Clemson baseball coach calls out Florida for ‘stupid’ illegal substance check

In the aftermath of Sunday’s super regional loss to Florida, Clemson baseball coach Erik Bakich went to bat for one of his pitchers and called the illegal substance check the Gators requested on him late in the game a “stupid” move.

In the bottom of the 10th inning of Clemson’s season-ending loss to Florida, Tigers pitcher Austin Gordon had just recorded his career-high 10th strikeout in 4.1 innings when UF coach Kevin O’Sullivan asked the umpires to check the reliever for a possible illegal substance.

At O’Sullivan’s request, lead umpire Billy Van Raaphorst huddled with his crew, then walked up to Gordon and requested to inspect his hat, which had a noticeable dark spot on the brim.

Van Raaphorst checked Gordon’s hat for about 10 seconds before returning it to Gordon without issue, while the home crowd at Doug Kingsmore Stadium booed O’Sullivan’s decision.

The entire delay lasted under two minutes and was a minor moment in Florida’s thrilling 11-10 walk-off win over Clemson, which eliminated the No. 6 overall seed Tigers from the postseason and saw a Clemson player, Bakich and special assistant Jack Leggett all get ejected.

Three days later, though, Bakich wanted to set the record straight on the insinuation that Gordon, Clemson’s top relief pitcher, had been breaking any rules.

“That was stupid,” Bakich said Wednesday during a season wrap-up news conference at Doug Kingsmore Stadium. “Florida initiated it. It was dumb. It’s dirt. (Gordon) licks his fingers, he touches his dirt, he touches his hat. Austin Gordon doesn’t use any sticky stuff, and he doesn’t need any. He’s nasty. That was dumb.”

Was it disappointing to see from O’Sullivan, a former coworker?

“Little bit,” Bakich said. “Whatever.”

Explaining sticky stuff rules

The ESPN broadcast crew quipped during the review that O’Sullivan, who was an assistant coach for Leggett at Clemson from 1999-2007 and overlapped with Bakich on the team’s 2002 staff, wasn’t “making any friends in Clemson this weekend” by initiating the review.

O’Sullivan called for an illegal substance check after Gordon recorded his first strikeout in the bottom of the 10th inning, with Clemson and Florida tied 9-9 and the Gators in a potential walk-off situation, prompting boos from the crowd.

During the brief delay, the ESPN broadcast showed various shots of Van Raaphorst, the lead umpire, examining Gordon’s hat and Gordon giving him an explanation, as well as a shot of Bakich looking less than happy in Clemson’s dugout.

“A little gamesmanship, perhaps,” one broadcast remarked.

“We’ve had a little bit of everything this afternoon,” another said.

The ESPN broadcast later showed a close-up shot of Gordon’s orange hat, which had a noticeable dark spot on its brim. Bakich said Wednesday that Gordon has traditionally licked his fingers and then touched the dirt on his hat as part of his pre-pitch warmup.

“That’s what they were looking at, the dark spot on the hat of Austin Gordon,” the ESPN broadcast said Sunday. “You saw Billy Van Raaphorst touching the hat, and he saw nothing wrong with it. So, play ball.”

Any college baseball coach is within their right to initiate an illegal substance check on an opposing pitcher. The NCAA has been cracking down harder on pitchers using illegal substances after the MLB noticeably ramped up enforcement of the rule.

Earlier this year, Florida and O’Sullivan initiated a similar review against a Vanderbilt pitcher, JD Thompson, and umpires deemed he had an illegal substance on his forearm. Thompson was ejected from that SEC game in April and served a four-game suspension, per NCAA rules.

Players cannot apply a “foreign substance or moisture to the ball or to the pitching hand or fingers, or do anything to deface the ball” under NCAA rules, according to The Associated Press, since those foreign (usually sticky) substances can improve a pitcher’s grip and increase speed.

Social media videos appeared to show a Georgia pitcher putting a foreign substance into his glove during a game in Texas A&M in April, but he wasn’t disciplined after those videos surfaced the weekend after the series ended.

When Bakich was the head coach at Michigan in 2022, one of his pitchers, Willie Weiss, was ejected from a Big Ten conference tournament game for having an illegal substance on his glove and suspended four games.

“It’s like when you’re a parent and your kid makes a mistake,” Bakich told the Big Ten Network after that game, per the Michigan Daily. “You don’t love them any less but you have to admit you made a mistake. … That’s not part of our program.”