.

The Commodores are the best college baseball team in America.

This Vanderbilt (59-12) team may also be the best in program history. The Commodores also won the 2014 national title and finished runner-up in 2015. But this year’s squad broke the SEC record with 59 total victories, swept the SEC regular-season and tournament titles, and won 35 of their last 39 games.

MLB In Omaha Shows Potential Of Better Partnership With NCAA

The question remains what is to come of this arrangement. MLB and the NCAA haven’t been able to find common ground on much in the past, though the relationship has improved since Rob Manfred became commissioner. Will MLB in Omaha become an annual event the way the Little League Classic has? Will Manfred get his ultimate wish of holding the draft in Omaha just across the street from TD Ameritrade Park at CHI Health Center Convention Center? Or will the two entities continue to struggle to find common ground?

Thursday night was a good start. But there’s a lot that can be accomplished if MLB and the NCAA can find a way to improve their working relationship. The draft’s position on the schedule remains a thorn in the side of all parties and there are plenty more topics they can discuss from scholarships to increased attention on the college game from MLB’s media arm and beyond.

Kumar Rocker pitched the greatest game in college baseball history

A pitcher with a name like Kumar Rocker is bound to get noticed. With his performance on the mound Saturday night, Rocker left no doubt. That he pitched a no-hitter for Vanderbilt is a story in itself. But it gets better.

Rocker pitched that no-hitter to deliver a 3-0 win over Duke in a game Vanderbilt had to win or else they would have been eliminated from the NCAA baseball tournament super regional of which they were the host. That adds intrigue, and ups the stakes, providing much needed context for Rocker’s dominance.

Vanderbilt, the No. 2 team in the country, still needs a win on Sunday to advance to the College World Series. But that they even have a chance is thanks to the amazing Rocker.

That Rocker STRUCK OUT NINETEEN BATTERS sends his performance on Saturday into the stratosphere. He walked only two batters — Michael Rothenberg in the second inning, and Damon Lux in the sixth — and after the last walk Rocker retired his final 10 batters faced, seven by strikeout, naturally. Rocker ended the game by striking out the final four Duke batters, including whiffing the side in the ninth.

Texas A&M baseball player hits rare ‘Golden Homer’ in NCAA Regional

Here’s a baseball term that doesn’t get mentioned all that often: Golden Homer.

I’d never heard the term before Bryce Blaum stepped to the plate for Texas A&M with two outs in the ninth inning and the Aggies trailing West Virginia by three runs on Sunday. Blaum hit a walk-off grand slam and Texas A&M beat the Mountaineers 11-10 in an NCAA Regional game in Morgantown.

That’s called a Golden Homer.

Ranking the ultimate all-star lineups in NCAA baseball history

USC has twice as many CWS titles as the next-best schools (LSU and Texas), but it’s been nearly two decades since the Trojans were last seen in Omaha. Under the legendary Rod Dedeaux, the Trojans won six championships in seven years from 1968 to 1974. The Trojans have had 15 first-round picks, plus a slew of high picks back when the secondary phases of the draft existed. Two of the greatest pitchers of all time played for the Trojans, and the roster is so deep that Mark Prior, the No. 2 pick in 2001 and the highest-drafted Trojan, can’t crack the team….

The Trojans come close to Arizona State’s power—the starting nine hit 2,240 home runs—but they have Seaver and Johnson, two Hall of Famers who are at the top of any discussion of the greatest pitchers in major league history. With impressive pitching depth behind those two, USC inches past ASU’s Bonds-and-Reggie-led lineup for the most cumulative WAR among our 15-man rosters. Seaver and Johnson versus Bonds and Reggie? That would be fun to play out. (For the record: Bonds hit .306/.452/.551 against Johnson with three home runs in 62 PAs; Reggie was .226/.351/.581 off Seaver in 37 PAs, all late in their careers.)

This college triple play was a confusing, glorious mess

Triple plays don’t always make sense. From a defensive standpoint, they’re exciting for the team turning the triple play—a would-be rally by the opposition is instantly quashed, and usually in dramatic fashion.

But they can be confusing, sure, especially when there’s some chaos on the field of play The Saint Mary’s Gaels of Moraga, Calif., turned a triple play in their WCC Championship game against the LMU Lions on Friday at Banner Island Ballpark in Stockton, but oh yes, there was chaos.

With the bases loaded and nobody out, a liner trapped by the right fielder put things in motion. It didn’t put the baserunners in motion, however, circumstances which led to an unorthodox 9-2-5-6 (right field-to-catcher-to-third-baseman-to-shortstop) triple play

Not quite at the Babe Herman level, but close enough.

How a retired major leaguer and ex-ESPN reporter transformed a DII baseball program

OLD WESTBURY, N.Y. — The Frank Catalanotto era of NYIT baseball started with a Twitter DM.

But first we have to go back to 2010. Catalanotto, who was drafted out of Smithtown High School on Long Island and played 14 years in the majors, spent the last few months of his career with his hometown New York Mets. There, he met ESPN beat reporter Adam Rubin and followed him on Twitter. By the All-Star break, Catalanotto was out of baseball, retiring with a .291/.357/.445 slash line and $22 million in career earnings. Rubin, meanwhile, was amassing one of the largest followings in sports media with his thorough coverage of Mets minutiae.

It was a relentless job, and after 15 years on the beat, Rubin was already burned out and looking for something else when ESPN declined to renew his contract in 2017. He decided to leave journalism altogether but stay in sports, becoming the assistant athletic director for strategic communications at the New York Institute of Technology, a small school known for its emphasis on applied scientific research.

It’s a fancy title for what is in fact a one-man media and media relations department. Rubin is the school’s SID, but he also runs the HDMI cables to the center field camera before each baseball game, and takes photos of the graduating members of the team and their family for Senior Day, and writes recaps for each game, and profiles for each player, and does this all for 17 sports.

For those among you interested in the college game.

MLB ‘19: College draft picks on rapid rise to big leagues

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) — Joey Bart already looks like a big league hitter in his first major league camp, especially when the San Francisco Giants catcher sends a misguided pitch soaring over the centerfield fence.

The same with White Sox shortstop Nick Madrigal every time he makes a spinning stab deep in the hole, or Tigers pitcher Casey Mize when he leaves an unsuspecting batter befuddled, or the four young arms the Royals selected among the first 40 picks of last year’s amateur draft.

All have a couple things in common: They played college baseball rather than turning pro out of high school, and they are all expected to help their clubs sooner than later.

That is, until the service-time manipulation begins….