Texas A&M catcher Troy Claunch says the Aggies don’t panic no matter the score or inning.
COLLEGE STATION — Coach Dan McDonnell traded his stock Louisville baseball cap for a wide-brimmed hat during Thursday’s practice in near 100-degree heat at Texas A&M’s Blue Bell Park.
McDonnell chuckled and labeled the choice of lids his “battle with the sun” leading to Louisville’s battle with the Aggies this weekend, with a berth in the usually cooler College World Series on the line.
“You have to enjoy it,” McDonnell said of what’s sure to be a raucous setting along the railroad tracks starting 7:30 p.m. Friday in Game 1 of a super regional of the NCAA Tournament. “But there is something special about being on the road and being the villain, being the bad guy. Just embrace that.”
And being in the heat to boot. Saturday’s Game 2 of the best-of-three series is scheduled to start at 2 p.m., when it’s forecast to be right around 100 degrees. A&M first-year coach Jim Schlossnagle has been the visitor in a hot super regional at the park named for ice cream, and recalled that it got so toasty in 2016 the umpire sweated through his pants and right into his bag of game balls — causing them to be soaked.
TCU, which Schlossnagle helped coach at the time, helped dry the balls with towels in a situation that would have been funny had it not been so … hot. A&M, the nation’s No. 5 national seed, would appear to have an added homefield advantage because of the heat over Louisville, where it was 81 degrees on Thursday afternoon at the same time it was 99 in College Station.
As the Aggies (40-18) have found out, however, never count out the Cardinals (42-19-1) of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Louisville helped knock A&M out of its last appearance at the CWS in Omaha, Neb., in 2017.
The Cardinals defeated the Aggies 8-4 in their 2017 CWS opener, and A&M under then-coach Rob Childress followed with a loss to Schlossnagle’s TCU squad that sent the Aggies packing from Omaha.
This is the closest A&M has come to the sport’s ultimate destination since — in exactly one year after A&M athletic director Ross Bjork hired Schlossnagle from TCU with the idea of perennially contending for one of the eight CWS slots — the Elite Eight of college baseball.
“It’s going to be highly competitive between two teams that are playing really well,” Schlossnagle said of this weekend’s showdown. “I know it’s going to be hot, but I also know the ‘12th Man’ is going to show up and impact the games.”
The contests are expected to be sellouts, and A&M fans packed Blue Bell last weekend as the Aggies swept through a regional with wins over Oral Roberts, Louisiana and TCU.
“This is a really special place,” said A&M senior catcher Troy Claunch, a transfer from Oregon State. “And whenever you have the 12th Man behind you, you know you have a shot.”
The Aggies didn’t appear to have much of a shot at the postseason early in the year — and most fans were willing to give Schlossnagle a longer-term shot at a rebuild, considering the Aggies missed both the SEC and NCAA tournaments last season with a 9-21 SEC record.
This year A&M lost two of three to Penn of the Ivy League in the second three-game series of the season, and on March 15 was handed an 8-2 loss by Houston at Blue Bell to drop to 10-6 in nonconference play — what was alleged to be the easy part of the season. The Cougars wound up 13-11 in American Athletic Conference play and didn’t make the NCAA Tournament.
Schlossnagle said after that loss to UH he practically pouted in his office and told himself, “Don’t let these guys down” about transfers like Claunch who’d believed in him enough to play their final seasons at A&M, which was picked to finish sixth in the seven-team SEC West division. The Aggies wound up winning their first West title.
“Competitive grit and resilience,” Schlossnagle said of the primary ingredients of A&M’s saltiest team in memory. “These guys have met the standard for being a fightin’ Texas Aggie.”
The Aggies, who won their final seven SEC series to close out the regular season, made a habit of figuring no hole they dug early was too deep. A&M on May 7 wiped out a nine-run deficit against South Carolina in a 13-12 Aggies victory, in their largest comeback against a league foe in program history.
“There’s no panic,” Claunch said. “Whatever the score is or what inning it’s in.”
Brent Zwerneman is a staff writer for the Houston Chronicle covering Texas A&M athletics. He is a graduate of Oak Ridge High School and Sam Houston State University, where he played baseball.
Brent is the author of four published books about Texas A&M, three related to A&M athletics. He's a four-time winner of APSE National Top 10 writing awards for the San Antonio Express-News, including a second-place finish for breaking the Dennis Franchione "secret newsletter" scandal in 2007.
His coverage of Texas A&M's move to the SEC from the Big 12 also netted a third-place finish nationally in 2012. Brent met his wife, KBTX-TV news anchor Crystal Galny, in the Dixie Chicken before an A&M-Texas Tech football game in 2002, and the couple has three children: Will, Zoe and Brady.