A baseball catcher has a dangerous job.
There are the usual risks, like knee strain and getting hit by foul balls, but junior Kyle Teel had something new to worry about on Sunday, June 11.
If the University of Virginia won game three of the best-of-three Super Regional against Duke, the team would celebrate qualifying for the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, with a dogpile on the pitcher’s mound.
The last time UVA won a Super Regional in 2021, Teel was a freshman right fielder. By the time he jogged home, he was able to launch himself into a coveted spot atop the pile.
Now, Teel would be squatting just feet from pitcher Brian Edgington, who was destined to become the epicenter of the celebratory crush.
Teel’s reward for becoming the first catcher in UVA history to be named a semifinalist for the Golden Spikes Award, given to the country’s best amateur baseball player, was to be crushed by his own teammates.
In the tunnel, Teel turned to graduate student outfielder Travis Reifsnider. “What should I do?”
Reifsnider considered. “Here’s what you’re going to do,” he said. “You’re going to tackle Brian Edgington. And you’re going to roll off.”
That was the plan.
When sophomore outfielder Colin Tuft caught the final out of the game to seal Virginia’s 12-2 victory, Teel launched himself into Edgington’s arms, then tried the Reifsnider roll.
He had forgotten to account for the fact that this would require Edgington letting go.
Edgington only clutched Teel tighter, and the two were suddenly buried beneath the entire Virginia baseball team.
“It was a little painful, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world,” Edgington said.
The risk of temporary suffocation was worth it. Just two days prior, it seemed possible that the Cavaliers wouldn’t even play a game three, let alone win it.
Jake Gelof is UVA’s all-time home run leader, and he broke Virginia’s single-season RBI record with 84 this season.
When he stepped up to the plate for the final at-bat during game one of the Super Regional on Saturday, June 9, with two runners on base and the Cavaliers down by one, the home crowd was on its feet. If Gelof recorded a hit, Virginia would walk off with a win.
Gelof connected with the final pitch of the game so forcefully the crack could be heard across Davenport Field as the ball sailed toward the shouting audience behind the left-field fence.
Then Duke’s Tyler Albright leapt upward and snagged it out of the air, quieting the crowd and forcing UVA to concede a 5-4 defeat. It was only the fifth time in 42 games the Cavaliers had lost at home. That was enough to stun the players. It was not enough, however, to panic them.
“When you’re one loss away from ending the season, sometimes the team is really quiet and worried, but seeing everyone be confident still was really cool,” sophomore shortstop Griff O’Ferrall said.
In the tunnel before the do-or-die game two on June 10, Teel did his best impression of a broadcaster watching an upcoming Virginia win.
Into his imaginary microphone, Teel intoned the story of O’Ferrall hitting his first home run of the season. The bases were loaded, of course.
It might not have been a grand slam, but it turned out Teel’s prediction wasn’t too far off.
As the host of a Super Regional, the Cavaliers got the rare opportunity to be the away team at home when the batting order flipped for game two. That meant O’Ferrall, Virginia’s lead-off hitter, started the game at the plate.
“The crowd was all chanting,” O’Ferrall said. “That was the loudest I think I’ve heard the crowd.”
On the first pitch, Duke pitcher Alex Gow missed upwards. O’Ferrall knew Gow would zero in on the strike zone after getting behind on the count, so he decided to be aggressive on the next throw.
On the second pitch, O’Ferrall connected.
Just like announcer Teel had called before the game, his hit went all the way over the left-center wall.
“It was really special to see him hit his first home run of the season in such a big spot,” Teel said. “He worked so hard, and he’s such a great ballplayer. It was really exciting to see.”
Starting pitcher junior Connelly Early stepped onto the mound in the bottom of the first with the cushion of both a 1-0 lead and a riled-up stadium.
“When Griff O’Ferrall hits a leadoff home run, I mean, the fans are gonna be into the game right from the start, so I didn’t have to get the crowd going,” Early said.
