Miss. St. shuts down Vandy for first title
Mississippi State’s first national championship had been building since 1985, when “Thunder and Lightning” — Will Clark and Rafael Palmeiro — were the stars on what’s known as the best team to not win a College World Series.
The 2021 Bulldogs got the job done. Finally.
Will Bednar and Landon Sims combined on a one-hitter, the Bulldogs scored early and built on their lead, and at the end they were in a dogpile celebrating a 9-0 victory over Vanderbilt in the deciding third game of the College World Series finals Wednesday night.
There to see it was Ron Polk, the godfather of Mississippi State baseball and the coach of that ‘85 team.
“Coach Polk is the one who built this and started it,” coach Chris Lemonis said. “We run out there and play in front of the big crowds, but Polk was a big reason why, and our former players, too. This is a lot of years in the making, and a lot of fun. And I know our fans will enjoy this.”
Oh, they enjoyed it. It seemed the whole town of Starkville, Mississippi, was at TD Ameritrade Park — loud and proud — for all three games of the finals.
When third baseman Kamren James threw to first for the final out, the Bulldogs’ dugout emptied and about 100 fans jumped out of the stands to celebrate. The players walked the warning track and reached up to high-five the fans.
“I couldn’t be more happy for a team, a town, a fan base, the whole state of Mississippi, except Oxford, of course,” SEC player of the year Tanner Allen said. “Those guys are always on my back. So I had to take a shot at them.
“This team overcame everything, man. From getting swept at home in front of 10,000 versus Arkansas to Missouri coming in and taking a series from us and then getting embarrassed at the SEC
Tournament. We just kept playing and playing. You blink an eye, we’re national champions.”
Bednar, working on three days’ rest, walked three of the first five batters he faced before retiring 15 in a row. He turned the game over to Sims to start the seventh, and Vandy broke up the no-hitter when Carter Young singled into center field with one out in the eighth.
“I’ll probably bust his chops tomorrow,” a laughing Bednar said of Sims losing
the no-no. “Win a national championship, I don’t really care about that. I’m on cloud nine.”
It was the first one-hitter at the CWS since 2014 and the climax of an Omaha run that seemed to get easier for the Bulldogs the longer they were here. The three wins they needed to reach the finals were all decided by one run.
“When you’re going to do something legendary for the first time, it was going to have to be tough,” Lemonis said. “The reason we are champions is we just have a really tough, resilient group. It’s been built over time. It’s the accumulation of the last three years.”