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Georgia's baseball culture doesn't allow for 'regrets'

Jeremy Johnsonby:Jeremy Johnson•04/03/25•

JeremyO_Johnson

Georgia
Conor Dillon UGAAA.

At 29-2, Georgia baseball has shown it can handle ‘respecting the game’ and moving to the next day with focus.

Head coach Wes Johnson usually speaks to the media and sends a message that his team ‘respects the game’ every day. Georgia does that. They win games by 19 runs, walk-offs offs or whatever, but they tend to flip the switch and look toward the next one.

The next enemy of a winning team is complacency. That isn’t just an enemy on the field. Complacency can take place within one’s actions off the field.

Georgia head coach Wes Johnson has career full of ‘regret’ stories

Georgia is heading to Texas and into the second half of the season with their eyes on being ‘special’. For that to happen, off the field sacrifices have to be made.

Winning comes with attention. The Bulldogs have made an effort to head off the trappings of winning. Johnson has his stories of regret that he shares with his players on a regular basis.

“We talk a lot about it,” Johnson said. “Like in our game, they’ve got, you know, the, we try to live with, you know, I tell them the worst thing you live with in life sometimes is regrets. You got a chance to be special, you know, do special things or be really good or whatever it is. I’m just asking them to think about it. I mean, it’s April the 2nd, our season’s over in the middle of June, hopefully, you know, if you play the last game of the year. So how many months are you really talking about having to sacrifice for something?”

Johnson has seen great on-field opportunities go by the wayside because things are handled off the field.

“I’ve done this a long time,” Johnson. “I’ve talked to a lot of players that I’ve had that were really good and couldn’t leave the ballpark and do the right thing. I run into them and, you know, what do you think the first thing is they tell me? They regret that they didn’t do X, right? Whatever X was, either work out harder, sleep better, or do things right away from the ballpark. All those factors come in and those are the guys that you look back and you go, yeah, you know, they could have been really special.”

The culture at Georgia is working

His players are listening, to him and to Georgia’s football head coach, Kirby Smart. A famous quote from Smart has made its wait to Foley Field.

“We just have to continue to be who we are and keep the main thing the main thing,” senior catcher Hunter Henry told reporters Wednesday.

For Henry, it’s exciting to see the energy around the program but that’s not for the players on the field to worry about.

“We try to focus on the group in the dugout to best of our ability,” Henry said. “It’s been fun. The fans are excited everywhere you go. It’s a new era here, and it’s kind of the expectation; it’s growing more and more, and we’re embracing it.

Georgia heads to Austin to face No. 5 Texas this weekend. Game one is Friday night, with first pitch scheduled for 7:30 p.m.

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