Coach Rob Childress is the impetus behind A&M reaching the World Series.
Up-and-down Ags bring 5-game win streak into College World Series
Texas A&M coach Rob Childress doesn’t quite know what to make of his players’ latest dugout good-luck charms, but he knows enough to keep his distance and let superstitious quirks reign.
“I don’t like the smell of pickles,” Childress explained of the Aggies’ affinity for shaking the briny cucumbers in the hope of helping spark comeback victories. “But they keep working, so I just do my best to stay as far away from them as I can.”
That’s Childress in a nutshell, or in this case a pickle jar. He’s serious and zeroed in on the task at hand but loose enough to let his sometimes zany players do their thing.
“You hear that thick accent and Southern drawl, and you think he’s going to be tough on you — which he is — but he’s also one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met,” A&M senior outfielder Walker Pennington said. “In some of the biggest crunch-time situations this season, coach has cracked a joke … it just kind of loosens all of us up.”
This season has culminated in the 48-yearold Childress, in his 12th season at A&M, trying to tiptoe that balance beam for the next couple of weeks, with the Aggies back in the College World Series for the first time since 2011.
A&M (41-21) will take on Louisville (52-10), the nation’s No. 7 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament, at 1 p.m. Sunday in TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Neb., in the opening round of the CWS. Like the Aggies, the Cardinals have barely missed on a CWS berth in the past two seasons with narrow super-regional setbacks.
“We’ve been in similar boats,” Louisville coach Dan McDonnell said. “You get so close — one game away, one inning away, one run away … it’s tough.”
Searching for first win here since 1993
Twelve years ago, then-A&M athletic director Bill Byrne hired Childress, a Gilmer native and the Nebraska pitching coach at the time, to overcome those long odds and not only get the Aggies to Omaha but compete for a national title in the eight-team CWS.
“It’s gone really fast,” said Childress, in summarizing his last 12 years at A&M. “When you’re having fun, time really does fly.”
Childress’s Aggies have reached the CWS every six seasons. He was hired in 2005 to replace the fired Mark Johnson, and Childress’s 2011 squad led by pitchers Michael Wacha and Ross Stripling and outfielder Tyler Naquin got to Omaha, only to drop its first two games to South Carolina and California.
Overall, the Aggies are searching for their first CWS win since 1993, considering the 1999 team that reached Omaha prior to the 2011 bunch also lost its first two games. A&M is 2-10 in the CWS in five prior visits spanning to 1951, and it hasn’t come close to a national title. Childress believes that can change over the next two weeks.
“We’ve won five in a row,” he said of the Aggies’ spotless postseason record this year, in sweeping both a regional and super regional. “Why not win five more in a row?”
This season is perhaps his top coaching job with the Aggies, considering last year’s team that lost a super regional to TCU had a school record and nation-leading 13 players drafted
(with 12 signing), and this was expected to be a spring of rebuilding the roster.
Overcoming the adversity
At times, the Aggies looked like it, in starting Southeastern Conference play 0-5 and losing eight of their last 10 games entering the NCAA Tournament. But in between, they won 19 of 23 games in providing solid evidence of what this team could be.
“We found a way into the NCAAs,” Childress said of the Aggies being one of the last four at-large teams selected for the 64-team tournament, “and certainly made a lot of breaks along the way to get here.”
As usual under Childress, pitching leads the way for the Aggies, and he has relished his role as pitching coach over the years while also heading up the program.
“He finds a way to get to you, to help you out, whether it’s mechanics or mindset or just kind of having a little bit of an attitude,” A&M starting pitcher Stephen Kolek said. “He knows what to tell you to get you going — to deliver.”
Now A&M fans are hoping Childress can finally deliver a victory in Omaha, what would be a big step for a program that annually has among the nation’s top draws in attendance at Blue Bell Park.
“He’s been under a lot of adversity this year,” Pennington said of a restless fan base’s response to the early- and late-season slides. “It wasn’t warranted.”