(Photo credit: Gators baseball media team)
The 2024 Gators baseball team will be remembered for a lot of things.
Most of those things aren’t pleasant.
They’ll be remembered for losing the opener to St. John’s, which instantly triggered alarm bells among Gator fans. They’ll be remembered for getting swept by a ghastly Missouri team. They’ll be remembered for blowing not one but two winnable games against Kentucky in Gainesville. They’ll be remembered for a slew of ugly midweek losses to teams like Stetson, Central Florida, and– in all three meetings– FSU.
They’ll be remembered for pitching letdowns, baserunning breakdowns, fielding miscues, and failures to get big hits. They’ll be remembered as the team for which anything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong.
Yet despite all of that– or maybe because of it?– now the 2024 Gators baseball team will be remembered for the same thing as thirteen legendary teams before it: reaching the College World Series in Omaha, NE.
To hear Florida assistant coach Chuck Jeroloman tell it, each team’s journey is different. But this 2024 Gators baseball team is undoubtedly unique in ways that all those other thirteen teams were not. This is the team that defied the greatest odds, climbed the biggest hill (literally), and took the craziest path to Omaha.
And while this team’s path culminated in the same crescendo of jubilation as the prior thirteen, the game that led to that dogpile was unlike any other– not just in the Gators’ history, but perhaps in college baseball history as well.
After defying the odds to win the Stillwater, OK Regional over Nebraska and Oklahoma State, Florida earned a trip to Clemson, SC for a Super Regional date with the Tigers. A best-two-out-of-three series, with the winner advancing to Omaha. There were storylines every which way you looked, from the fact that Florida and Clemson hadn’t played in decades, to the fact that Florida coach Kevin O’Sullivan used to coach on the same Clemson staff as now-Clemson head coach Erik Bakich under long-time Clemson head coach-turned-assistant Jack Leggett, to the fact that another Clemson assistant, Griffin Mazur, is married to Florida softball legend Amanda Lorenz.
But the Gators put all those storylines on the back burner, and made their own storyline by surviving one of the wildest college baseball games ever played in Game Two of the Clemson Super Regional to finalize its travel plans.
Game One of the Super Regional was wild enough in its own way.
Florida freshman starter Liam Peterson didn’t do a lot right on this Saturday afternoon, but he did leave the bases loaded with a 2-0 deficit to keep Clemson from landing the early haymaker. A pop fly that the wind blew away from Ashton Wilson turned into a triple and a free run to make it 3-0, and after Florida countered with a sac fly from Cade Kurland, Clemson’s Jimmy Obertop launched a tape-measure shot to make it 4-1 Tigers after three.
But then the Gators baseball team battled back.
Tyler Shelnut came through with a solo home run in the fourth to cut the deficit to 4-2. Moments later, center fielder Cam Cannarella– who played almost the entire season with a torn right labrum– robbed what would have been a second solo home run of the inning. Undeterred, Jac Caglianone blasted a three-run homer to give the Gators the lead for keeps in the ensuing frame, driving one the other way through the wind to make it 5-4 Gators. The bottom of the Gators’ order kept the momentum going, re-launching the rally and tacking on insurance runs via an RBI single from Luke Heyman, an error from Clemson second baseman Jarren Purify, a suicide squeeze executed to perfection from Brody Donay, and another RBI single from Michael Robertson. That all added up to a seven-run inning to make it 9-4.
Meanwhile, Florida pitcher Fisher Jameson kept the Clemson offense at bay. He did make two mistake pitches– solo home runs by Obertop and Tristan Bissetta– but scattered those hits and avoided the laborious innings, allowing him to eat up outs and get Florida to the sixth after Peterson was yanked in the second. Brandon Neely took it from there, slamming the door with a twelve-out save that featured a double play to escape a messy sixth inning and then shutting the Tiger offense out over the last three innings. For good measure, Luke Heyman drilled a solo home run in the top of the ninth to make the final score 10-7.
That set the stage for Game Two, a five hour, thirteen inning affair that Clemson had to win to stay alive and Florida had to win to finish the series while it was best suited to do so. As it turned out, Saturday’s game was a mere warmup for the insanity that played out on Sunday.
The game began innocently enough. Jac Caglianone started the game on the mound for Florida (the Gators were the home team in Game Two), and he opened up the contest by tossing a zero on the scoreboard and then blasting a two-run homer over the batter’s eye. That was Caglianone’s 33rd of the season, and the 73rd of his career– one short of the school record set by Matt LaPorta.
