July 2, 2007

About the time Courtney Paris' uniform was folded away for the off-season, Sooner fans looked back on a marvelous women's basketball campaign and wondered to themselves, "What could possibly match that for fun?"

Then baseball happened.

Sunny Golloway and his team had the kind of season that figuratively tossed confetti and honked noise-makers from February to June.  L. Dale Mitchell Park might as well have been a giant inflatable for the romp of a good time that was had there.

Twenty come-from-behind victories will do that even in a sport as steeped in tradition and stoicism as baseball.

The 2006 season was nothing if not fun, but the fun was not all wrapped up in the wins and losses. It is true that much of the glee to be found in sports depends on the left side of the record dwarfing the right. It is also true that the journey behind those numbers represents the real fabric of a season and it was in that pursuit that Sooner baseball gave us something special.

Golloway is like most other baseball coaches. He would love a roster loaded with dominating power pitchers and muscle-bound home run hitters. That's not the hand he was dealt. With the NCAA scholarship restrictions, he may never be dealt that hand to the extent he would like.

But Golloway refused to hammer away at a square peg when the hole was obviously round. He adapted to his talent. Batters slotted in the meat of the order often bunted. The pitching staff had more committees than a church.

It was real, honest-to-goodness coaching, and real, honest-to-goodness coaching only works when players swallow their pride and buy into the whole chemistry thing. The result was a blast to watch.

Never was it more fun than the night of the regional final when OU vanquished Wichita State. The story lines were too many to count, but it wasn't the group dynamics or even the game itself that defined that night or this team. It was what happened after the last out was recorded.

The Sooner players did the customary dog pile and ran out to touch their centerfield sign in another ritual that became somewhat common. Then they did something almost foreign to a sport defined by spikes, spit and not rubbing where it hurts - they went into the stands to revel with their families and friends.

I even saw several of them - are you ready for this - hug their dads. In a sport in which crying is outlawed, it was comforting to know that a rough-hewn baseball player can still bury his nose in pop's neck.

It was unbridled happiness. It was the right kind of happiness. It was precisely the emotion sports are supposed to yield.

None of the celebration was fabricated and none of it was designed to shine the light on any one player. It was just a pure expression of collective joy.

"So what?" some might say. "Winning leads to that sort of thing."

I disagree. Winning in the spirit of team unity and in reaching maximum potential is the only thing that gives us something as unblemished as what we saw at Mitchell Park that night. 

After the super regional loss, OU's equipment managers, just as they did for women's basketball, laundered and folded away the baseball uniforms. I guess it's a bit of a sad scene. 

Why then is it so hard to wipe the grin from our face? Because it was fun, that's why. And fun in the genuine article sears in us memories that no loss can erase.

 
  
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Kenny Mossman, Associate Athletics Director for Communications, provides his perspective on Oklahoma Athletics in his regular column on SoonerSports.com.