While much of the sports world was focused on Denver on Monday night, where the Nuggets captured their first NBA championship with a 94-89 win over the Miami Heat, Texas and Stanford were playing for a berth in Omaha at the Men’s College World Series.
After splitting the first two games of their super regional in Palo Alto, the two teams had still not separated in 8.2 innings in the third game of the set to decide who would advance. Stanford put the runners first and second with two outs, but Texas was able to get a pop-up that seemed destined to send the game into extra innings.
However, the entire Texas team lost the pop fly high in the lights, watching it fall onto the outfield grass in front of the right fielder, who stood there helplessly.
The Stanford second runner did his job, running it until the umpire gave the signal out, and to his surprise that hadn’t happened when he got to home plate to score the winning run, taking off as his teammates chased him to celebrate their trip to Omaha. It’s an all-time thrill of victory/agony moments of defeat, as the entire Texas team seemed to be in shock, all collapsing to their knees trying to figure out how. This this is how their season ended. It’s as brutal a way out as there is and just a feeling of gutting for the good outfielder and all the others who simply lost the ball from the start and could never get it back at the worst moment. possible.