Paterson Peak to Lake Lechelt

On the Beavers

By mike parker

The Portland Tribune, Jun 29, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (5 Reader comments)

Some may have chalked up their 2006 College World Series championship to fairy-tale destiny, but the Oregon State Beavers’ repeat win this year at Rosenblatt Stadium over North Carolina is another story.

Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

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My family drove out to Omaha, Neb., to join me for the 2007 College World Series. Our plan was to sneak in a vacation of sorts on the return to Corvallis, stopping at places we’d never seen.

From Badlands National Park to Mount Rushmore to Deadwood, S.D., to Devil’s Tower in Wyoming, to Little Bighorn in Montana, to Yellowstone National Park, the Teton Mountains and more, we saw beautiful, awe-inspiring sights.

It was fitting to take that sort of road home to Oregon State, because what the back-to-back national champion Beavers have accomplished also fills me with wonder. Especially what they did this year.

Last season’s run to the title, while exhilarating, was not wholly unexpected. The Beavers had been to Omaha in 2005, their key pitchers were coming back and most of their key position players were returning.

The glorious scene at Rosenblatt Stadium last year had the savor of a “once-in-a-lifetime experience” –a bunch of hard-nosed, gritty, talented kids from the Northwest coming together at the right time and place to pull off the Oregon version of “Hoosiers.”

Arizona State coach Pat Murphy said as much, calling OSU’s 2006 title “the closest thing to a miracle you’ll ever see in college baseball.”

And Baseball America’s John Manuel described the 2006 Beavers as “arguably the most shocking champion in the history of the College World Series.”

To one degree or another, most of Beaver Nation probably would confess to buying into that sort of rhetoric about the 2006 championship. The Beavers had caught lightning in a bottle. How often does that happen in the universe?

Apparently, more than once.

Or maybe, just maybe, the OSU baseball program is really that good.

As many reached for ways to account for the manifestly implausible, the Beaver coaches kept recruiting players who were willing to show up and work on the hit-and-run, sacrifice bunts, relay plays and how to pitch inside.

My first inkling that the 2007 Beavers believed they could do it again came in my initial conversation with catcher Mitch Canham, just before my first broadcast of the season, a nonleague game against San Francisco in Corvallis in mid-March.

My duties with OSU men’s basketball had precluded me from seeing the baseball team until then. But I knew the Beavers were 17-3 and playing very well.

I asked Canham what his expectations were for the rest of the season. Without equivocation, he replied, “Mike, we’re going back to Omaha to collect some more hardware.”

I was tempted to chalk that up to obligatory bravado, but as he expanded on his answer, I understood that he meant it.

As the Beavers finished nonconference play at 23-3 and ranked No. 2 in the country, Canham wasn’t alone in his conviction. Then came Pac-10 play. The Beavers lost all three games at Arizona, beginning an exhausting, frustrating and ultimately futile attempt to climb over .500 in conference.

In their final homestand, the Beavers were swept by Arizona State, going 9 for 86 at the plate. Canham and Darwin Barney both struck out in what we all thought were their last at-bats at Goss Stadium.

The heaviness, the sadness in the ballpark that day, was palpable. I even said on the air –it pained me –that it felt like the end of an era. It was such an inappropriate sendoff to a great team.

The Beavers now were 8-13 in league, had lost four straight and faced the ominous prospect of needing to win the final regular-season series at UCLA just to sneak into the NCAA tournament.

And then … they won the UCLA series.

Next came a sleepless night, awaiting news from the NCAA committee, then jubilation at seeing Oregon State appear on ESPN’s selection show, followed by the cross-country trek to Virginia, by a team just relieved to be in the postseason.

The Beavers performed prodigies in Charlottesville. Coach Pat Casey later said that it was in the dugout in the eighth inning, down 3-1 to Virginia with six outs remaining in the season, that “something happened.”

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