Texas takes down Baylor
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BY BRIAN CHRISTOPHERSON / Lincoln Journal Star
OMAHA — The always philosophical old coach was telling people earlier this week that baseball can really turn your stomach sometimes.
"I call the game of baseball very cruel" were Texas coach Augie Garrido's exact words.
Yes, cruel's a fine word to describe how the game treated the Baylor Bears Saturday night at Rosenblatt Stadium.
And Garrido didn't mind it one bit.
Baylor had paddled intrastate rival Texas good and sound all season, playing them four times and winning four times.
But when the higher stakes came along at the College World Series, the Longhorns made those previous meetings inconsequential with a 5-1 win before 26,641 fans.
"That's baseball," Garrido said. "It was good timing for the old Longhorns for that to happen."
The win pushed Texas (52-16) into Monday's winner-bracket game against Tulane. Baylor will also play that day, though it'll be playing for survival in the losers' bracket against Oregon State.
What's worse for the Bears (44-23) is they lost Saturday while starting their hotshot pitcher Mark McCormick.
Though McCormick (8-4) eventually settled down against the Longhorns, he was greeted in the first inning by a two-run homer by Seth Johnston that set the tone for the night.
"He threw me one down the middle, and I just put a short swing on it and it found a way out of here," said the Texas shortstop.
Baylor never could get the game even again after that, though the Bears did bring the score to 2-1 in the fourth inning when Paul Witt singled home Kevin Russo.
But even the fourth inning ended in somewhat disappointing fashion for the Bears. With two outs, Michael Griffin hit a ball to deep left field that wasn't quite deep enough. It was caught at the track, allowing Texas starter Adrian Alaniz to escape his most precarious situation of the night.
"I thought we had (Alaniz) on the ropes a few times," Baylor coach Steve Smith said.
While the coach was right — Baylor also stranded men on the corners in the third — Alaniz (7-3) worked his way through seven innings of 7-hit ball to pick up the win.
McCormick would not be so fortunate. He left after a sixth inning in which Baylor handed two runs to the Longhorns on two throwing errors.
The last of those two errors came from McCormick with one out when he hurried a throw to try to get Texas' Robby Hudson at first base. His throw went wide of the bag and bounced away in foul territory in right field.
While the ball skipped away, the Longhorns' Carson Kainer and Taylor Teagarden scored from first and second to make it 4-1.
"It came down to a couple defensive plays that we just didn't make the play," Smith said. "If we make one or both of those plays, we have a one-run game and who knows what happens after that."
Texas, which has now won its CWS opener the last four years, added one more run in the eighth when Hudson picked up an RBI.
The win gives Texas the opportunity to claim the CWS lead for most victories in the tournament's history with a win over Tulane. The Longhorns have now won 74 times in the tournament, which equals what Southern California has done.
Asked for his impressions of Tulane, the nation's top seed, Garrido said: "My first reaction when I saw the brackets was, ‘Oh, great.'
"We got a team we can't beat to play first and then we got the No. 1 seed if we do. So that's still my reaction."
Reach Brian Christopherson at 473-7438 or bchristopherson@journalstar.com.
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