Then, as the sun beamed down on the Carolina Upstate and the temperature exceeded 90 degrees, tensions began to boil over. With two outs and Jack Crighton on second after a double, Clemson’s Nolan Nawrocki put the ball in play on an excuse-me check swing that resulted in the ball dribbling down toward first base. Caglianone came off the mound to field the pseudo-bunt, which drew him into the baseline. He applied the tag to get the out, which Nawrocki didn’t appreciate. The two pushed each other, and the benches cleared.
Caglianone would later tell me that the source of the fight stemmed from Nawrocki not knowing the rules of the game. “He said ‘I have a right to the baseline,'” Caglianone stated. “I said, ‘bro, no you don’t when I have the ball.’ That’s when the pushing started.”
When the dust had settled following a fifteen-minute review of the melee, every player and coach on both teams were warned… except one. Crighton– the starting first baseman who had just doubled moments earlier and then sprinted into the fracas– was ejected for making contact with an official. Clemson coach Erik Bakich called Crighton out of the dugout and onto the field so that the umpires could inform Crighton of his disqualification directly. Crighton, of course, was displeased, and boos rained down onto the field as the umpiring crew once again tried to restore order. Some twenty minutes after Caglianone applied the tag onto Nawrocki, play resumed.
Jacob Hinderleider got Clemson on the board in the third with an RBI double to score Purify, and moments later, Blake Wright put Clemson on top with a two-run homer. But Colby Shelton quickly responded to that with an RBI single to score Kurland, knotting the score at three apiece after three innings. The score remained that way until Shelton came through again in the fifth, driving in two more with a bases-loaded RBI single to make it 5-3. Florida would then strand two runners in scoring position when Shelnut struck out.
Then, with one out in the sixth, catcher Jimmy Obertop came through for Clemson again with another solo homer to cut the deficit to 5-4. Unfazed, Florida’s Brody Donay replied to Obertop’s home run with one of his own, this one a two-run shot over the right-center field wall to make it 7-4 Gators.
That was when the umpires stepped in again. After an infield hit up the middle by Michael Robertson and a walk to Caglianone, Florida executed a double steal. But as Obertop reared back to throw down to third, he brushed against plate umpire Greg Harmon, who promptly stopped the play and ordered the runners back to their original bases for umpire’s interference. That, of course, drew the ire of Florida’s dugout, but with both teams having been warned on the second-inning dustup, the Gators remained put. Florida failed to score in that frame, leaving the score at 7-4 heading into the seventh.
Jake Clemente– one of the heroes of Stillwater– took over on the mound for Caglianone and struck out the side in the seventh. The Gators couldn’t do anything in their half of the seventh, either, moving the game to the eighth with the score 7-4.
Clemson changed that quickly in the eighth. Cam Cannarella singled home the first run of the frame. When Clemente walked the ensuing batter, Kevin O’Sullivan summoned closer Brandon Neely to try to finish the game for the second day in a row. Though he did give up another run on a single from Tristan McCladdie– who replaced the ejected Jack Crighton– he limited the damage to just that, giving Florida a 7-6 lead heading into the bottom of the eighth.
The Florida offense responded. Ashton Wilson– the hero of the postseason– made Clemson pay for intentionally walking Caglianone with a two-run moonshot over the center field scoreboard. And with a 9-6 lead heading into the bottom of the ninth, it felt like Florida had the game secured– even with all the ways it had found to blow similar late leads throughout the season.
Neely started the ninth by coaxing a lineout to Kurland. That drew Florida within two outs of Omaha. All Neely had to do was get two outs before Clemson could score three runs.
But then back-to-back base hits brought the tying run to the plate in Cannarella. And the Tigers’ star found a pitch that caught too much of the plate and belted it out of the park to tie the game and send the Clemson faithful into a frenzy. To his credit, Neely stopped the bleeding there and kept Clemson from inflicting any further damage, but the damage was already done; when Florida failed to score in the bottom of the ninth, the game went into extra innings.
In the bottom of the tenth– because we hadn’t gotten enough of this yet, right?– more controversy ensued. O’Sullivan stopped the game with one out to order the umpires to check the hat of Clemson pitcher Austin Gordon, which seemed to have some black residue on the bill resembling pine tar. Pine tar is, of course, illegal for pitchers to use, as rubbing some on your fingers can make the ball dance and do some crazy, physics-defying things on its way to home plate.
The umpires complied with O’Sullivan’s request, but after inspecting Gordon’s hat, determined it was kosher and allowed him to stay in the game. Needless to say, this triggered yet another round of raucous booing from the Clemson crowd.
