Bad Day for Big XII Baseball

A young G-Dub in happier days. Happier days for the country that is. (Photo courtesy of George Bush Presidential Library and Museum)

Sunday was not kind to Big XII baseball teams. It was a day of judgment – Elimination Sunday some called it, particularly the in-over-their heads crew staffing ESPNU's studio coverage of the NCAA regionals – and the ultimate judgment for the Big XII was Doom.

Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma State, Oklahoma, and Texas were all knocked out of the tournament on Sunday, leaving only Texas A&M to represent the league in play Monday night.

It is, some would argue, eerily similar to the United States being represented by George Bush.

Nebraska and OSU were, along with A&M, No. 1 seeds, hosting home regionals. Nebraska met a very determined and possibly Holy Spirit-filled Oral Roberts team. It's tough to win a baseball game when you're up against a team that counts a 900-foot-tall Jesus as one of its supporters. When athletics turns biblical, someone always gets smited.

There is much weeping and gnashing of teeth in Stillwater, too, and word out of that Oklahoma town is that some have even taken to wearing sackcloth after a bizarre weekend saw the fifth-ranked team in the nation fall to Wichita State. First, OSU ace Andrew Oliver was declared ineligible just hours before he was to take the mound Saturday for a winner's bracket matchup against the Shockers. Then, after battling back through the loser's bracket for a rematch with WSU, the Cowboys were treated to a further irony, as Clinton McKeever, a former OSU player who had transferred to Wichita State a year earlier, hit a game-winning grand slam in the 10th inning.

While it remains unconfirmed, speculation is rampant that Oliver spoke with an agent, a big no-no with NCAA types. If it turns out to be true, expect Oliver to be mercilessly beaten by his teammates, perhaps with the old soap-sock, an ancient and semibarbaric practice in which a bar of soap is dropped into an athletic sock, which is then swung with great fury and vengeance at the offending party. Timing is everything, they say, and for such a bad luck to fall on a team at the absolute worst possible time in the season is mind-numbing. Players and agents alike know the rules. If the rules were broken, Oliver will carry a shame that even a soap-sock beating won't remove. People will say the kid let himself down … and his family … and his team … and the state of Oklahoma.

Some OU fans are not-so-secretly tickled by the turn of events, loving it when OSU loses, even more so when there is controversy. The Sooners, of course, barely made the tournament on the strength of a 9-17 conference record. Though they did beat mighty Vanderbilt twice in regional action, the Sooners were throttled twice by Arizona State and have returned to Norman, Okla., where football season is always right around the corner.

It's right around the corner in Austin, too, just a summer away, since the Longhorns baseball team could not advance out of the regional round for the third straight year. There is nothing embarrassing about losing to Rice. What many UT fans have to be wondering, though, is whether or not the 'Horns are being passed by the Cakes [that is the Rice mascot, right?] as the premier team in the state of Texas.

Now the hopes of all fans of Big XII baseball rest on the shoulders of the Aggies of Texas A&M.

Somewhere, George Bush must be smiling, not because he has a hot poker in his hand, eager to press it to the flesh of a torture victim, but because he is a man who understands hope, knows it to be an American value.

Gig 'em, Aggies.

Gig 'em for America.