Bill Little Commentary: Tears of joy

Bill Little, Texas Media Relations

OMAHA -- This is a story of boys who cried, each at the same place, years removed, and the odyssey of life that has its own way of traveling.

The twilight Thursday brought a strange hush to the little park on 13th street, across from the big zoo and in the space where hopes and dreams were both dashed, and realized. It was silent, with only a breeze lilting across the landscape as the Omaha skyline rose in the distance. Faraway to the east, the mighty Missouri River meandered its way between Nebraska and Iowa.

It was here, where 65 seasons ago, Texas first came to Omaha to play in the College World Series in a place that would eventually be called Rosenblatt Stadium, that all of this magic in this city in the Midlands began. Blocks away, where a new state-of-the-art stadium welcomed visitors to the College World Series, the flags and the pennants flew in the stiff northwest breeze that reminds visitors that the chill of the night holds on to the last vestiges of spring.

A Southwest Airlines jet had brought the 2014 Longhorns to Omaha, just days after the finish of an improbable run that had taken them through an NCAA Regional Tournament on the road in Houston and a sweep of two games in the Super Regional in Austin over the University of Houston.

For Augie Garrido, it is his 15th trip as a head coach at Texas and Cal State Fullerton. The winningest coach in all of college baseball, he has led teams to CWS titles in the 1970s, the 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s. Now, he returns for the second time in the decade of the 2010s.

But as the memories of the space deep on 13th St. where Rosenblatt Stadium stood, he remembers not only the moments of victories, but the tears. You can add one more decade to Augie's experience at Rosenblatt Stadium. Where today a small park stands as a memorial to all those years and all those games, somewhere beyond where home place is immortalized is a curb where a disconsolate Fresno State player name Augie Garrido waited for a bus after a final loss in 1959. An overthrow from the outfield that cost what turned out to be the winning run tore into his memory.

Fast forward, if you will, to another time, and another young player. This one was a high school junior who had come from Chicago to watch the College World Series at Rosenblatt in 2009. He had come to see his future team, the Arizona State Sun Devils, and his future coach, Pat Murphy, battle for the championship of all of college baseball.

His name was Mark Payton.

History will show that Texas fought all the way to the finals of that tournament in 2009, and in the process the Longhorns eliminated the Sun Devils. They came from behind in a 10-6 victory, and then sealed the deal with a 4-3 win that vaulted Texas into the championship series with LSU.

Payton, who was completely committed to attend ASU and play for Murphy, had a simple reaction.

"I cried," he said.

Fortunately for the Longhorns, however, that is not the end of the story.

A season later, Murphy -- whom Payton had known since he was playing summer league ball in Chicago -- was fired at ASU. And Mark Payton, an undersized outfielder who had a burning desire for the game and an exceptional ability to play it, was without a college home.

It was then that Texas pitching coach Skip Johnson traveled in the summer of 2010 to Jupiter, Florida, to watch players at a World Wood Bat Tournament. He had not come to see Mark Payton. There was a long list of guys who were on the Longhorns radar. But once Johnson saw Payton play, and earn the MVP of the tournament, he came back to Texas convinced that the Longhorns needed to recruit him.

Johnson bargained with his fellow coaches, offering to trade a pitching scholarship for a position player if they would accept Payton, who would be a rare out-of-state recruit from Chicago. Disappointed with the turn of events at Arizona State, Payton agreed to a visit. And the fortunes of Longhorn baseball took a unique turn when he agreed to sign with Texas.

That season of 2010 proved one of the toughest disappointments for the UT baseball program in recent years. Loaded with talent and returning as the national runner-up, the 'Horns were shocked in the Super Regional by TCU, which won the right to go to Omaha.

The next season, Payton was a freshman who was capturing the hearts of the Texas folks, and was in the embryonic stages of becoming a super star. The 'Horns returned to Omaha, this time to the new ball park near the Old Market district in downtown. Rosenblatt Stadium was a distance away, but the old grandstands still stood.

It has been three years since the Longhorns left Omaha in 2011, and in the time that has passed, much has changed. Rosenblatt Stadium is gone now, replaced with the special memorial park by the Henry Doorly Zoo. There are park benches and parking spaces, and there are pillars marking where first base was, and where third would have been. Most of all, home place has been kept. The green grass and the artificial surface base paths are all that remain.

Saturday, however, the boys that cried will be back in Omaha, this time together, this time battling for a National Championship.

Garrido went into the college coaching business, and as he takes this team to Omaha, his teams have won more games than anyone in the history of the sport. And many of those wins in these last few seasons have been because of Payton.

Payton enters the College World Series with what is believed to be an NCAA record of 101 straight games in which he has safely reached base with a hit, a walk, or being hit by a pitch. The old Big 12 record was 93, held over three seasons. NCAA officials agree that, until proven differently, Payton's mark will be listed as a national record.

So, as they begin this final trip together down college baseball's finest hour, what is it that the two have in common?

First, it is an abiding love of the game. Second, it as understanding of the value of the process.

When the Longhorns stumbled a bit toward the end of the season, Payton took a page from Garrido's book of wisdom.

"We started concentrating too much on winning, and not enough on the process," Payton said. "We forgot to play the game."

The sunset brought a particular serenity to the place where Rosenblatt once stood, the place where Longhorn teams came for 33 times in the years the series was played there. Down the street, the vendors readied the sparkling new park for Saturday, when all of this will begin in Omaha for the 65^th time.

Baseball, of all of the sports, is the one that has endured. For more than a century, at little league parks and sandlots, at historic major league facilities and college stadiums, it annually brings little boys, and grown men who have never quit being little boys, to a place and time that seems eternal.

Augie Garrido and Mark Payton came to that space a full fifty years apart. And now, together, they embark on another very special journey -- where it is 90 feet from home to first, where the green grass grows and the winds blow, and memories are locked forever in a grand new stadium, or a little park where the evening brings the ghosts out for one more swing at the fence.

The University of Texas at Austin Athletics