OMAHA, Neb. — It began with a area microphone and an uncharacteristically feisty baseball coach. Texas had simply received its regional in Austin in 1989 and had made it to a different Males’s Faculty World Collection, however legendary coach Cliff Gustafson had one other workforce in a distinct regional in his head.
100 miles away, in Faculty Station, No. 1 Texas A&M had simply been upset by LSU. Feeling giddy about each developments, Gustafson grabbed the mic and let unfastened.
“The place are the Aggies now?”
The gang at Disch-Falk Discipline erupted.
“For those who knew Cliff Gustafson, it was so completely out of character,” longtime Texas sports activities data director/historian Invoice Little mentioned. “I used to be like, ‘I can not imagine you simply mentioned that.’
“The animosity — you’ll be able to name it no matter you wish to name it — was constructing. I name it spirit, as a result of that is what it’s.”
Texas had gotten the higher of A&M for years however that spring an Aggie named Massive John Byington hit a few walk-off homers to provide them the sequence win over Texas, and ultimately the Southwest Convention championship. And so started the modern-day Texas-Texas A&M baseball rivalry, which ran sturdy till 2012, when the Aggies joined the SEC.
However some say it by no means ended.
On Sunday, the 2 previous rivals will meet for the primary time on the Males’s Faculty World Collection (2 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN app). The loser will go house and, nearly as necessary, should stay with the truth that it bought crushed by the opposite. Baseball is the one main sport by which the 2 groups play one another yearly, although that can change in 2025 when Texas joins the SEC.
The Longhorns, for his or her half, downplayed the importance of the rivalry. They mentioned it is simply one other sport. Pitcher Tristan Stevens added that it isn’t a lot of a shock {that a} workforce, or a fan base, could be fired as much as beat them.
“Not a variety of groups like us anyway,” Stevens mentioned.
However Texas coach David Pierce conceded that it will likely be an enormous sport for each fan bases.
“We simply cannot get caught up into enjoying Texas A&M,” Pierce mentioned. “We’ve to maintain it about us and simply do our prep and so they’re good. They swing the bats effectively. They are a good workforce. It would not matter if it was A&M or whomever. It is only a sport we’re enjoying for our lives to proceed, our baseball lives for this yr.
“I do know the blokes shall be able to go. I do not need them enjoying tight. I need them to go on the market, calm down, let it fly and see what occurs.”
Texas A&M went to Austin in late March and received 12-9 in entrance of an electrical crowd of almost 8,000. A&M’s Jack Moss went 5-for-5 that day and hit for the cycle.
Will Johnson, an Aggies broadcaster for 20 years, mentioned it was one of the crucial intense baseball video games he is ever watched.
“One thing rode on each pitch,” he mentioned. “Guys made performs in every single place. And you could possibly inform there was a bunch of fellows elevating their sport as a result of they did not wish to lose to the rival. It was unimaginable. That was two groups saying, ‘I am not shedding to these guys within the different dugout.’
“However now, my God, they’re making an attempt to finish one another’s seasons and it is arduous to fathom that depth getting ratcheted up a notch. However right here you go. You have bought it now.”
On Saturday night time, 17 hours earlier than the sport, a bunch of faculty buddies from the College of Texas sat at DJ’s Dugout — Texas A&M’s unofficially designated bar in Omaha — and contemplated the Texas-Texas A&M rivalry.
They concluded that it wasn’t all that large of a deal to Texas. Two males within the group graduated with engineering levels from UT final month, and the 14-hour drive to Omaha is their final journey collectively earlier than they begin their careers. All 4 of them are members of the Texas Iron Spikes baseball spirit group, and so they tailgate and root their Longhorns on from a left-field perch.
Jack Gallagher mentioned the group of followers does a variety of social media analysis to search out the very best materials for heckling opposing gamers, and Oklahoma bought an earful when it got here to Austin. However A&M? Not as large of a rival.
“I let you know, A&M’s entire identification is predicated on hating us,” Gallagher’s buddy Joseph Martinez mentioned. “They have no persona exterior of that.”
Gallagher added that A&M’s battle music is about Texas. It is within the second verse:
“Goodbye to Texas College, So lengthy to the orange and white”
Then Martinez glances at his telephone, which is stuffed with texts from a buddy who’s an Aggies fan. They’re speaking trash to 1 one other.
The rivals cannot even appear to agree on the historic file of the rivalry. In line with ESPN Stats & Info, Texas A&M says the sequence began in 1904 and Texas leads 239-129-5; the Longhorns say the primary sport was in 1903 and so they lead the sequence 244-129-5.
Mark Johnson, who resurrected Texas A&M’s baseball program again within the Nineteen Eighties, mentioned the rivalry had its share of fights within the early days, however that deep down, it was cordial as a result of lots of the gamers had been home-grown Texans who knew one another from highschool and youth baseball.
“Individuals suppose it is a soccer state,” he mentioned. “It is a baseball state, too, as a lot as soccer. If no more.
“There’s good gamers all around the state, and so they’re accessible. The actually good ones, after all, you need them to return to your house? A variety of occasions, Texas would get them, or we would get them.”
Johnson, who was employed in 1985, had future MLB participant Chuck Knoblauch, a Houston native, on certainly one of his first rosters, together with Massive John. Johnson had forgotten about that comment from Gustafson again in 1989. He is not even positive if he ever heard it.
“It is simply the best way it was,” Johnson mentioned. “With Texas and Texas A&M, there’s going to be an edge.”
