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Even old-timers are calling it the greatest College World Series ever.
We’ve all seen those baseball movies where the old-fashioned general managers, managers and scouts are reluctant to take the advice of young whippersnappers who now look at the game through a different lens.
Well, there is a coming together of the generations who are hailing the 2023 College World Series as the best ever played. And looking at the facts probably supports that theory. The only wrong prediction I had was Wake winning.
Before Florida and LSU capped it off with the most bizarre championship round, eight games were decided by one run to tie a mark only reached twice in the 75 prior editions.
In what has always been a pitching-and-defense College World Series, three teams overcame deficits of three or more runs, the most since the CWS moved into its new, more expansive stadium in 2011.
Thirty home runs hit, the most in the new ballpark and the first time since 2010 in smaller Rosenblatt Stadium. Florida hit 17 home runs, tying the records set by LSU and Southern Cal in 1998.
Florida’s Ty Evans arrived in Omaha with four homers on the season. He hit five in the Series, moving past 11 guys who had hit four in Rosenblatt. The longest home run in the Series came off the bat of the Gators’ Wyatt Langford, who parked one 456 feet that allowed Florida to rally with three runs in the 11th inning to beat Virginia and avoid the losers bracket, from where it is very hard to win the title.
In the semi-finals elimination game with a spot in the championship series against Florida on the line, pitchers Rhett Lowder of Wake and Paul Skenes of LSU set the all-time record for combined strikeouts in a game that was 0-0 until the bottom of the 11th inning when the Tigers won on a dramatic walk-off home run. It was the second scoreless game in extra innings since 1974 when metal bats were introduced to college baseball.
There is no secret why this Series and the game has never been better. Six of the first 10 projected picks in the MLB Draft played in this College World Series. And the Series ended with Florida beating LSU 24-4 in the second game of the finals before LSU kicked the Gators’ collective butt 18-4 to win it all, the wackiest finish by far in CWS history.
That went against norms too, it was only four times in the last 11 Series that the team that lost the second game of the best-of-three turned around and won it the next night after being blown out the day before.
Featured image via Associated Press/Rebecca S. Gratz
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