Michigan’s Ako Thomas hit the ball into the air, and seconds later, it settled into center fielder Pat DeMarco’s glove for the third out of the ninth on a Wednesday night in Omaha.
With it, Vanderbilt’s national championship season was complete.
That fly-ball out ended an 8-2 victory that included 14 strikeouts from pitchers Mason Hickman and Jake Eder, who allowed just 10 base runners against a Wolverine squad that blistered the ball throughout its stay in Omaha.
It came nearly 4 1/2 months after the season’s beginning on Feb. 15. That night, VU began its season against against Virginia and won with its offense, pounding out 17 hits in a 15-9 win over the Cavaliers.
Those two performances stand in contrast as fitting bookends to the season. From start to finish, no matter the venue, the opponent or the situation, Vandy just won.
This team won titles.
Playing in the country's top RPI league, Vanderbilt won the Southeastern Conference's regular-season title with a 23-7 record. That was two games better than runner-up Georgia. The next week, VU went 4-0 in Hoover, Ala., to win the conference tournament.
LSU (2017) and Florida (2011) were the last two teams to win both, but neither followed with a national title. LSU's 2009 squad, which went 56-17, is the only other team to win all three.
Vanderbilt set records for numbers of victories.
Its 59 victories are the most ever for an SEC team, and were the most by a CWS champion since Wichita State (68-16) in 1989. There was nothing fluke-ish about the win total. While the Commodores out-performed Pythagorean expectations by about four games, VU also did it against the No. 2 RPI strength of schedule.
Vanderbilt won against good teams. It went 13-2 against the eight teams in the CWS field. According to Warren Nolan's final RPI rankings, VU was 24-8 against the RPI top 25, 35-10 against the top 50 and 45-11 against the top 100. It went 19-7 against teams in Baseball America's final Top 25.
It won against different types of teams.
It struggled some against teams with elite pitching and defense, dropping weekend road series to Texas A&M (No. 3 nationally in ERA) and Georgia (4), but still managed to take a game from each. It went 2-1 against Missouri (5) and Michigan (10) and went 2-0 against Mississippi State (15) and and 3-0 against Louisville (17) and even won 11-6 against Samford (13). It went a combined 9-1 against the No. 4 (Mississippi State), 6 (Louisville), 9 (Arkansas), 13 (Ole Miss) and 24 (LSU) teams in total runs scored.
It did it in different situations and with different styles.
With the SEC regular-season title on the line on May 16, the Commodores blew a 9-0 lead against Kentucky and trailed 10-9 entering the eighth. They responded with a 7-0 run to close out a win. Ten days later, Vanderbilt spotted Ole Miss a 9-1 lead in the SEC Tournament title game before rallying for an 11-10 win. Twenty-six times, VU scored double-digit runs. It also recorded six shutouts and allowed two runs or fewer 29 times.
In the Nashville Regional, VU nearly let an 8-1, ninth-inning lead slip away in its Saturday winner's bracket game before Eder came on to finish an 8-5 win over Indiana State, which had the tying run at the plate with nobody out. And, of course, everyone remembers Kumar Rocker's no-hitter in an elimination game the next weekend.
It set records in how it played.
Vandy's 765 pitching strikeouts established an all-time NCAA mark, besting Arizona State's 732 in 1972. It led the NCAA with 100 home runs.
It it with seven seniors. First baseman Julian Infante, shortstop Ethan Paul and left fielder Stephen Scott were starters, as was pitcher Patrick Raby for most of the season. Yet, at the end, it leaned heavily on Rocker, the freshman who was the Most Outstanding Player of the College World Series.
It did it with superstars, and with balance.
Third baseman Austin Martin and right fielder J.J. Bleday were first-team All-Americans, as was closer Tyler Brown. When those guys didn't come through, it found heroes like Infante, who was the Nashville Regional MVP, or Scott, whose two home runs helped beat Mississippi State in the CWS, or Hickman, who technically pitched better than Rocker (one run in 12 1/3 innings, vs. two in 12) in Omaha. Thirteen players on the roster were MLB draft picks earlier in the month.
It was consistent.
Only twice did it lose two in a row, and never more. It lost one mid-week game all season. It won 35 of its last 39 overall.
And they did it under the weight of expectations that, at best, they could only meet.
The Commodores became national title favorites the minute that Paul, Scott, Raby returned for their senior years, and a host of freshman, led by Rocker, also turned down professional money to get to campus. They were the near-consensus No. 1 heading into the season, the No. 2 seed entering the NCAA Tournament, and the best remaining team once the CWS field was set. Against both Duke and Michigan, VU had to win consecutive games to keep its season alive in the postseason. It won those four games by a combined 26-5.
Expectations actually began long before that. Baseball America anointed VU's 2015 and '17 classes the top in the country, and this year's freshman class, No. 2.
Prior to this season, Corbin fielded genuinely great teams in 2007, 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015. It's long been debated which was the best. But each of those five teams either had significant hiccups in the regular season or the post season. This one did not.
It wasn't perfect. Some shaky starts in series openers and a bullpen that caused some ulcers in bridging the gap to Brown were cause for concerns. But the other parts always came through to provide enough, more often than not, far more than enough.
That debate has been settled. The 2019 Commodores will not only go down as the best in school history, but one for the ages across the sport.
"I see a team that's one of the all-time greats, in the history of the sport," the SEC Network's Chris Burke said after Wednesday's final game. "I think they've cemented their legacy as one of the great teams that we've ever seen in college baseball. They've checked every box along the way. They've dealt with expectations. They've won a regular-season championship, a tournament championship and now the College World Series championship.
"And they've done it the Tim Corbin way. A tremendous amount of passion, but with class and poise. I see greatness when I look out there and see them celebrate."
