While the Wildcat’s baseball team couldn’t take home what could have been the most unexpected title in the University’s history, since moving back to Hi Corbett Field in 2012 the Wildcats are slowing winning hearts.
Since 2012, the Wildcats have made it to the championship series twice. In 2012, the Cats took home the fourth title for the U of A’s baseball team. Yet it seems that the excitement for the team only really started after the Super Regionals this year.
The U of A has been a basketball centered school since the arrival of Lute Olson back in the 1980’s. He took control of a program that had no national recognition and in just a few years’ time turned it into “Point Guard U.”
Yet before Olson walked the hardwood for Arizona, this was a baseball town. Jerry Kindall was the face of Tucson’s sports scene with three national titles before Olson even made it past the first round of the NCAA tournament. Yet the minute the basketball team reached that first Final Four, the connection to the baseball team all but diminished and the baseball atmosphere in Tucson, thanks to porr decisions by corrupt Pima County supervisors, faded away.
Jake Glatting, a punter currently for the football program, discussed his feelings towards the baseball team and their recent success during the run to the CWS. He admitted that he started watching once the team reached the final eight against Miami, but that he knew players on the team and had been to a few of the games at Hi Corbett during the season. While he himself wished to stay loyal to his athletics field, he recognizes that the campus is still a basketball campus even with the success of Jay Johnson’s boys.
“I think whenever any team goes far in a tournament or anything it brings publicity a little bit,” stated Glatting. “I think we had a lot more people show up to football games the year after the Fiesta Bowl than we had the year before the Fiesta Bowl. Just like if we make a Final Four we’ll have a lot more people show up in the first few games that if we go out in the Round of 32.”
Mark Pierce, a graduate student who transferred to the U of A from South Carolina where baseball is king, said without hesitation that the baseball atmosphere was better in South Carolina than here. Baseball is his go to sport. He even passed on the idea of a single season pass to the McKale Center for basketball tickets and took the lifetime pass to Hi Corbett field I offered him in a hypothetical option. While his friends next to him seemed to shake their heads at his answer, he said while he loves the sport of baseball, he knew it will always be a third sport.
“I don’t know if getting more credit is the right term but I don’t know what the fan base towards baseball is like here,” said Pierce. “But baseball will always be a third sport in college athletics, that’s the way it is. Football is generally number one, basketball is number two in most places. Some schools it is different. Baseball has never had the same amount of notoriety as the other sports, but it can come close.”
While the younger generations of Wildcats tend to view the baseball team with lukewarm excitement, there are those who were around to see the glory years of the program and continue to watch the team with great admiration. Federico A. Sanchez, a native Tucsonan who normally follows the team every year – with this year being an exception due to uncertainty of the team’s potential – graduated in 1973 and later again in ’76 for his Masters degree and even wrestled for the school before the program was disbanded stays passionate to his school’s athletic programs. While he enjoyed the glory days of Arizona baseball, even he recalled how quickly Arizona’s basketball team put the baseball club in the back seat. He said that because Olson was such a great coach with a clear personality and a team that was competitive in the biggest games the program kept them on the front page. But now with Jay Johnson, Sanchez believes that it could be the baseball team’s time to take center stage. Not just in recognition but in how they are treated with the administration.
Sanchez, who is currently running as a write-in candidate against Congressman Raul Grijalva stated, “I think the administration needs to pay attention to minor sports. Minor sports get kids into college and helps them become whatever they want to become. The other guys come in and be a basketball star and football star so they need to re-prioritize. They make so much money in basketball and football. It is incredible. They don’t divvy it out. Like wrestling,” Sanchez explained while enjoying his iced tea on the hot summer day. “We’ve been trying to get wrestling back for ages…There is gymnastics and stuff like that. Local kids, and even high schools don’t do much with those. But if they did more kids would stay in school and they’d have a system to get into.”
The expectation in the locker room for the players, who just came up short this season, is that they can surely get to the dance again. Yet the question is: will the atmosphere change at all for those young athletes? Will the baseball teams, the softball teams, and the swim teams continue to be pushed to the background? The Legends of Arizona athletics are not just Andre Igoudala, Tedy Bruschi and Sean Elliot. There is Jennie Finch, Ron Hassey, Nancy Evans, Ed Vosberg, and Terry Francona. Those aren’t the names that sell the tickets however it seems — just the ones that win national titles.