HAILSTATEBEAT: Underdog Bulldogs Back In College World Series

Of course I'm sitting in a hotel room at 2 a.m. writing this story.

What else should I have expected? What other result than the one we witnessed should any of us have expected from this Mississippi State baseball team? What different road could anyone have possibly expected them to take except the absolute most difficult one possible?

Of course that's what happened. 11 innings. An early lead. Then an early deficit. Then a tie game mid-way through, followed by another lead late, naturally replaced by yet another tie in the bottom of the ninth.

Nothing has ever been easy for this team, so why should the game – the entire weekend, really – that sent Mississippi State to the College World Series for the 10^th time be any different?

This is the team that didn't even have a field to practice on in the fall and had to drive two hours away to Jackson just to have some actual scrimmages. This is the team that went through the preseason practices on an active construction site, that got swept on opening weekend, that lost its head coach days later and that then started a two week road trip, ultimate playing a record-low 23 games at home in 2018.

Baffling non-conference losses were followed by a 2-7 start to SEC play.

And then the Bulldogs beat three top-five teams, including a sweep of the No. 1 team in the country to finish the regular season. They won four-straight elimination games in Tallahassee – because just advancing through the winner's bracket would have been far too easy – to win a Regional and move on to a Super against Vanderbilt in Nashville.

So of course I'm sitting here at 2 a.m. after a game that was supposed to start at 5 p.m. and didn't end until well after midnight.

I probably should've been writing this at, say, the reasonable hour of 12:30 a.m. But a three-run lead for State in the ninth quickly turned into a tie game that went into extras. Like everything else this year, MSU just had to do things in the most difficult way possible. It wasn't their choice, of course. It just seems that the gods of baseball have fated this team to dramatics, have cursed it with a path of adversity and have blessed it with a flair for theatrics.

So how else would they have punched their ticket to Omaha?

"I was thinking about that in the 10^th inning," junior outfielder Jake Mangum said. "Why wouldn't we blow a lead in the ninth and win it in extra innings? This year has been a roller coaster. It speaks volumes about this team's character."

Gary Henderson, the interim head coach who used to be the pitching coach and was never supposed to be the head coach, shared the sentiment.

"We gave up three in the ninth and we won," he said with a mix of exasperation and pride. "That speaks to character, that speaks to belief, to single-mindedness, to toughness and to sticking with it."

What did he expect? That was the most appropriate way possible for this team to get to the College World Series, and he's been there the whole way through to vouch for it.

Even the opposing head coach couldn't help but be in awe of what he saw from the opposite dugout. Tim Corbin is one of the great coaches in college baseball, and he also is acutely aware of the season the Bulldogs have had. After all, it was his Commodores of Vanderbilt that swept MSU in Starkville on the opening weekend of SEC play, only to see those lost-in-the-desert Bulldogs come back to bite when the sport's ultimate destination was on the line.

"They rose above it," Corbin said of the adversity MSU has faced. "Maybe because of it. They're a tough team. There's just no give-in to them whatsoever.

"You have to credit their kids. They came to our place, were the visiting team two games in a row, and they won, fair and square.

"It's unbelievable, when you think about it," he finished. "They don't give in. They do not give in. They make you work."

They make themselves work, too. And their fans. Their coaches. Their umpires. Their scoreboard operators. All of them. All of the people. There's no easy way to be around this team. But there's no lack of entertainment, either. No lack of excitement. No lack of whoops and yells, of screams and howls, of runs and wins, of fist-pumps and walk-offs.

This team does it the hard way, but they do it the best way. They do it with flair, with personality, with drama. They write their season the way a playwright pens a Shakespearean tragedy, but in this case, the good guys emerge victorious. The home team is also the winning team, even when they're technically the visiting team.

This team has something special. Something ineffable. Something unseen, something untouched, and something altogether clear and obvious all the same. They've got It, capital I, whatever It is.

They've got Jake Mangum and Elijah MacNamee. They've got Gary Henderson and Jake Gautreau. They've got no-names and big names. Xs and Os, Joes and Schmoes. They've got clutch pitching and hitting, just enough of both to make up for a lack of either on any given night. When things go wrong, they find a way to make them right.

20 come-from-behind wins. Five-straight elimination games gone by without a loss. From SEC afterthought to nationwide juggernaut. 10-1 against Top 10 teams.

To say this team shouldn't be here is unfair. They were supposed to occupy this spot from the start. It's not their fault no one else saw it coming.

It's 4 a.m., and of course I'm writing this. Of course I'm writing it now. Of course I'm writing it today.

Of course this team, of all the teams across the country, is headed to Omaha.

What else did you expect?

Mississippi State University Athletics

HAILSTATEBEAT: Underdog Bulldogs Back In College World Series

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Elijah MacNamee

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