I’ve been fairly critical of Clemson baseball this season. Despite a 14-0 start the Tigers stumbled after their first loss and really haven’t recovered over their last 20 or so games.
At least until this past weekend, when the Tigers took two out of three from a talented Wake Forest team in Winston-Salem.
The wins were imperative if this team has hopes to even make the ACC Tournament, much less an NCAA Regional.
I felt like the season may have been saved, at least temporarily, with Sunday’s win.
What a huge, perhaps season saving, series win for Clemson baseball.
— Seldom Used Reserve (@seldomusedres) April 17, 2022
As important as the wins were, it was how they were achieved that showed me the team still has fight left in them.
Mack Anglin’s gem and Geoffrey Gilbert’s relief pitching shut down and shut out a really good hitting team in Fridays 1-0 Clemson win.
On Saturday the Tigers came back from a 7-1 deficit in the first inning, battling all game long, before finally tying the game in the ninth, only to lose in the tenth.
Sunday, given every reason to give up, the Tigers stood toe to toe and bashed with the bashers and held on 10-8 for the series win.
So imagine my surprise when a response to the tweet above framed the series win in a negative light, implying that it was “just enough” for the “undeserving” coach to remain at the helm.
As mentioned, I haven’t been this staff’s biggest fans recently, but I could see how much that series win meant to the players on the team yesterday.
They needed it. The players. The ones you should care about as a Clemson fan.
I’m not one to tell fans how to be fans. Some are more critical than others, some pump sunshine all day and night. Some are inbetween.
I will also admit that fighting to make an ACC Tournament that 12 of 14 teams get into is a far cry from the heyday of the program.
But, if you watched the team as closely as I do, see them struggle for weeks and then finally see them breakthrough, how do you go negative on that?
If you have any faith at all in the Clemson athletic administration this series will be one small piece of an overall evaluation of the program and not the sole answer, just as the Pittsburgh series debacle shouldn’t be the sole answer.
To me though, there have been enough negative experiences this season to point out, without turning the positives into negatives to suit an agenda that you’ve already decided how it should end.
Baseball is a strange game. A team can play over their head and win 14 straight and that same team can then struggle for six weeks before finding themselves again and making a run.
For some fans, there’s no longer any reason to watch. Not for the rest of this year or as long as Monte Lee is at the helm.
Earlier in the season similar thoughts crept into my head, especially when the team looked listless for large stretches of games and weeks.
This weekend showed me they still cared and therefore I still care, too.