May 18, 2007
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Feature Story By Will Matthews
NASHVILLE – There were a whole host of moments worth remembering Thursday on what surely will go down as one of the most special nights in Hawkins Field history.
Commodore ace David Price ringing up his 156th strikeout of the year in the third inning and setting a new Vanderbilt single-season record – breaking the previous mark of 155 that he himself set just last year – was a moment to remember.
Price walking off the field for what almost assuredly will be the final time during a regular season game to a loud standing ovation from the record crowd of 2,685 after throwing 8.2 sparkling innings in which he struck out 15 and allowed just three runners to reach as far as second base was certainly a moment to file away in the old memory bank.
And Casey Weathers inducing LSU right fielder Steve Broschofsky into a game-ending fielder’s choice to nail down Vanderbilt’s 20th SEC win of the year – an ongoing team record and a benchmark not often reached in arguably the nation’s toughest conference – will long be remembered as well.
But the most memorable moment on this night came more than 45 minutes after the final out had been recorded in No. 1-ranked Vanderbilt’s 4-1 win over LSU, long after most of the Commodore faithful had retreated for the evening.
With the radio broadcast emanating from the public address system and the entire Vanderbilt team huddled in right field and hanging on the play-by-play, Mississippi put the final touches on its 5-4 win over Arkansas, a result that clinched the regular season SEC championship for Vanderbilt.
“I couldn’t be happier right now and I absolutely couldn’t be prouder of our kids,” said a jubilant Vanderbilt Head Coach Tim Corbin, wet after sprinting from the dugout where he was listening to the broadcast with his coaching staff out to a pile of his celebratory players and being greeted with a dousing of a Gatorade bucket full of water. “It takes a lot of hard work to accomplish something like this. It is a goal that the kids established for themselves at the beginning of the year and so I am just really happy for them.”
The SEC regular season championship is the first in the history of the Vanderbilt baseball program, Vanderbilt’s first regular season conference championship in any sport since 1993 and a fulfillment of one of the major goals that Corbin set for the program when he took its reigns five years ago.
“Selfishly, you want to do this kind of thing right away,” Corbin said. “I thought we played really well in year two. But to win an SEC title and to win it outright is representative of a body of work during the course of the season. It is quite an achievement. It is quite and achievement for the kids.”
And there was something poetically just about the achievement coming on a night in which the Commodores defeated LSU – a team that tried hard to lure Corbin away from Vanderbilt last summer before Corbin decided to stay in Nashville and, as he has put it at the time, finish what he had started.
“Yeah, that feels good,” Corbin said. “It is good for the school and it is good for everyone involved. I am sure the chancellor is very proud of what is going on. But I am mostly happy for the coaches and the kids. I really am. It just shows you that hard work does pay off. We have put a lot of time and effort into this and in five years we have come a long way.”
But even in the midst of the much-deserved on-field celebration, the common refrain from the Vanderbilt players was that they still had not come far enough.
“We have come a long way the past couple of years and so this is a really good feeling right now,” Price said. “But this is not over yet. There are still things out there that we want to do. So we just want to keep playing hard.”
The team has made it clear from the onset of fall practice in October that while winning a conference championship would be nice, its primary goal is to reach the College World Series next month.
“In the end, if we don’t win the national title we are going to think back on the fact that we had a shot at doing it and we didn’t do it,” said sophomore third baseman Pedro Alvarez. “This is just a starting point for us. Hopefully, there will be many other successes for us this year.”
Will Matthews spent three years as an investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Newspaper Group in Southern California. He earned his Master of Divinity degree in 2007 from Vanderbilt Divinity School. To email Will your feedback, Click Here