The booing continued as Kurland singled through the whole, and reached a crescendo as Caglianone was intentionally walked again. That brought Wilson to the plate, needing just a base hit to end the game. Instead, Wilson was thinking bigger, and drove a meaty pitch to deep center field for an apparent walk-off extra base hit.
But Cam Cannarella never thought so. He got on his horse and sprinted back a good 40 feet or so to dead center field. After switching directions on his way to the wall twice, Cannarella realized a more direct approach was needed. Looking more like a wide receiver– Tyrie Cleveland against Tennessee in 2017 comes to mind– Cannarella opened both his glove hand and his bare hand, leaped into the air, and made a spectacular two-handed catch as the ball dropped perfectly over his shoulder, beside his head, and into his arms as he crashed full-force into the wall.
Ashton Wilson, who’d hit the ball, put both hands on his head in disbelief. Gordon, who’d thrown the pitch, sprung out of his crouch– he thought he’d just lost the game– and screamed with delight. Bottles, towels, and all sorts of debris flew in the air as the purple-and-orange-clad Clemson crowd lost its collective mind. It truly felt like not only a season-saving catch, but an Omaha-clinching one.
Because Florida– much maligned for its issues on the mound this year– was now out of pitchers. Or at least its most dependable batch of them.
Peterson had been Florida’s best pitcher of late, and he couldn’t even get out of the second inning, forcing Florida to go to its bullpen way before it wanted to the day before. Caglianone was burned with a long Sunday start. Jake Clemente had already been burned. Neely was now running on fumes in his second long day of work in a row. Fisher Jameson, the next most reliable reliever, had just thrown a whopping 60 pitches the day before. Pierce Coppola would likely have been used as the starter the next day, but with his Tommy John surgery still lurking so close in the rearview mirror, could not have been counted on to go more than three or four innings at most.
Behind those names, there’s plenty of talent, sure. Kevin O’Sullivan always makes sure of that. But the experience level and reliability drop off like a continental shelf. So this game, on this day, was the Gators baseball team’s best chance to knock Clemson out and make it to Omaha. And everybody knew it.
Somehow, Neely got the Gators through the eleventh, coaxing a groundout on his 71st pitch. That gave the Gators another chance to land the knockout punch. With two outs, back-to-back walks to Tyler Shelnut and Dale Thomas gave Brody Donay a chance to be the hero– again, only needing a base hit to end the game. He didn’t get it. Bakich made a pitching change after Gordon started him off 2-0, and after Billy Barlow had thrown his warmup pitches, Donay swung at the first pitch he saw, popping it up to end the threat and stranding two more runners.
Luke McNeillie then took over on the mound for Neely, getting a double play and then a strikeout to get out of the top of the twelfth. With two outs and Michael Robertson on first, the Gators then set up yet another chance to win the game with a mere single, as a bouncer up the middle from Ashton Wilson found a hole. When the middle infielders collided and the ball bounded away, the Gators had second and third with two outs. But Colby Shelton struck out on a slider from Ethan Darden.
And it seemed like that would be costly. Ty Olechuk was beaned by McNeillie to start the thirteenth. Even when his pinch runner Devin Parks, was picked off, Alden Mathes finally made the Gators pay for stranding all those runners by launching a solo home run over the right field wall to make it 10-9 Clemson.
What happened next was easy to see coming from a mile away, and yet added an entirely different dimension to the nuttiness of the game. As the crowd lost its mind, Mathes fired his bat into the ground in celebration, which caused the umpires to run over, seemingly to eject him. Bakich, under the impression that the umps had just tossed a second starter of his from the game– which trigger automatic suspensions for the if-necessary Game Three of the series– came sprinting out of the dugout to argue.
According to Bakich in an interview with Greenville Online, because the crowd was so insanely loud, he couldn’t hear what the umpires were saying. He could, however, hear the umpires say that Leggett– the former Clemson head coach who worked with Bakich and O’Sullivan as assistants, and now serves as Clemson’s program development assistant– had been booted for inciting the crowd, screaming at the umpires and coming onto the field. Bakich asked the ump, “Are we really going to suspend Jack Leggett?” The response from crew chief Greg Harmon: “Yep, we’re going to do that, and because you incited the crowd and waved to the crowd when he was out there as well– you’re ejected too.”
Bakich then compounded matters by getting in Harmon’s face to demand a better explanation, which was a losing effort. It did, however, win him two days off to begin the 2025 season, as he was instantly handed a suspension as well for raising both hands above his head in victory– as if he’d won something. This caused the crowd– which had been booing the ejection– to switch to cheering.
The Clemson fans weren’t cheering for much longer.
