FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — It’s Arkansas that TCU aspires to see after a hoped-for victory in their opener of the Fayetteville Regional on Friday night against California, the so-called Cheez-It Bowl II: Hoedown in the Ozarks.
The Razorbacks are the ones who carry the biggest stick in this NCAA Tournament gathering. Getting out of Fayetteville will require getting through the Hogs. No way around it.
Cal, though, has some interesting storylines to follow.
First baseman Andrew Vaughn, the reigning Golden Spikes Award winner, is both a projected tough out and top-five pick in the MLB draft beginning Monday.
Do you remember, by chance, his teammate, Bears second baseman Darren Baker?
He is Dusty Baker’s son and, as a 3-year-old, was the San Francisco Giants bat boy who ran out of the dugout to retrieve a bat in Game 5 of the 2002 World Series against the Angels.
Play hadn’t stopped, though. As San Francisco’s J.T. Snow crossed the plate, he picked up Darren all at the same time to protect him from being run over by a trailing baserunner.
Dusty Baker, then the Giants manager, said he got a good talking to from his mother — as in, Dusty’s mother — after the game. She never liked the idea of a little boy so young running around with big men carrying bats.
“It’s about time you listen to me,” mother said to son, paraphrasing only slightly.
Some things never change between mothers and their sons. On the other hand, Darren has changed. Today, he is a 6-foot, 165-pound sophomore hitting .299 with 18 RBI and 19 stolen bases.
He doesn’t remember a thing about his role or that night in World Series history.
TCU has changed, too, both over the generations and the weeks.
Nothing tells the tale of how far TCU baseball has come quite as adequately as the anecdote about Dutch Meyer conserving baseballs the old-fashioned way.
In the year 1932, TCU used 14 dozen baseballs and had only three left at the end of the season.
Meyer, the busiest man in Fort Worth as a football, basketball and baseball coach, had to do something to conserve both money and baseballs, especially when gate receipts totaled only $25 that season. So, to a downtown harness shop he went for some saddle soap.
And he started scrubbing his used baseballs.
The practice actually had a benefit, he insisted. Through washing the cover, a loose ball became tighter and more durable. After a thorough scrubbing, the balls were dried with a towel and placed in the sun.
Boom! New ball.
The saving of baseballs ensured that the Frogs went through the 1933 season with expenditures of less than $325. That included all trips.
You couldn’t feed the right side of the infield at lunch for that sum today.
It’s true, that’s $6,300 today. Or, in other words, Fran Garmon’s women’s basketball annual budget in the 1980s. You think I’m kidding. No one did more (10 wins?) with less than Fran Garmon.
The baseball budget has increased tenfold with a gazillion multiplier. And so has the perception.
TCU baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle has his reasons why he believes the Horned Frogs were included in this season’s NCAA baseball tournament, despite a 32-26 record and a meh RPI. A good conference and an attuned selection committee that noticed the Frogs improved starting pitching health and depth.
What convinces is conviction. The Frogs also showed a lot of that in Oklahoma City at the Big 12 tournament.
There was also another important factor: Respect.
That’s something the men’s basketball team did not get when on the NCAA Tournament cutting room floor.
On the other hand, the basketball Purple haven’t been to five College World Series, including four consecutive during one stretch, since 2009. Schlossnagle said he lobbied hard for his team in the days leading up to the selection, but there can’t be much doubt that the esteem in which his program was held was a decisive factor.
Making the tournament, Schlossnagle said, is merely “a means to an end. Hopefully, we’ll take advantage of it.”
Fayetteville turned out to be the destination for the regional. Only us gray hairs remember TCU and Arkansas were once first cousins in the Southwest Conference.
What days those were. Some things never change
For the newbies, pig sooie won’t be the only phrase requiring translation.
Sheer-crapper is not an adjective describing the first year under Chad Morris, but rather a tenant farmer who gives a part of each crop as rent, aka, sharecropper.
Noways means anyway. It just does.
D’reckly is the word most often used to convey the meaning of immediately. Round third and go home d’reckly.
Plum is completely.
Ambeer? That’s saliva colored by tobacco chewed or held in the mouth … tobacco juice.
But when the masses begin descending from the subculture of the hills of the Ozarks, full from two plates of fried catfish, purple hull peas, okra, grits and a piece of pie and perhaps a peace pipe, things happen.
Playing the host team in Fayetteville – whether it be on the other sideline or dugout – is tantamount to sitting on a bed of fire ants.
Arkansas is a tough place to play. And the Razorbacks baseball team is a handful.
Just about every poll has Arkansas in its top five.
This isn’t the same Frogs team that at one point lost eight of nine and hit rock bottom and left for dead after being swept by Baylor 33-6 in late April.
If not scrubbing themselves clean, the Frogs definitely got up and dusted themselves off, winning two of their final three Big 12 series and three games in the conference tournament before a 10-inning loss to Oklahoma State in the semifinals.
TCU enters with some newfound confidence. With Jared Janczak’s return to health and capability, Schlossnagle asserted that his team has enough starting pitching depth, including Nick Lodolo – soon to be a first-round pick in the major league amateur draft – Charles King and Brandon Williamson, to play with anybody.
Baseball, unlike any other sport, most reflects life itself.
It’s a journey, slow and deliberate. It requires constant planning and thinking ahead, batter to batter. The little things, so many of them and many terribly dull and monotonous, are critical.
And things can change – and might have in TCU’s case — in an instant.
This hootenanny in Fayetteville is doable for TCU.
There is no Step 2 without Step 1. First things first: Cal and the Baker kid.