Proving their hunger for great college baseball, Kentucky fans are showing up

When the doors opened at Kentucky Proud Park at 10:30 on a Friday morning, the fans rushed the gates.

Mind you, this was 90 minutes before the Kentucky Wildcats were to play the Western Michigan Broncos in the opening game of the NCAA Baseball Tournament’s Lexington Regional.

Didn’t matter. Didn’t matter that it took three hours and 20 minutes for the SEC co-champions, the region’s top seed and tournament’s overall No. 2 seed, to hold off the champions of the Mid-American Conference by a 10-8 score.

“They sat there for five hours,” said UK coach Nick Mingione in near-amazement afterward.

They didn’t all sit. Reserved seats sold out in 25 minutes. The rest of the crowd announced at 5,861 joined in on standing and chanting and cheering, a start to the postseason journey it hopes will end in the program’s first trip to Omaha for the College World Series. In other words, Big Blue Nation showed up.

Kentucky’s bats showed up early, as well, jumping to an early 8-0 lead. It then needed a stellar effort from reliever Robert Hogan to advance to the winner’s bracket game Saturday. A right-hander who transferred to UK from Texas A&M, Hogan pitched 3 1/3 innings of scoreless baseball after Western Michigan had sliced Kentucky’s lead to 10-8.

“Quite frankly, we expected to be here today,” said WMU coach Billy Gernon. “And frankly, I’m disappointed we didn’t win.”

There could be no disappointment in the crowd turnout. If skeptics wondered if there was enough interest in college baseball here to fill Kentucky Proud Park when it opened in 2019, that has been dispelled. These last two seasons have proved the adage: Win, and the fans will come.

Kentucky baseball started winning last year. After struggling through a four-year period — the 2020 COVID-shortened season doesn’t count — in which the Cat were 44-76 in the SEC, Mingione’s club rebounded to go 16-14 in the nation’s toughest conference and 40-21 overall in 2022-23.

That earned Kentucky the designation as a regional host, where Mingione’s team fought back from a second-game loss to advance to a super-regional berth in Baton Rouge, where the Cats fell to eventual CWS champion LSU.

If you wondered if last season was a fluke, Mingione’s squad proved you wrong and then some. Kentucky started out a ridiculous 15-1 in the conference before ending up in a regular season tie with East Division co-leaders Tennessee. Even a 1-2 record in last week’s SEC Tournament couldn’t keep the selection committee from ranking the Cats as the No. 2 seed behind Tennessee when the national seeds were announced Monday.

And that on-the-field success has fed a local hunger for winning baseball. Not that this was a surprise. Look at the number of terrific players and major leaguers the region has produced, from current Dodgers pitcher Walker Buehler to Trevor Gott to Collin Cowgill to Matt Ginter to Kevin Jarvis to Austin Kearns to John Shelby. Just to name a few.

Still, it’s one thing to believe that hunger is there and quite another to see it appear.

“As our program has climbed, we’ve made just adjustments,” Mingione said. “I think our fans have done the same thing.”

“The atmosphere here was unreal,” said Western Michigan first baseman Cade Sullivan. “And it was unmatched for us.”

And that’s coming from a player on the visiting team.

“It was really seeing all the fans come out,” said UK right fielder James McCoy, who hit a two-run home run in the second inning. “They were kind of rushing the gates when were doing BP (batting practice).”

So what does that kind of enthusiasm and support do for a team when it actually crosses the lines and takes the field.

“It puts the focus on the front of the jersey,” McCoy said. “They pour their hearts into us. It’s really cool to see.”

“I’ve been at another place where it’s been like that,” said Mingione, who was an assistant at Mississippi State from 2009 to 2016 before becoming UK’s head coach in 2017. “We hadn’t had that yet.”

They have it now.

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