Foul play tougher, team better, DVH says

Carson Shaddy, Jared Gates and Eric Cole briefly became Arkansas’ Bermuda Triangle in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the College World Series Wednesday in Omaha, Neb.

The Razorback second baseman, first baseman and right fielder were unable to catch the ninth-inning, two-out, two-strike foul ball that landed between them. If snagged by any, it would have won college baseball’s national championship, 3-2, for a two-game Arkansas sweep off the Razorbacks’ 4-1 Tuesday triumph in the best-of-three series with the Oregon State Beavers at TD Ameritrade Park Omaha.

Instead, reprieved Beaver Cadyn Grenier battling tiring Razorbacks closer Matt Cronin, who tried to close two saves in two nights. Grenier whacked the game-tying single followed by

Trevor Larnach’s two-run home run.

Arkansas lost, 5-3, Wednesday.

Oregon State freshman Kevin Abel pitched a complete game, two-hit,

5-0 masterpiece on Thursday to seize the national championship, the third in the program’s history. The Razorbacks were so close to bringing the title home to Fayetteville, but it was instead yanked out west to Corvallis, Ore. Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn refused to point any fingers. Van Horn knows from experience how difficult it would have been for any of Shaddy, Gates or Cole to catch the foul ball with all three pursuing from different directions. They converged with Cole running in from right field, Gates running out from first base and Shaddy cutting across the field from second base.

The coach said Arkansas would have never made it to Omaha without contributions from all three players.

“You almost had to be there to see how tough a play it was,” Van Horn said Friday upon returning to Fayetteville. “When it left the bat, I didn’t even know if they would get to it. I didn’t even know if it would get to the stands for not. With the way the wind was blowing, the crowd was extremely loud, they probably couldn’t hear each other very well if at all. The ball kind of blew back a little bit. That’s why Carson overran it. He ran extremely hard.”

Shaddy had the longer way to run but still a better angle than Gates, in Van Horn’s view.

“Gates didn’t really have an opportunity to get to it,” Van Horn said. “You know, in a perfect world Cole would have been the one to get it. But he got a late break on it. He told me that.

“It’s just one of those things. If it had been an easy play you would have been kind of thinking, ‘Why?’ But that was a very difficult play. That would have been an incredible catch if we had come up with that.”

Ultimately, coach Pat Casey’s Beavers won on great pitching beating good pitching. The Beavers struck out 38 Arkansas batters in three games.

“We won the first game and didn’t do much,” Van Horn said. “We had one good inning. The second game kind of the same way. We were within one strike of winning the national championship.

“Baseball is a game of 27 outs, and we couldn’t finish it out. We couldn’t get that last out. We were trying to get out an All-American (Grenier) and a first-round draft choice (Larnach), and they had another one (CWS MVP catcher Adley Rutschman) right behind him in the order. There was no margin for any issues. I think Cronin gave us everything he had and just left one out over the plate a little bit.” And Larnach hit it.

“Just got to give Oregon State credit,” Van Horn said. “Their lineup is the best we’ve faced all year offensively, and we actually held them down. But then you flip it there, and their pitchers just did a great job against our hitters. And that’s the way it went.”

You can call it, “close, but no cigar,” but Van Horn calls it a great year.

“They were a special group, and they bonded early,” Van Horn said. “Just a good bunch of guys, high character guys that really cared about each other and knew what they were representing all along. Every day they stepped out here they knew they were playing for the Razorbacks, and it meant a lot to them.”