OMAHA, Neb. — June 1956 was a different time in America. As a country, we had barely been blessed with the bittersweet technology of the snooze button on alarm clocks, and Elvis Presley was just starting to cause a ruckus by performing on television without a guitar, doing his gyrations of hip on stage a national concern. . It also happens to be the first time anyone has participated in the Men’s College World Series.
It was also the only time in tournament history that such a strange but statistically remarkable feat occurred – that is, until June 14 at Charles Schwab Field. Today, Tennessee Volunteers second baseman Christian Moore joined the list as one of only two players to hit a single, double, triple and home run in an MCWS game, after Jerry Kindall, the legendary former University of Arizona head coach with three national caps. securities. Kindall played for the Minnesota Gophers in 1956, and the series was still relatively new at Rosenblatt Stadium.
This world was still black and white, in many ways. The young man nicknamed C-Mo by his teammates did it this weekend to open the Volunteers in Color debates. Tennessee is back in action tonight against North Carolina (7 p.m. ET, ESPN2/ESPN+) in the winner-take-all game in Omaha.
“Christian Moore was a man on a mission tonight,” Vols coach Tony Vitello said after a thrilling 12-11 victory over Florida State in Game 2 of the MCWS. “This guy wants to win as much as anyone on the field. I don’t know how you define that, but that’s what makes his engine run. He doesn’t do very well when he’s not in this mode and he worries about other things.
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Going 5 for 6 with 12 total walks, 4 extra base hits and 3 runs scored is enough to fill the stat line, but the way it happened was just as remarkable. He started the game with a leadoff triple, then scored another run (Florida State’s catcher dropped a base hit at the plate in a wacky play) the next inning and scored again himself. After a good hit earned him a single in the fourth, he homered to finish the task.
A gargantuan shot from the center of the field, it was clear there wouldn’t be a better player on the field that night. And his ninth-inning double with two outs and two strikes was just the icing on the cake of an iconic performance that led to a victory.
“I guess when you hit for the cycle – that is, in the sixth inning he had hit for the cycle – you know what you’re dealing with,” the Florida State Seminoles coach said. Link Jarrett after the match.
We’re not talking about a random anomaly of a performance or a blowout win where a guy just fills out the stat sheet. They were down when this circuit left the field. The match was on the line when he locked up late and kept the rally going to win in the ninth. Funny story aside, the top-seeded Vols needed its night, in what was otherwise honestly a super sloppy game in an exciting MCWS that saw three hits in the first three games.
“I would say the most unique thing was the reaction of some of the guys in the dugout,” Vitello said with a laugh. “When you impress your teammates like that, it’s like a Shawn Kemp – for the old enough people in the room – like a Shawn Kemp dunk and you have everyone on the bench going crazy.”
But there’s a part of the baseball world that sees his talent, doesn’t really know him, and sees the brash Tennessee team known for what we’ll just call its very collegiate antics and thinks that this guy doesn’t have the makeup to be a big league player or whatever and push him down their draft board.
Oddly enough, the inability to have a clear view of what they see in front of them is something that also affected Moore himself. And he didn’t even know it.
“I would definitely say my first year here (I grew), and part of that was because I couldn’t see,” Moore told Daron Sutton and Dani Wexelman on the show. Amateur hour podcast from June 3. “My vision was bad and I didn’t know it. And I got to college and they gave me a physical eye exam, and my coach was like, “Hey, you’re blind. You need contacts. …The first two weeks were really weird, my depth perception was really bad. After that I kind of got used to it and it really helped me.
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A megastar at the amateur and prep level, he reached arguably the best baseball conference in the country before he could even correctly perform seam rotations in the batter’s box. Short version: It’s amazing. It’s a skill that hitters use as a baseline advantage to get a leg up on pitchers, which is certainly difficult, but for many hitters it’s a necessary condition to even have a chance. Playing with a visual impairment from high school all the way to the Southeastern Conference is nothing short of incredible.
