Kentucky defied all odds with historic walk-off win in MCWS debut (2024)

OMAHA, Neb. – So Big Blue Nation, how do you like Omaha so far? You should know, it’s not aways like this.

Another day, another firecracker finish in a Men’s College World Series that so far is an absolute gusher in drama. This time it would be the Kentucky Wildcats, those Omaha rookies, leaping into one another’s arms on the field, while the North Carolina State Wolfpack trudged away as the third stunned walkoff victims in barely 24 hours.

Three games, three walkoffs. The MCWS has been around since Harry Truman was in the White House and never seen anything like it.

But for Kentucky to make its debut something to remember and cherish and fit the motif so far of 2024, everything had to be in place. Especially with North Carolina State nursing a 4-3 lead into the bottom of the ninth inning.

The Kentucky centerfielder, who had been taken out for a pinch runner, sat in the dugout with a tower of rally caps on his head, the designated team symbol of hope. “I’ve never done the hat stack before, but they said we needed some mojo and I threw them on,” Nolan McCarthy would say later. How many hats? “I heard 24.”

The second baseman had locked himself in the bathroom down the tunnel. Why Emilien Pitre was so sequestered – “I was just sitting in there on the toilet, waiting for cheers,” he said later – we’ll get to a moment.

Wildcats assistant coach, Nick Ammirati, had assembled the hitters for an impromptu pep talk. “Ammo brought us together and he said, this is what we play for. Let's have some fun, let's do this,” said Mitchell Daly, destined to be the man of the hour. “The whole message through the entire day, from Coach Ming (Nick Mingione) and the rest of the coaching staff was don't try to do more. Just keep being us.”

With all that karma going for them, how could the Wildcats fail? And so the first official day a Kentucky baseball team had ever spent in the MCWS transformed into an epic hello. Ryan Nicholson went the other way to homer in the ninth to tie, then Daly homered to left field in the 10th, a moment so powerful that coach Nick Mingione was left to take a knee in the coaching box at third, waiting for Daly to trot by toward home where his frenzied teammates were waiting.

“Just when you guys thought it couldn't get better,” Mingione said to the media afterward. Indeed, the third game of the 2024 CWS ended like the other two, though needing an extra inning. Only walkoff victories will do so far in Omaha. “I feel like I’m going to pass out,” Daly said after his winner.

Yep, the Wildcats are a story that just keeps getting better and better.

Attention, people of Omaha. Now that you’ve seen the magic show that is Kentucky baseball, have you given your hearts to the Wildcats, like their coach so ardently requested?

You neutrals out there in the parking lots, with no dog in the fight and just here to see the College World Series no matter who’s in it, flying Iowa and LSU and Nebraska and Oklahoma State and LSU flags at your tailgate parties. Have you joined Big Blue Nation, since Mingione invited you all?

He took the floor Thursday at his pre-Series media conference and delivered his plea.

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“If the people of Omaha are looking for a team to root for, this is your team. We are the first-timers. We want to have a great experience. We want to be lifted up. I've seen this city, and I've seen the people of this place lift up opposing teams. I've watched this thing over and over. If they're looking for a team that competes at the highest level and has an amazing time doing it, we would love for you to jump on board. There are so many seats on the Kentucky bandwagon.”

Apparently, Omaha was paying attention. One city department, anyway, as Mingione reported Saturday. “We get an email from the local fire department, `Hey, I heard one of your players is called a fireman. We've made you a fireman helmet.'"

Thus, while the Wildcats dugout willed for a comeback in the ninth inning Saturday, one of them was in a fire helmet.
“This is awesome,” Mingione said. “The people actually listened.”

Do you know this was the first time in 47 years a team had to go extra innings in its first-ever MCWS game, and first time in 49 years since it won such a thing? Or that before Saturday afternoon, teams entering the ninth inning with the lead were 176-9 in the past 185 games? Or that Tennessee and Kentucky were the only teams in the SEC without a walkoff victory this entire season but both just accomplished it 20 hours apart?

Or that Saturday’s winning blast came from the son of a four-star Army general who moved eight times as a kid? The irony is that the man who led Kentucky into the MCWS record book for the first time actually has played in here before. Daly went 4-for-16 here in 2021 as a Texas Longhorn.

So there is one intriguing curve after another in the Wildcats' journey.

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This for instance. The national narrative on Kentucky has been how the Wildcats thrive with small ball. Bunt, steal, scratch out runs. Coming into Saturday, the eight teams here this week were Nos. 1, 4, 5, 7, 11, 16, 33 and tied for 69th in the nation in home runs. Guess which one was Kentucky. Sure, No. 69, 15 homers behind next lowest North Carolina State and 91 behind Tennessee.

So how do the Wildcats win their first-ever World Series game Saturday? They hit three homers, even with a stiff wind blowing in. So much for small ball.

“People may label us as small ball but that’s just a piece of the puzzle. A lot of teams don’t have that piece in their puzzle,” Nicholson said. “The long ball was never not a part of our game. It’s part of everybody’s game.

“We do what the game calls for.”

Said McCarthy, “We know what we can do. We can attack everyone with everything.”

Which is the whole idea, as Mingione confirmed. “You've heard me say it over and over, we are whatever-it-takes type of offense and I thought today showed that. Bunts, homers, two-strike hitting, walks, you name it.”

You couldn't make up some of the carrying on that happens in the Kentucky dugout in times of crisis. Stacking hats, wearing Spider-Man suits . . . and now an Omaha fire helmet. Anything to attract a smile from fate. Look what happened to Pitre. He hurried down the tunnel to use the bathroom in the ninth inning. Let him take it from there.

“I was in there when Ryan hit his home run. I had no idea. I heard people screaming. I walked out and the guys were celebrating and I said, what the hell just happened? They said you have to go back in the bathroom. so I spent the rest of the ninth inning in the bathroom.”

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Alas, the Wildcats didn’t score again, and when Daly went to the plate in the 10th, Pitre was in the dugout. It was left to McCarthy and his stack of hats to get the job done. “I had no idea it was a home run,” he said of Daly. “I saw the ball go up, I saw everyone running out so I threw the hats off and I got out there with them.”

But should Kentucky need a late rally next game, “If I have to do it, I’ll go in there,” Pitre said of his bathroom plans. “That kind of encompasses how we think and how we do things,” Nicholson said.

Before this weekend, 117 different schools had played in the Men’s College World Series. Tufts has been there. Oral Roberts. Stoney Brook. Colgate, Kent State, James Madison, Harvard and Princeton, Rider and Rollins, Delaware and Dartmouth, Western Michigan and Eastern Michigan. Maine from the East and Hawaii from the West. The Citadel has never seen the NCAA Tournament in men’s basketball but has seen Omaha.

But never Kentucky. Not until Saturday afternoon. No wonder the unleashed joy afterward from the masses in the stands, who for glory have had to trade March for June. The Kentucky baseball team has won five more NCAA Tournament games the past two weeks than the Kentucky basketball team has won the past four years. Twenty minutes after the game, a voice cracked over the radios to all the stadium workers. “We’re having trouble getting Kentucky fans to leave,” someone announced.

Understandably, they wished to savor the moment. But what’s next for an already classic College World Series that has seen seven runs scored in the ninth inning in three games? What’s next for the newcomers in town?

“This game is a really good starting point and a big confidence builder going forward,” Nicholson said. “We didn't just come here just to be happy that we were here. We came here to win games.”

Not all of them will have to be walkoffs. Will they?