(Photo: Nicholas Badders/WCSN)
Building a winning culture doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time, building brick-by-brick, to establish an eternal mindset of competitive spirit and belief that anything is attainable.
It’s been a long and sometimes treacherous path to this point, but it seems like Tracy Smith might finally be starting to establish his culture with Arizona State baseball, the latest example being a four-run rally in the bottom of the ninth against an All-American closer for the No. 4 team in the country, as ASU (37-15, 16-11 Pac-12) snatched victory from the jaws of defeat for a 6-5 walk-off win against the Stanford Cardinal (39-11, 20-7 Pac-12) on Thursday night.
“Learn how to win,” Smith said. “You get a winning culture, you get a winning environment, you understand what it feels like. And that could be on the flip side too, people could accept losing. So I think the more you win the more guys learn what that feels like and the more you want to experience that.”
It certainly didn’t seem like Arizona State was headed for a victory through eight-and-a-half innings against Stanford, as they trailed 5-2 going into the bottom of the ninth with Jack Little trotting in from the bullpen to face them.
After a 2018 season that saw Little record a 0.60 ERA in 45.1 innings and garner every major first-team All-American selection in the country, the junior right-hander from Bishop Gorman High School in Las Vegas imposes the strongest of challenges for any team that faces him. The Sun Devils rose to it with a champion’s attitude.
The opening quartet of hitters for ASU, in the persons of Hunter Bishop, Alika Williams, Lyle Lin and Gage Workman, went double-single-single-double against Little to cut the deficit to 5-4 with runners on second and third.
With Carter Aldrete intentionally walked and pitcher Boyd Vander Kooi on as a pinch-runner for Lin as the potential tying run, the winning culture that has trickled down to every player on the Sun Devils’ shorthanded roster this season rose to the forefront once again.
Cole Austin, the redshirt junior transfer from West Virginia, seemingly looking at two full seasons lost in January when he underwent back surgery after sitting out his transfer year, strode to the plate after pinch-hitting for designated hitter Erik Tolman in the fifth.
Austin worked the count to 3-1 before driving a fly ball down the right field line that was deep enough to score Vander Kooi from third.
“Cole in his own right, battles through sitting out a year and a tough injury,” Smith said. “We didn’t know if we were going to get him back or not this year, and then to come back and put together a very very important RBI for us is huge.”
Next man up, junior outfielder Myles Denson pinch-hitting for defensive replacement Dusty Garcia.
With one out and the winning run 90 feet away, Denson fell behind his former high school teammate and close friend Little 0-2.
Denson fouled off three straight pitches before lofting one to left-center field that was just deep enough to prevent Kyle Stowers from throwing out Workman at the plate to win the game for Arizona State.
“You’re not out when you’re 0-2,” Denson said. “Still got another pitch, still gotta compete there. I think we have as a team a good approach with two strikes, and I just tried to get that in there and it ended up working out obviously.”
“Just kinda like the whole game, even if you’re down you’re not out of the game yet. You always gotta fight.”
Denson has had to fight for playing time since the day he walked on to campus three falls ago, and while this season has finally yielded the results that show up on the stat sheet, the way he conducts himself on a day-to-day basis stands out more than that to Smith.
“I think Myles is a major part of this team, in a different way than maybe [Spencer] Torkelson is,” Smith said. “Guys pull for a guy that comes to practice every day, and pulls for you when he’s not playing. And then when he gets an opportunity to win his team a baseball game against a really good team, it makes it all worth it when you can hear those guys in there for him.”
Given that the team has gone just 12-14 in its last 26 games, it can be forgotten at first glance that Arizona State started this 2019 season better than any other team in college baseball, the last unbeaten team at 21-0, stretching out a 25-1 start before regressing back to the mean somewhat over the second half of the season.
But the calling card of the 25-1 charge out of the gates was the unflappable confidence that every single player on the team showed outwardly, no matter the deficit or the situation, that in the end everything would turn out ok.
“I think tonight we were playing with a little bit more of an edge than what we’ve been doing the last couple of weeks,” Williams said. “Tonight, I can’t explain it, it’s just different. We showed up to the ballpark and we were there to compete until the end, and we came out on top.”
“What I was thinking before the game is, [Stanford’s] going to be a good postseason team this year,” Denson said. “They’ve been highly-ranked all year, they’re a good squad, almost what I was thinking is this is early playoffs for us. And sure enough, 1-0. So a good way to start it.”
For a team that has gone through its two worst seasons in program history consecutively after perhaps underperforming in seasons prior, every moment like the ninth inning tonight solidifies the culture in Phoenix brick-by-brick, the feeling of invincibility that all great teams have.
“If we’d lost that game, does that change my approach tomorrow with the team, or does that change their approach? I would hope not,” Smith said. “You can’t let that result affect how you prepare and how you approach the next day… that has nothing to do with what we’re doing tomorrow.”
