The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Bill Little commentary: Horns and Cougars on the road to Omaha
06.05.2014 | Baseball, Bill Little Commentary
Texas and Houston met in a Super Regional in 2002.
Bill Little, Texas Media Relations
While much emphasis was appropriately placed on the first-ever NCAA postseason baseball meetings between Texas and Texas A&M in last weekend's NCAA Regional in Houston, history records some very significant games pairing UT and the Houston Cougars on the threshold of Omaha and the College World Series.
The memories are varied between happy and sad, exhilarating and painful, but in almost every case, the matchup proved historical. And as always seems the case, the eras, and the teams, are often interconnected.
The best example of that is the current group of Longhorns and the team that became Augie Garrido's first national champion at Texas in 2002. Today's players were in elementary school when a freshman named Huston Street led a group of newcomers who joined with a few quality veterans to Omaha and the College World Series.
Today, Huston Street makes his living playing baseball, but he and former teammates such as Seth Johnston, Buck Cody, and Curtis Thigpen have, from a distance, adopted this current group of the Longhorns of summer.
"I can't explain why I have been drawn to this particular team. I have talked to so many guys who were on our team, and we actually talk about how we are really pulling for these guys this year. I see a lot of similarities," Huston said on his way to Petco Park in San Diego where he is the star closer for the Padres.
"Both our team in 2002 and this team started out under the radar. We had a unique group of guys who were veterans—Jeff Ontiveros, Dustin Majewski, Omar Quintanilla, Tim Moss, Justin Simmons along with Ryan Hubele behind the plate, just to name a few. You need that kind of leadership, but you also need that kind of exuberance and the excitement of the youth.
"I see that in this team in the way they have rallied around each other. They are like we were. They had their backs up against the wall in the regional, very similar to what we had in our regional and super regional against Houston, which is ironic," Street said.
Texas was trying to return to glory in the early 2000s. In 1999, the Longhorns had gotten back into the NCAA playoffs, but had been eliminated from a regional tournament in Houston with losses to the Cougars and what was then known as Southwestern Louisiana.
The next year, in his fourth season as the head coach at Texas, Augie Garrido had accomplished a near-miracle in 2000. The man who was respected as the best coach in the college game after three national championships in three different decades at Cal Fullerton took his Texas team into top ranked Arizona State and knocked off the Sun Devils in their own regional. Then, he took Texas back to Omaha for the first time since the 1993 season with a Super Regional win over Penn State in Austin.
"The 2000 team started the whole process," said Street. "They built on that in 2001, and we were able to realize the rewards in 2002. There have been a number of very successful teams in the middle which have helped continue the tradition, but this team in particular has done a phenomenal job of bringing it back, and it has a lot of very cool similarities to us in 2002. You have to have a unified belief in each other. It takes a team, and Augie Garrido is the best in the world at expressing and conveying that."
By 2002, the Longhorns had reestablished themselves as a force on the college landscape. The Horns had won the Big 12, and after an opening loss to Texas A&M in the league tournament at the home of the Texas Rangers in Arlington, they had stormed back to claim that title as well. Garrido was clicking off what he called a "series" of championships. First, the Big 12. Then, the Big 12 Tourney. Next came the NCAA Regional in Austin, where the Horns had won it in three games, including two victories over fellow Big 12 member Baylor. Now, it was the Super Regional, against an excellent challenger in the University of Houston.
The Cougars has won Conference USA with a 22-7 record, and brought a 47-15 record into Austin to battle for the right to go to Omaha. The team was ranked ninth in the country, and got to Austin by coming through Arizona State in a regional tournament played in Mesa. The Cougars had a remarkable 25 victories over top 30 teams, and were led by three all-Americans, including pitchers Brad Sullivan and Jesse Crain. Of all the Houston teams the Longhorns have faced in NCAA competition, this was arguably the best.
In the 1950s and 1960s, as Houston bounced between mid-major conferences and life as an independent, the Cougar baseball program fought hard to establish itself as a force. Evolving in the talent-rich area of the Bayou City, the Cougars took advantage of a Rice program which was a non-factor, even in the Southwest Conference.
Texas, under the legendary Bibb Falk, was nearing the end of its second of the Billy Disch, Falk, Cliff Gustafson and Augie Garrido eras. But Falk's 1960 team had been something really special. With an all-American outfield of Wayne McDonald, Roy Menge, and Jay Arnette, Texas had its best record since the 1920s. The Longhorns dominated the Southwest Conference, heading into the NCAA District 6 playoffs with a record of 21-2.
It had been ten years -- and that was long enough -- since Texas had won the national championship, and this was a team to make a run at it. The district playoff was set for a month between Texas and Arizona, with only the outside possibility -- remote though it was -- that Houston would squeeze into the mix by winning the Missouri Valley title. But the Cougars did qualify, and the NCAA baseball committee determined that Texas and Houston would play a true "sudden death" game to determine who would travel to Tucson to take on Arizona in the more traditional best two of three series to determine who would represent the district at the College World Series.
Houston was 11-9 and was not expected to gain a playoff berth, but—in a time of short seasons and no thought of things such as conference tournaments -- it did by winning a rain-shortened, one-game playoff with Cincinnati for the Missouri Valley championship.
Texas had won 17 of its last 18 games, had the great outfield melded with a young infield and a young pitching staff, and was the odds-on favorite to easily dispose of the Cougars at a game played at Austin's minor league park, old Disch Field (which was located near where the Palmer Events Center now stands).
