UNC baseball’s season ends, reminding few places as loved as Omaha deliver more heartbreak

Arguably the most revered place in college athletics claimed another victim and broke another heart here on Tuesday, like the story of a would-be country song set on these blustery Nebraska Plains. That’s what Omaha does, but it will undoubtedly remain the same prize as always, with no shortage of suitors desperate to visit and stay around as long as they can.

For N.C. State, that was two College World Series games. For North Carolina, it was three. The Tar Heels’ season ended with a 9-5 defeat against Florida State on a gray and windy afternoon, but if it had to end anywhere, well, at least it ended here, on this stage and in this stadium. At least it ended in Omaha, where win or lose every college baseball team aspires to end its season.

It’d been six long years since UNC had made the trip to this college baseball Mecca of the Midwest, and all of the United States. There’s nothing like Omaha, in no other American college sport and arguably in no other sport, period. Few places are as tied to a sporting event as this place is to this one, and there might not even be all that much competition.

What other city conjures such a connection?

Perhaps Augusta, with The Masters. Maybe Daytona, with the 500. Say “Omaha,” though, and thoughts turn to mid-to-late summer dogpiles, the crack (or, the ding) of bats; they turn to steaks and maybe now revelers and Jell-O shots, and always to the College World Series, which the NCAA a while ago began calling “The Greatest Show on Dirt.”

It can be difficult to argue, what with the inherent drama; the almost-two-week-long fight to advance and survive and, ultimately, to win. Winning, though, becomes especially difficult here, given the fickle nature of baseball and variances that come with it. One or two subpar innings can change a team’s entire pitching rotation, or affect its bullpen, for days.

The wind, which has blown with a fierceness this week, can keep well-hit balls within the confines of the park or help carry them out of it. There are a great many odd or unexplainable things that happen in this game that can only be explained by the old, sage axiom that actually explains everything and nothing at the same time: “That’s baseball.”

And so it was for UNC in Omaha.

The Tar Heels, for instance, spent large chunks of this season as one of the most formidable offensive teams in the nation, with a lineup of mashers and line-drivers run-driver-inners. In Omaha, though, the Tar Heels mustered but four runs in their first two games and their bats took a while to awaken, too, against the Seminoles on Tuesday.

“That’s baseball.”

On the pitcher’s mound, too, UNC had long proved its mettle. At least had, until it walked nine batters on Tuesday. Against Florida State, the Tar Heels were nearly constantly attempting to work their way out of jams, a lot of them self-created. And then FSU, too, stranded 14 baserunners, which allowed UNC to hang around in a game the Seminoles mostly dominated.

But again: “That’s baseball.”

In Omaha, the margins become more narrow, the pressure greater, the stakes impossibly higher. Every college team wants so desperately to get here and there’s always such joy among those who do. At least at first. For the vast majority who make the trip, there’s a heavy cost on the other side of it. It can be the same in basketball, though the Final Four only ever breaks three collective hearts.

Omaha breaks more than twice that many, but somehow never grows any less pretty.

“There’s only one team that’s happy when the dust settles out here in Omaha,” UNC coach Scott Forbes said Tuesday, though in a literal and figurative sense it’s difficult for dust to settle here at all. It often lingers in the air, rustled up by the winds howling east across the Plains, and on the field it can take a while for anything to settle, too.

The first day of the College World Series, for instance, brought two games decided in the very final at-bat — including UNC’s walk-off victory against Virginia. The second day began just as the first ended, with Kentucky beating N.C. State with a home run in the bottom of the 10th inning.

If there was any consolation for the Tar Heels on Tuesday, it was perhaps that at least they could make peace with their fate. They could see it coming. Florida State led from nearly the start, with leads of 3-0 and then 7-1 before UNC fought back with a four-run fifth to make it a two-run game. It stayed that way until the Seminoles connected on consecutive home runs in the top of the ninth, and for the Tar Heels the reality set in, if it hadn’t already. So ended a brilliant season, one in which they earned the fourth overall seed in the NCAA baseball tournament before they made it here with a series of dramatic walk-offs of their own.

UNC’s postseason was full of so many theatrics it came to feel like some higher power might be at play. Vance Honeycutt’s game-winning RBI single against Virginia on Friday only reinforced the thought. But the mojo, like the Tar Heels’ hitting, simply gave out during their final two games.

“We said day one, the goal was to win a national championship,” said Honeycutt, the junior center fielder and UNC’s all-time home run leader who likely played his final college game on Tuesday. “It starts with getting out here in Omaha.

“You don’t want it to end, but if it does, you want it to be out here.”

That was the prevailing thought among Honeycutt and his teammates as the finality of it all began to set in. They’d planned and expected to be here much longer. The victory against Virginia suggested they might be. But after scoring just a run against Tennessee and faltering against Florida State, there was gratitude mixed in with the heartbreak.

“These are my best friends,” said Casey Cook, the third-year sophomore left fielder. “If I wanted the season to end anywhere I’d want it to be in Omaha. And doing it with your best friends is even more special. So like I said earlier, we didn’t get what we wanted, but I’m happy it can be here with the guys I kind of grew up playing with.”

Forbes spoke with pride of his team’s resilience. UNC hadn’t been here since 2018, and it’d never been here with Forbes as head coach, after he ascended into that position upon the retirement of Mike Fox after the 2020 season. There’d been some bumps along the way throughout Forbes’ first three seasons but at the end of this one, he said of his players:

“I’m just so happy that they got to experience Omaha.”

The Tar Heels, like the Wolfpack before them, didn’t want to leave their dugout on Tuesday. Players hugged and comforted each other. Some couldn’t contain tears. Forbes took a while to pack up, himself, and lingered. Getting here isn’t anything that should ever be taken for granted. Several UNC players remained against the railing of the dugout, staring blankly at an empty field.

They were taking mental snapshots, filing away a scene they’d relive. At least they’d been here. While his teammates packed up and slowly filed back to the locker room, one of those players, Hunter Stokely, a senior, walked toward third base with a water cup in each hand. He kneeled down and scooped dirt into both. It’d be something to take home, and keep.

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