The 1954 NCAA Division I Baseball Tournament was played at the end of the 1954 NCAA baseball season to determine the national champion of college baseball. The tournament concluded with eight teams competing in the College World Series, a double-elimination tournament in its eighth year. Eight regional districts sent representatives to the College World Series, but for the first time the preliminary tournament rounds hosted by each district were sanctioned NCAA events. These events would later become known as regionals. Each district had its own format for selecting teams, resulting in 24 teams participating in the tournament at the conclusion of their regular season, and in some cases, after a conference tournament. The College World Series was held in Omaha, NE from June 10 to June 16. The eighth tournament's champion was Missouri, coached by John "Hi" Simmons. The Most Outstanding Player was Tom Yewcic of Michigan State.
Famous quotes containing the words division and/or baseball:
“Major [William] McKinley visited me. He is on a stumping tour.... I criticized the bloody-shirt course of the canvass. It seems to me to be bad “politics,” and of no use.... It is a stale issue. An increasing number of people are interested in good relations with the South.... Two ways are open to succeed in the South: 1. A division of the white voters. 2. Education of the ignorant. Bloody-shirt utterances prevent division.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“I don’t like comparisons with football. Baseball is an entirely different game. You can watch a tight, well-played football game, but it isn’t exciting if half the stadium is empty. The violence on the field must bounce off a lot of people. But you can go to a ball park on a quiet Tuesday afternoon with only a few thousand people in the place and thoroughly enjoy a one-sided game. Baseball has an aesthetic, intellectual appeal found in no other team sport.”
—Bowie Kuhn (b. 1926)