COLUMBIA, Mo. — Tim Jamieson calls himself a fighter. It's why, on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, the Missouri baseball coach sits in a dugout at Taylor Stadium watching batting practice two days after his program's unlikely first Big 12 tournament championship.
Freshmen Jake Ivory and Landon Lucansky crack balls into the outfield more than halfway through the two-hour practice. Jamieson's expression doesn't change. He gazes through his thick sunglasses with little emotion, Bad Company's "Feel Like Making Love" blaring over loudspeakers above. He's content with a chance to return to an NCAA regional for the first time since 2009.
"It's a unique way how we got here," Jamieson says later. "That makes it that much more special."
It took a squad that adopted the 18-year veteran's steady personality to reach this point. For Jamieson, the Big 12 tournament had become a lesson in how painful close calls can be. The Tigers were within one strike of winning the event in both 2004 and 2011 — league officials waited to pass out championship hats and t-shirts near their dugout both times — only to see leads disappear.
On Sunday, though, the fighter was rewarded in the same place that produced so many sour memories for him. Missouri (32-26) completed a surprise run of victories over Texas, Texas A&M, Kansas and Oklahoma in five days at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City, clinching an appearance as the fourth seed in the Tucson Regional that begins Friday. The championship gave Jamieson a satisfying end to an otherwise inconsistent final Big 12 season.
It also gave him reason to believe the legacy of his current team, one that showed resolve when it mattered most, has yet to be determined.
"I've always been a fighter and never wanted to give up and wanted to be focused for 27 outs on every game," Jamieson says. "I think if nothing else, it supports those things."
***
He still remembers the hurt from a 10-9 loss to Texas A&M in 10 innings in last year's Big 12 tournament title game. That's a good place to start when understanding how much Jamieson enjoyed the result Sunday.
The sequence that ended the Tigers' 2011 season became a blur: They jumped to a 6-0 lead in the first two innings, only to see the Aggies rally with five runs in the third and two in the fourth; Missouri tied the score 7-7 with a run in the sixth, but Texas A&M pushed ahead by scoring another in the seventh; the Tigers answered with two in the ninth before Aggies pinch-hitter Gregg Alcazar extended the game by smacking a two-out RBI single to left field.
Texas A&M second baseman Andrew Collazo then ended the wild afternoon with a home run off reliever Dusty Ross with two outs.
First, there was shock for everyone in a gray uniform. Then came varying levels of acceptance.
"Last year," Jamieson says, "the championship game was very painful for me."
Pain also came from seeing another season pass without a trip to the NCAA tournament. Jamieson had built a national contender for most of the past decade. The Tigers reached an NCAA regional each year from 2003-09, and the 2006 campaign included a trip to a super regional against Cal-State Fullerton.
This season included struggle not seen during most of that run. For example, junior ace pitcher Eric Anderson sat out a majority of the spring with a strained right elbow. Still, Jamieson wanted players to use the sting from their near miss in 2011 as motivation. When the regular season ended, the Tigers went 10-14 in Big 12 play and finished sixth in the league before traveling to Oklahoma City last week.
"We felt we underachieved in the regular season," says sophomore infielder Michael McGraw, who batted .317 with 16 RBI this season. "We were hoping, going into it, it would be a big thing if we won it on the way out."
That was part of the message Jamieson shared with his team in the weeks before the Big 12 tournament. Near the beginning of May, he gathered players during a meeting at Taylor Stadium and told them to keep perspective.
Nearby, graduate assistant Travis Wendte listened. Wendte, a former pitcher for Missouri from 2002-06, admired Jamieson's positive approach through the years and considered it one of the coach's best traits. When Jamieson spoke that day, Wendte was impressed again.
"Look, everything is still in front of us," Wendte recalls Jamieson saying. "There have been a lot of things that haven't gone our way. But at the same time, we can control our own destiny."
Jamieson's message became a pivot point of sorts that led to Missouri's dog pile at Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark after the victory over Oklahoma, one that clinched the Tigers' first title since a Big Eight crown in 1980. The coach had hoped the memory of watching the Aggies' celebration in 2011 would produce one similar for his program. Redemption became the season's theme.
Now, the fighter prepares to return to the postseason having won an elusive Big 12 tournament crown in his final try. He'll arrive in Arizona satisfied.
"I feel like we've already won something," Jamieson says. "I feel like the pressure is going to be on everybody else that's there. I won't say that we're just happy to be there, but that's about where we are. We've earned it, but at the same time, every day is a blessing from here on forward. We weren't expected to be here."
***
Jamieson stands near the batting cage as players continue to hit close by. More than 370 feet away, a black-and-gold sign behind the right field wall reads, "Mizzou Baseball Postseason Appearances" and lists the years of each NCAA tournament berth. Soon, another will be added.
That will be a large part of the legacy left by a team that entered the Big 12 tournament losers of four of its previous six games. The Tigers became hot at the right time, embraced their manager's vision and earned the chance to keep their season alive before joining the Southeastern Conference. They made program history, despite never producing a conference-winning streak of more than four games.
"That's a pretty nice staple to have, to win a conference championship," says senior infielder Conner Mach, who batted .298 with 30 RBI this season. "With switching to the SEC next year, it's going to be a whole new world for this program and Coach J. It's a step in the right direction. I'm proud for this program to play in the premier league that we're going to. It will be fun to see how this place progresses."
For Jamieson, the Big 12 tournament championship is part of that progression. The title enhances the program's health, and it serves as a psychological victory to end a two-season NCAA tournament drought. Both are important as he guides Missouri into a new SEC life.
But there's opportunity for Jamieson and the Tigers this weekend as well. Missouri can be remembered for more if it plays with the same discipline it showed in outscoring opponents by a combined 30-12 in Oklahoma City.
Yes, Missouri can be remembered as a group that manages late-season momentum to create a longer-than-expected stay in June.
"I think the Big 12 championship run," Jamieson says when asked how his current team will be remembered. "If we get to Omaha (for the College World Series), then it will be that. But anything that's between now and Omaha, it's what we just did — what we accomplished and how we did it and who we had to beat and what we had to go through last year, because it was incredibly similar. But we still have baseball ahead of us."
Missouri's fight continues, and that's Jamieson's greatest achievement of the spring.
