Baseball
With the departure of head coach Dennis Womack to the front office, the arrival of head coach Brian O'Connor from Notre Dame in 2004, and the opening of Davenport Field in 2002, the UVa baseball team experienced a rebirth. Since the inception of baseball at the University in 1889, the team has only reached the NCAA Baseball Tournament eleven times, once each of the past three decades (1972, 1985, 1996), but most recently eight years running (2004–2011). The 2008-2009 season of the Cavaliers saw them through to the CWS (College World Series) with a 49-15-1 record, where they achieved their first ever CWS win. The team made a return trip to Omaha two years later in 2011, where they lost to eventual National Champion South Carolina in the semi-final round.
Read more about this topic: Virginia Cavaliers
Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
“Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.”
—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)
“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)
“Compared to football, baseball is almost an Oriental game, minimizing individual stardom, requiring a wide range of aggressive and defensive skills, and filled with long periods of inaction and irresolution. It has no time limitations. Football, on the other hand, has immediate goals, resolution on every single play, and a lot of violence—itself a highlight. It has clearly distinguishable hierarchies: heroes and drones.”
—Jerry Mander, U.S. advertising executive, author. Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, ch. 15, Morrow (1978)