Luke Heyman started the bottom of the thirteenth with a base hit through the hole, and Tyler Shelnut followed that up by smoking a single into left-center field. Dale Thomas then laid down a perfect sacrifice bunt to put the winning run on third with one out. Clemson then placed Brody Donay on first base to set up a double play, bringing up Michael Robertson with a chance to tie the game with a sac fly– or win it with a hit.
Of all the Gator hitters to be the hero, Robertson probably would have been the last guy you’d expect. As he strode to the plate, he sported a .250 batting average on the season with just 23 RBI, as well as 0-7 with the bases loaded. Throughout the year, Robertson had come up empty time and again in critical situations.
But baseball has a funny way of working itself out sometimes. Because the history books aren’t going to remember any of that. Instead, they’ll notate Robertson as the man who delivered the scrapbook swing, creating the sweetest “ping” sound of the season as he laced one into the right field gap to score not just the tying run in Jaylen Guy but the winning run in Tyler Shelnut. And as Shelnut dove headfirst onto home plate, it was official.
Against all odds, Florida had done it. The Gators baseball team was going back to Omaha.
Gloves, hats, Gatorade cups, and even a baseball exploded into the air as the Gators poured over the dugout railing and streamed onto the field. Robertson, who had touched second base just to make sure, never broke stride as he sprinted into left field, as if daring his teammates to catch him.
While most of the players who poured onto the field sprinted in Robertson’s general direction, Colby Shelton went flying over the rail with a purpose, making a direct beeline for Robertson. As such, he was the first to catch him, even though he had one of the farthest routes to get to him. Shelton managed to grab an arm of Robertson’s and swing him around, unable to actually tackle him. He did, however, hold him up and slow him down enough for Jaylen Guy and Tyler Shelnut to get their hands on him. Then Ashton Wilson barreled into the scrum, causing all four men to collapse on top of each other, and the dogpile was on.
Then the trophy came out, followed by the large cardboard ticket. Families, media, and equipment personnel trickled onto the field to celebrate, phones in hand to snap an album of pictures to document the conclusion of this wild, crazy, and outright nonsensical journey to Omaha.
It would be Ashton Wilson, who had three hits in the regular season, going on a tear and hitting behind Caglianone. It would be Dale Thomas, who struggled to get sacrifice bunts down all year, who laid down the perfect sacrifice in the thirteenth. It would be Tyler Shelnut, who cost teams runs and games with misplays in left field, who delivered the single that became the game-winning run. It would be Brandon Neely, who was shaky for much of the season and gave up the tying home run in the ninth, to hold it together and keep Clemson at bay for two more innings. And it would be Michael Robertson, the ninth batter of nine in the lineup, to deliver the game-winning hit in the bottom of the thirteenth.
No mistake that was made, no loss or injury that was suffered, and no frustration that was amassed in the regular season matters anymore. History will remember those players for delivering when they were needed most, for overcoming so much adversity, for winning the games they had to win. They’ll now and forever be notated as victors, as heroes, and as legends. hey’ll be remembered for making it to OmahaThis Gators baseball team won’t be thought of as the team that failed to live up to expectations. They’ll simply be thought of as the team that had to go on the road in the postseason to do it.
Maybe it’s time that a Gators baseball team got here the hard way. Florida usually does it the easy way, grabbing a top-eight national seed on the strength of an excellent regular season and then holding serve in home Regionals and Super Regionals. It kind of defies all the inherent craziness of baseball for a program to so consistently set up a home-field advantage for itself to get to Omaha.
In any case, just because the journey will now conclude in Omaha doesn’t mean the journey itself is finished. Because after falling one game short of a national title a year ago, this Gators baseball program still has unfinished business to attend to– unfinished business that nobody could have predicted they’d even get a chance to finish a few short weeks ago. As the 2024 Gators baseball season played out, it became more and more apparent that that unfinished business was going to be left unfinished, a battle scar that could never heal. That Game Three loss to LSU in the 2023 College World Series finals looked like one of those losses that the continued progression of time would only make hurt worse and worse, because Florida would not be getting so close again any time soon– and with the weirdness of college baseball, who knows if they ever will again?
But now this 2024 Gators baseball team can re-set its eyes on the prize it came so tantalizingly close to a year ago. The preseason mission this team had of “finish the mission” has been restored.
And with the obstacles this team has overcome to get as far as it is? With immortality already achieved, maybe, just maybe, this unlikeliest of teams is the one that’s destined to go the rest of the way, avenge its 2023 forerunners, and be the one to give its 2017 forerunners a little bit of company with a second national championship trophy.
