June 8, 2010
Complete Recap: Vanderbilt 3, Louisville 2 (10)
Do you like movies?
If you do, you couldn’t have done better than the nerve-wracking tension of Vanderbilt’s 3-2 win over Louisville on Monday to claim the NCAA Regional championship.
It had all the plotlines of any classic sports flick.
Look at what was on the line: a berth in a Super Regional for the first time in six years, and only the second in team history.
Look at the spectacular plays: Center fielder Connor Harrell’s over-the-fence grab in the third to save a home run. Shortstop Brian Harris’ immaculate leap to save what looked like a bases-clearing double in the ninth and send the game to extras. Harrell’s perfect bunt in the tenth and Curt Casali’s jubilant, game-winning slide.
Look at the unlikely heroes: Grayson Garvin, making his second start of the season and stifling Louisville’s bats through six-plus innings. Harrell, driving in his first and only run to crown the Commodores Regional champions. Casali, continuing to snap out of a slump to hit an RBI single for an early lead and then scoring the winning run in the tenth.
It had the titanic match-up of a war movie.
For 10 innings at Jim Patterson Stadium, Vanderbilt and Louisville, clearly the best teams at the Regional, battled in a showdown befitting of a championship game. The Commodores wanted revenge for being knocked out of last year’s Regional by the Cardinals; Louisville didn’t want to be one of the only top seeds this year not to make the Supers.
Thomas Royse, the Cardinal ace, pitched his guts out, at one point recovering from a bases loaded, no-out situation to strike out the heart of Vanderbilt’s order in the fifth. Garvin pitched his longest outing of the season and, like bullpen counterpart Richie Goodenow did a day earlier, held the Cardinals’ powerful offense down.
Jeff Arnold’s game-tying hit in the ninth off Commodore ace Sonny Gray, given there was one out left in Louisville’s season, was nothing short of clutch. Then again, so was Jason Esposito’s RBI single with two out in the seventh to give Vanderbilt a 2-1 lead.
It had the nail-biting suspense of a horror movie.
You can see this game had its share of heart-stopping moments. My heart was in my throat for most of the game’s 3 hours and 18 minutes.
Gray had to strand multiple runners in the eighth and ninth innings, when just one more hit could have been all it took for the Cardinals to be dogpiling at game’s end instead. It included another showdown with Phil Wunderlich, who took him deep for a 3-run homer in Saturday’s 7-1 loss. He lined a shot off Gray’s glove that Harris grabbed and threw to first to end the eighth.
And don’t forget; in a way, this was Vanderbilt’s version of The Exorcist, the 1973 horror classic. As in exorcising the demons of falling short at past Regionals.
Two of the past three years, Vanderbilt was a win away from the Supers. And yet, both times the Commodores lost in backbreaking fashion, including in 2007, when they fell in 10 innings and had to watch Michigan celebrate on Hawkins Field.
This Regional had what others had lacked the last few years for Vanderbilt: a happy ending.
Wait, scratch that. There’s still another chapter for Commodore baseball to write at Super Regionals. So like almost every good movie nowadays, this one demands a sequel.
To be continued.
Photo by John Russell