Regardless of physical abilities and growth, Moore comes from that generation of kids whose high school experiences were very strangely transformed by the coronavirus pandemic. Technically, he only played one season of baseball for his high school, following a legendary travel and showcase career. It wasn’t an easy ride before or during.
“There was an old boys club in New York that had a program where there was a piece of baseball,” Suffield Academy coach Bryan Brissette noted Saturday. Moore’s older brother, CJ, who was drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks but later played college ball at Lamar University, graduated in 2014. The pipeline from Brooklyn, New York, was then created.
“When CJ was here, Chris was probably around 10 years old. And CJ kept telling us that he was a good player in his own right. He was drafted by the Diamondbacks and ended up going to Lamar instead. But CJ kept pointing at this little kid running around in our games and saying, “Hey, coach, that’s the guy you need to go after.” He said, “You think I was a good player?” It’s the good one.’ I watch this 10-year-old kid run and play and throw a baseball, and I’m like, wow, OK. That’s how Chris really got on my radar.
After a few trips to different prep schools and even traveling around Tennessee as a young man and getting involved in the Knoxville program, he came back to finish high school in Suffolk and boom: pandemic time.
“He was a free guard on our undefeated football team. Some people don’t know that, right? We won the championship. And then that spring, the schools closed, everything stopped. It’s spring 2020. So we haven’t had a baseball season. And then when he came back in the fall, it was completely disjointed,” Brissette said. “And then that spring he finally had a baseball season, so he only played one season for me, but it was tough, you know? We had kids on campus who had to wear masks and it was such a disjointed time to be a young person. He arrived with a lot of accolades, but I think also with a lot of pressure. He had a target on his back, every game we played, you know. The kids knew him and they wanted to put themselves in his shoes, or they wanted to get the best out of him or, so it was unfair.
It was a circumstance that, over time, led Moore himself to understand that maturity was something he had to work on and quickly, even if some people considered the Brooklyn kid to be a kind of child with problems because he actually liked to express himself on the field. field thanks to its energy.
“I think I grew up a lot, coming in as a freshman, very immature, I didn’t know much (and) I thought I knew and, you know, I felt humiliated very quickly,” said candidly Moore after Game 2 before going to hang out with his parents. “Given the SEC that fall, I knew I had talent. I knew I just needed to figure things out. And I did. I think having guys like Evan Russell, Drew Gilbert, Jordan Beck, guys before me that kind of started me in the right direction (helped).
We’ll probably see a lot more during the tournament. Clearly a team leader, Moore is one of those kids whose college has done wonders for who he is as a person, let alone a baseball player. At a time when we are truly seeing more and more black kids advance to high-level Division I programs, how that translates to the next level is an ongoing question not only for Moore, but for many of those who look and see again we are just nervous talents to control instead of real cornerstones to invest in talent wise.
“He had to turn down very large sums of money to come here. I was going to save that for later, but I think he’s fighting a little bit against the reputation people have right now compared to others we dealt with three years ago,” said Vitello Friday. “We had some concepts there (from others). “He’s not a guy who says no to money and (he’s not a guy who) wants to be a team player” and things like that. We knew right away, once we got on campus, that we were wrong. But we also had to do certain things. Like any freshman, he needed to mature, and he’s done that now. So it’s fun to watch.
Vitello wasn’t going to explain everything, but the point was made. Guys from certain places who look like us have automatic assumptions made about them that are often superficial and inaccurate.
Even though the official NCAA account continues to conflate black players with each other on its Twitter feed, Moore is clearly someone whose name will not be forgotten – not by anyone watching under the lights Friday. Incredible composure at the plate, A-plus motor and energy, a cannon of a bat that can handle almost anything in and around the zone and a winning mentality.
There is a point in a young athlete’s career where they haven’t really outgrown their surroundings, but they are clearly competent enough and ready to succeed on a bigger stage. You’ll see a lot of talk about guys who should do this and that, but beyond the University of Tennessee records for career home runs (60), single-season home runs (33), and single-season base total (226). ), the eye test is still relevant.
Hopefully some of these big league front offices can finally start to see things through, too.