Posted June 3rd, 2009 by Brian
Filed under: Baseball, World Series
SI NFL expert Peter King was apparently up watching with us as Texas and Boston College played a 25-inning marathon Saturday night. He devoted an entire page of his weekly Monday Morning Quarterback column to Texas pitcher [tag]Austin Wood[/tag], heaping high praise on him and providing some really good quotes from Austin and Coach [tag]Augie Garrido[/tag].
Stat of the Week/Hero of the Week
[…] “In my 41 years of coaching,” said Texas coach Augie Garrido, “the effort by Austin Wood was the best pitching performance I have ever seen.” […]
When he walked off the field, just after midnight, everyone in the stadium rose and cheered. The Longhorn bench emptied and met him with cheers and high-fives and hugs in front of the dugout. The BC dugout cheered.
“The coolest feeling I ever had on a baseball field,” Wood said. “I can’t lie. I wanted to soak in every second of it. The BC kids, what class. That was incredible. I just wanted to make sure I enjoyed the best moment I’ve ever had in baseball. But I wasn’t satisfied. Not at all. We had to win this game.”
Austin Dicharry, the reliever, got two quick outs to send the game to the 21st. and Texas won it in the 25th, finally, on a Travis Tucker RBI single to right — after Tucker had gone one-for-11 up to that point.
Wood heard what Garrido said about him, about how it was the greatest pitching performance he’d seen in 41 years. “Now that is pretty cool,” Wood said. “I can’t lie — that’s some unbelievable praise.”
There may have been higher praise. “But I have to tell you what was the most incredible thing after the game. The president of the university came to me after the game, and this is a direct quote. He told me, ‘That’s probably the best athletic performance ever at the University of Texas.’ I mean, wow. Earl Campbell, Vince Young.”
Now there came the physical toll. “As soon as I started icing it,” he said, “I knew it was going to hurt. And it did. It does. But boy, is it worth it. I was on Cloud 9 all night. I couldn’t fall asleep. I got to bed around 4:30, I guess.”
“Did you sleep OK?” I asked.
“About four hours,” Wood said. “But I’ll tell you this: Fell asleep smiling, woke up smiling.”
And that is why we love sports.
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