The Cougars, however, had other ideas. A three-run homer and control pitching netted a 4-2 victory, and the best Texas team of its generation was finished. McDonald, the star of the team, still fretted over the loss years later.
"I still remember that awful feeling as I walked out of Clark Field after we'd come back to dress. It didn't seem real then, and it doesn't even now," he said more than 20 years later.
As an example of the inequality in the sport at the time, there was no national limit on the number of games teams could play. Arizona, which eliminated Houston and went on to finish fourth in the CWS, took a 41-7 record to Omaha, and was eliminated eventually by runner-up USC, which was 40-14 heading to the series.
History was made the next time the Cougars and Texas played for the District 6 crown. It was a strange set of circumstances from the beginning. Texas got into the playoff by winning a coin flip after the Southwest Conference finished in a four-way tie. The District 6 playoff featured a best two of three playoff this time, with the first game in Austin followed by a trip to Houston to finish the work.
Rain hammered the first game, which ended in a tie. The next day, Houston won, 5-4, meaning the Cougars needed to win only one game in Houston to earn the trip to Omaha. Falk, and Texas players, had begun the series almost as an afterthought to what had been a disappointing regular season. But all of that changed when the Cougars celebrated after that victory in Austin.
"At the end of the game they started jumping up and down and throwing their gloves, and I remember thinking, 'They look like a bunch of Little Leaguers.... They got no business beating us,'" recalled UT outfielder Joe Gideon.
Even so, the bus ride to Houston was uninspired, Gideon said. But rain hit Houston, and the Cougars' home field was unplayable for several days. With that, arrangements were made to play a doubleheader, if necessary, in the brand-new "Eighth Wonder of the World" -- The Astrodome.
"When we found out we were going to be playng in the dome, we all got fired up," said Gideon.
So fired up, in fact, that Texas got 14 hits to win 9-3 in the first game, and took advantage of eight unearned runs in an 8-5 victory in the championship game -- the first college games ever played indoors.
A year later, in the 25th season of his head coaching career, Bibb Falk decided to retire at the end of the 1967 season. The Longhorns gave him his 20th SWC championship, but as the teams in Texas continued to struggle with the inequalities of the landscape of the college game, the label of "tradition and Falk" -- rather than talent -- placed on that time of the '60s -- became all too true when the Longhorns faced UH in another district playoff.
Houston won the first game of the series on its home field, 11-8, led by all-American Tom Paciorek. Texas answered with a 5-1 victory in Austin, setting up a third and deciding game. The scene was set for drama, as it was Falk's last game at old Clark Field, and the Longhorns had a 3-0 lead in the ninth inning. But the Cougars scored four runs in the top of the ninth to take a 4-3 lead. In the bottom of the ninth, Texas had the tying run at second, but a great play by the Houston shortstop knocked down a single in short centerfield, and the runner was thrown out at the plate -- the third time that had happened in the game. And so, despite a brilliant pitching performance by little-used Jimmy Raup, the season, and Bibb Falk's career, had ended.
The Cougars entered the Southwest Conference in the 1970s, and the two didn't meet again in NCAA competition until the rain-plagued tourney at Houston's ball park in 1999. Then, as Texas represented the Big 12 and the Cougars carried the Conference USA banner, came the season of 2002.
"Brad Sullivan pitched a brilliant game and beat us, 2-0," Street recalled. "Then we pounded them, 17-2 in the next game. Finally, we were in a real dog fight in the last game, but we won, 5-2. It had happened just as Coach Garrido had said it could. He talks a lot about 'the process.' But as is the case with 18 to 20 year old young people, you have to take those words and put them into action.
"I was lucky enough to be surrounded by guys who all bought in to what Coach Garrido was saying, and we believed it. It made us better people, it made us better baseball players, and it allowed the team to do the things we were capable of. Those experiences, especially on the road to Omaha, were what allowed us to perform once we got there."
The record will show Street became the MVP of the College World Series as he came out of the bullpen to close and save all four tournament games. But he is the first to take his experience back to the concept of team.
"I remember in the championship game against South Carolina (which UT won, 12-6), Brandon Fahey hit a shot off the shortstop's glove that led to four runs, and Chris Carmichael hit a home run that put the game out of reach. When I came in with that big lead, I was able to make different pitches than I would have had to make, and we closed it with a ground ball double play and a ground out," Street said.
"Thinking back, it reminds me of stories my dad told me about the importance of getting the job done," he said.
Street's biggest memory of that final game of the 2002 season came from the impact he has felt from a simple speech Garrido made to the team before Texas played South Carolina.
"It is one of the most profound moments of my entire career, and life for that matter. He walked in, looked us all in the eye, stood there with a small moment of pause, and said this: 'The world treats winners different than it does losers.' And then he walked out. It was the most spot-on sentence, which is true."
But Huston's message to this 2014 team carries something from both his late father -- whom this team has honored all season -- as well as Garrido.
"This game will not change who you are, whether this team goes on and wins the national championship or not, but it is important to understand the consequences. Before those games in the NCAA playoffs, I had no aspirations of playing major league baseball, but when we finished, I remember thinking 'Hey, I think I can do this.'"
As far as the Houston series is concerned, he offers two thoughts: "I remember the crowd in that final game in Austin, with the Houston fans chanting and our fans yelling. And when we won it, I remember my dad, and what he told me that day has stayed with me forever.
"He said, 'Good job, Bubba.'
"'Now you have to go out and do it again.'"