Virginia extended its lead to 4-0 before Duke hit a pair of doubles to cut the Cavaliers’ lead to one in the bottom of the fourth.
That was when Early started thinking of graduate student pitcher Edgington, who was scheduled to start the next game, if there was a next game. Game three still had the dreaded parenthetical “if necessary” beside its Sunday start time on the NCAA schedule.
“I had a realization,” Early said. “I was like, ‘There’s no way I’m not going to give Brian a chance to pitch this third game.’ That’s all that was running through my mind. I was like, ‘I’ve gotta do whatever I can to be able to get Brian out there for what could be his last outing.’”
Early buckled down for the final three innings of his start, allowing zero runs on two hits and forcing four batters into swinging strikeouts.
Meanwhile, Cavaliers batters piled up 14 runs. Gelof joined in on the fun by finally getting that home run he’d been swinging for at the end of game one. It was enough to tie the series with a 14-4 win.
It would all come down to Edgington in game three.
Before the winner-takes-all game three on Sunday, June 11, pitching coach Drew Dickinson pumped his fist.
Dickinson had just watched Edgington, who was warming up in the bullpen, hurl his split-finger. This pitch, thrown like a fastball with the pitcher’s grip spread into a V, surprises batters by dropping suddenly at the plate.
“When it’s not on, it’s [a] battle for him … but when he throws it with confidence, it’s good,” Dickinson said. “It just looks like a fastball, and then it gets to the home plate and just disappears. He had it going the other day, and I knew right in the bullpen. … As soon as he threw that first pitch, I was like, ‘It’s on.’”
Sure enough, the Blue Devils had no answer for that tricky pitch.
Edgington kept Duke off the scoresheet for the first half of the game, opening with five brutally efficient, scoreless innings while the Cavaliers’ offense got to work.
By the time the eighth frame rolled around, Virginia had scored 11 runs. Edgington had held Duke to two.
In the final two innings of a normal game, a starting pitcher would usually sit and allow a closer to finish out the win. This, however, was no normal game.
“As a kid, you always dreamed [of] a complete game, especially in sending your team to Omaha,” Edgington said. “I was just hoping they weren’t going to take me out. And that was never discussed.”
That dream looked like it would never come for Edgington when he injured his shoulder as a freshman at Saint Joseph’s University back in 2018. It wasn’t certain he would ever be able to throw again at full strength, let alone pitch a meaningful D1 contest.
Six years and three schools later, Edgington finally got the chance to pitch his dream game. It was the first complete NCAA Tournament contest from a UVA pitcher in nine years.
“I don’t think words can describe the joy, the excitement I was going through,” Edgington said.
Nine Cavaliers batters connected for hits in game three. In two must-win games, Virginia outscored Duke 26-6.
“Pressure is not a bad thing,” Teel said. “Pressure is a good thing, and pressure is what makes this team so great. I love it. It makes the game way more exciting.”
Of 299 D1 men’s baseball programs, only eight make it to the College World Series each summer.
In Brian O’Connor’s 20 years as head coach, the Cavaliers have made the trip six times, including their 2015 championship season and most recently in 2021.
“That’s something that we always talk about in the fall. We break the huddle saying, Omaha in three,” O’Ferrall said. “In this program, it’s something we talk about every day. It’s always in the back of our minds.”
On Saturday, June 18, six days after the Super Regionals game three victory, Virginia was eliminated from the College World Series after a 4-3 loss to Texas Christian University.
This is the end of the road for the Hoos this season, but “it doesn’t diminish what this team accomplished,” O’Connor said after Sunday’s loss. The team finished with 50 wins (for the fifth time in program history), and ended 50-15 overall. The Cavs’ 44 regular-season wins were the second most in program history, and just one short of matching the record. UVA also won 19 ACC games during the regular season, the most since 2016, and won its first ACC Coastal title since 2011. In other words, UVA’s 2023 baseball season was a big success, by any measure.