Hinojosa’s herculean blast keeps Texas alive and well
OMAHA, Neb. — When it comes time to tell their grandchildren the story of how they won a College World Series game for Texas, maybe Mark Payton and C.J Hinojosa will tell the version everyone else saw
Maybe Payton will reminisce about making a catch that was so spectacular it made 24,337 mouths gasp at once, and maybe Hinojosa will talk about crushing a home run so unlikely that his coach joked “four players fainted.”
Or maybe they’ll tell the truth about UT’s 1-0 victory over California-Irvine on Wednesday, and how they both messed up.
Right before he made a headlong, over-the-shoulder diving grab to preserve a shutout, Payton mistakenly thought he was about to hit the wall and took his eye off the ball.
“I felt like it was in the air forever,” the senior center fielder said.
‘I missed my spot’
Right before he launched a ball over the left-field bullpen for the first home run hit by any player in nine wind-suppressed CWS games this week, Hinojosa told himself to hit the ball on the ground.
“I missed my spot a little,” Hinojosa admitted, grinning.
If they keep making miscalculations like those, the Longhorns might never lose again. Those two plays, combined with another sparkling pitching performance from out-ofnowhere postseason ace Chad Hollingsworth, enabled Texas (45-20) to survive a second consecutive elimination game at TD Ameritrade Park.
To make the CWS championship series, the Longhorns will need to beat Vanderbilt twice, first on Friday.
By then, Payton’s magnificent third-inning grab — which came on a dead sprint to the right-center gap and almost certainly prevented at least one run — already will have become a highlight-reel staple. Irvine coach Mike Gillespie, for one, is dreading the replays.
“We’ll see that catch more than we’ll want to,” Gillespie said. “We’ve seen enough of it already.”
Payton credits the wind
Payton said he was aided in part by the same southeasterly wind that sent dozens of well-struck fly balls to die earlier in the series. That was the wind that convinced most players that trying to hit one out of the park was foolish, which is why Hinojosa was just trying to make simple line-drive contact when he led off the seventh.
Instead, he hit an Evan Manarino pitch so hard that UT coach Augie Garrido said he “had a mild heart attack.”
“As soon as I hit it, I knew it was gone,” Hinojosa said.
Hollingsworth, meanwhile, yielded no such contact against the Anteaters (41-25). Two weeks after his first college start, in which he held Texas A&M without an earned run in the regional round, he tossed 81⁄ scoreless in
3 nings Wednesday.
“It was a matter of will,” he said.
The day before, he’d predicted there was no way he could match his previous outing. Like Payton and Hinojosa, he was wrong.
Maybe his grandkids will hear about that, too.