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Mississippi State Bulldogs reach college baseball mountaintop with first CWS title
By Jake Mintz
FOX Sports MLB Writer
College Baseball is many things.
It is passion, pride, hard work, loud aluminum pings, dugout noise, dumb team slogans, sixth-year seniors, too much time on busses and some of the best atmospheres you’ll find in the whole world of baseball.
But when it all boils down to the truth of it, college baseball is mostly, usually about who screws up the least. This is a more poignant fact at the lower levels of the sport, where players screwing up is as common as a beer at the ballyard.
But even at the top level of the sport — the games played on a manicured lawn in Omaha, Nebraska, featuring guys throwing in the high 90s and sophomores with goatees who look 35 years old — it’s still often about who screws up the least.
The Mississippi State Bulldogs are the champions of the Men’s College World Series because they did not screw up — not once. In seven games, they made a grand total of zero errors. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Over the course of a week and change, not a single error was seen or made or committed by the young men wearing the maroon uniforms.
Seven consecutive errorless games at the big-league level would be impressive. For a college team, it’s borderline miraculous.
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On Wednesday, the team that refused to err pulverized a star-studded defending champion Vanderbilt squad featuring two of the presumptive top 10 picks in the upcoming MLB Draft in Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter. Mississippi State ace Will Bednar, pitching on short rest, was fabulous and did not allow a hit through six innings of work.
In fact, the Bulldogs were five outs away from a championship-winning no-hitter before Vandy dinked a single into center in the eighth inning.
There was never a moment when it looked like the Bulldogs might lose the game. If you want to be picky, I guess Vandy had first and second with one out in the bottom of the first before grounding into a double play. But after that, there was never a question.
The Bulldogs dripped runs across in the first, second and fifth, taking a 5-0 lead into the later innings. That’s when the floodgates truly opened, with the deciding blow a three-run tater from freshman DH and John Mulaney look-alike Kellum Clark.
Prior to Wednesday, Mississippi State was arguably the most successful Division I program without a World Series title. Including this year, the Bulldogs have 12 appearances in Omaha, with a runner-up finish in 2013. They have more SEC titles (13) than any other school. They’ve reached the regional round a whopping 34 times. Their home stadium, Dudy Noble Field, regularly leads the nation in attendance and holds the all-time on-campus record for attendance (15,586) and nine of the top ten.
Theirs is a community, a place and a school that really cares about baseball. I’ve never been to Dudy Noble — which locals and folks around college baseball wonderfully call "The Dude" — but it’s supposed to be an unforgettable baseball experience.
This is all to say that Mississippi State has been teetering for a long time on the edge of being a no-question upper-crust college baseball program, and now, they have the big, shiny trophy to prove it. Led by a cadre of unrelenting upperclassmen such as Tanner Allen and Rowdey Jordan (who combined for five hits on Wednesday), these Bulldogs are the culmination of more than a decade of culture-building hard work, and they are undeniably deserving champions.
It was a weird College World Series, to say the least. Vanderbilt’s appearance in the finals alone speaks to that. After a COVID-19 outbreak knocked the red-hot NC State Wolfpack out of the tournament, Vandy flew straight to the final series. The Commodores won the opener behind a dominant performance from Leiter. But the Bulldogs battled back in Game 2, winning 12-3 to tie things up and force a Game 3.
Then, Mississippi State didn’t simply eke out a W against Rocker, one of the most dominant college pitchers ever. The Bulldogs knocked him around. Rocker, who next week will be drafted in the first 10 picks and then will deservingly make more money than you or I could ever imagine, looked understandably exhausted throughout this game and didn’t make it past the fifth. It was a disappointing end to an unforgettable career, a fizzled finale to one of the greatest fireworks shows we’ve ever seen at this level.
But Wednesday was about the Bulldogs, a program that finally reached the mountaintop after years of climbing. It was about Will Bednar and Landon Sims, two unhittable typhoons of pitching delight who won’t have to pay for a drink in Starkvegas for the rest of their lives. It was about Jake Mangum and Brent Rooker and Hunter Renfroe and all the other Bulldog alumni who were checking their phones in the clubhouse during their professional baseball games. And it was about a team that refused to make mistakes when the lights were brightest and the grass was crispest.
Cheers to the Bulldogs.
Jake Mintz is the louder half of @CespedesBBQ and a baseball analyst for FOX Sports. He’s an Orioles fan living in New York City, and thus, he leads a lonely existence most Octobers. If he’s not watching baseball, he’s almost certainly riding his bike. You can follow him on Twitter @Jake_Mintz.
