Scott Davis: South Carolina baseball is still breathing, still hoping

Scott Davis has followed South Carolina athletics for over 40 years and provides commentary from a fan perspective. He writes a weekly newsletter year-round and a column during football season that’s published each Monday on GamecockCentral.com.

Following is this week’s Scott Davis newsletter. To receive it each Friday, sign up here.

I’ve started to write a column about the South Carolina baseball team at least 10 different times this season.

It’s always been easy for me to write about South Carolina baseball. The program has historically been the university’s most successful athletic organization (at least until Dawn Staley arrived to campus). The fans here care about the game and the team. The competition in the SEC is the best in the country, the same as it is in every other sport. In short, there’s a lot to work with.

What’s more, I care about baseball.

Baseball was the sport I played growing up, the only one I showed even a whiff of aptitude towards. When I was attending South Carolina, I lived across the street from the late, great Sarge Frye Field and walked to the yard for just about every home game over a series of years, regardless of whether the opponent was Florida or Furman. When it comes to my own in-person attendance, I’ve seen more South Carolina baseball games than I have every other sport combined. 

I was so strung out during the team’s epic run to the national title in 2010 that I actually had my eyes closed when Whit Merrifield slapped a walk-off base hit to secure the championship. I was too nervous to even look at my television.

And yet here we are, nearing the end of May, deep into 2024, already finished with the baseball regular season, and until now I haven’t been able to figure out what to say about the program. It’s been one of those years: I’ve written the 2024 season off 50 different times. Then, just as soon as I’d made peace with the notion that it wasn’t happening this year, they’d pull me back in.

Then they’d struggle for a while. Then the whole thing would start back over. 

And now here we are, in Hoover, Alabama, in the SEC Tournament, of all places, and the Gamecocks are still alive, still clinging to a life raft, still keeping hope alive.

So you know what? Keep me hanging on, boys. Please.

Slow Slide to the Middle

As hard as it may be to believe, Ray Tanner has now been the athletic director at South Carolina for nearly as many years as he was the school’s head baseball coach. The program’s standing, of course, is no longer what it was when he left the dugout in 2012.

It goes without saying that Tanner’s tenure was by far the most successful of any South Carolina athletic coach prior to the Dawn Staley Renaissance in women’s basketball. Tanner’s teams played in the College World Series six times and won the whole thing twice. They won league championships in a deep and rugged Southeastern Conference. They were relevant locally and nationally, year after year after year.

South Carolina baseball was the kind of program every fan dreams of following.

And for an athletic department that had long been associated with mediocrity, Tanner’s team was the dependable outlier, a genuine member of the elite, one of the two or three most important baseball programs in all of college sports. That legacy would have been difficult to match for almost anyone, and it’s not surprising that Tanner’s successors have had some struggles in their efforts to maintain it.

The coach’s hand-picked replacement, Chad Holbrook, lasted five seasons before giving way to Mark Kingston. In turn, Kingston’s rein has been the very definition of an up-and-down, back-and-forth affair – the program has made two Super Regional appearances in his seven seasons, but they’ve also posted losing records in the SEC three times under him (including a 13-17 league mark this year).

The roller coaster vibe has made it challenging for many fans to give their whole hearts to the program, even if they want to. This season has been particularly head-scratching – South Carolina produced a host of electrifying wins during the spring…but also lost six straight to close out the year. They limped into the SEC Tournament – always a house of horrors for the program, even in its best years – with zero momentum.

And then, almost on cue, they won a couple of games there, at a place where the Gamecocks rarely win, before running out of gas last night against LSU in what felt like the longest sporting event ever played.

So what’s a well-meaning fan to do?

For now, cling to that life raft and hope our ship comes in.

A Chance to Change the Course

The last decade or so of South Carolina baseball has often reminded me of the Dave Odom years in the men’s basketball program.

You were never dreadful enough to want to burn the whole thing down. At times, you were even pretty good. But there was a gnawing sense that you weren’t headed anywhere in particular. It never felt like championships and victory parades were in your future.

And for the most part, there are worse fates for a fan than to follow a program that most would classify as “definitely not terrible and occasionally pretty solid.” But it’s different for South Carolina baseball.

This was our thing.

This was the one thing we had in this whole crazy pressure cooker known as college sports.

This was what we had. Men’s basketball was something we had half a century ago. Football was something that always loomed just out of our reach, somewhere in the clouds.

Baseball was our past, present, and future.

Until it wasn’t.

And when this edition of the SEC Tournament dawned in Hoover, most rank-and-file members of Gamecock Nation weren’t expecting our fortunes to change. Even Ray Tanner couldn’t solve Hoover (except that one time in 2004).

Almost inevitably, the Gamecocks quickly won two in a row over Alabama and Arkansas – the first time the program had won two games in the Tourney under Kingston. It looked for a long while Thursday night like they’d coast into Saturday in the winner’s bracket. Then LSU mounted a comeback, the roller coaster plunged again, and now the Gamecocks face Kentucky today in a “win or go home” matchup.

Can we hope, one more time, that this baseball season can pull us back in?

Sure. This is South Carolina, after all. While we breathe, we hope.

Tell me your thoughts on South Carolina baseball by writing me at [email protected].

To receive Scott’s newsletter each Friday, sign up here.