Mustaches, magic and moxie carry Notre Dame into its CWS opener with Texas
So detail-oriented is Notre Dame baseball coach Link Jarrett that he removed a bottle of dish soap and a coffee urn from a counter behind him Wednesday so it wouldn’t junk up the shots of him that the local TV crews were trying to capture.
Which is why his lack of any semblance of a mustache two days before his unseeded Irish (40-15) launch their College World Series journey in Omaha, Neb., seemed out of place.
“I didn’t (grow one), because I just didn’t,” he said with a smile from the ND team room inside Frank Eck Stadium in South Bend shortly before departing for the eight-team, double-elimination tourney.
“I probably wouldn’t look very good with one, but at this point I’m not messing with that.”
He’s more than OK, though, that his players have messed with them and the message behind sprouting them, heading into Friday night’s CWS opener against ninth-seeded Texas (47-20). Game time is 7 p.m. EDT at Charles Schwab Field, and ESPN has the telecast.
Notre Dame’s very presence in Omaha is the more emphatic symbol of insolence aimed at the NCAA Tournament selection committee for sending the Irish to Statesboro Ga., for a regional then to Knoxville, Tenn., to slay a No. 1 seeded-Tennessee team, whose talent was surpassed only by its bluster.
The more subtle and amusing way of giving the selection committee a naughty hand gesture is the mustaches.
Why mustaches?
“So, (the players) were watching Top Gun,” Jarrett explained, sorta. “I think Nick Juaire and Liam (Simon) broke down the difference between the new Top Gun (Top Gun: Maverick) and the old Top Gun. And I guess there are mustaches involved in that.”
Specifically, in the newer one, Miles Teller’s character, Rooster, has the feature facial hair.
Reliever Matt Lazzaro allegedly has the best mustache among the Irish, with outfielder Ryan Cole laboring to get his to show up.
“I’m probably a 6.5, maybe 7,” offered catcher David LaManna, ND’s leading hitter at .348, of his mustache look on a scale of 1 to 10.
“I don’t like it — but I like it, because we’re in the playoffs,” he said.
And maybe with as good a chance as any of the eight teams — four of them unseeded — now that Tennessee has been eliminated from the field in last weekend's Super Regional round.
“I told (the players) before the game, ‘This is going to be the biggest game college baseball has ever seen.’” Jarrett said of ND’s 7-3, come-from-behind win in the deciding game 3 Sunday.
“ I think our team enjoys riding the moment of what that felt like and what that meant. It clearly let everybody see what we’re capable of.
“Do I think it makes us a favorite to go walk in there and win this thing? I don’t. You’ve got eight exceptional teams that are all a little bit different. Everybody’s good at things, and there are some things that maybe other teams are better at than we are. And we’re better at some things than maybe some of the other guys in the tournament.
“I don’t think we’re a favorite. I do think the baseball world at all levels enjoyed the confrontation that they witnessed (at Tennessee), and I enjoyed our guys conquering it.”
To win the College World Series for the first time in program history, in its third appearance, the Irish must first conquer Bracket 1. It comprises half the field — ND, ninth-seed Texas, fifth-seed Texas A&M and unseeded Oklahoma.
Once a survivor emerges from the double-elimination format, that winner plays the winner from Bracket 2 in a best-of-three final June 25-27. Bracket 2 comprises No. 2 seed Stanford, unseeded Arkansas, unseeded Ole Miss and 14th-seeded Auburn.
Both Notre Dame and Texas feature right-hand-heavy lineups and both have opted to go with lefties on the mound to combat them. Sixth-year ace John Michael Bertrand (9-3, 2.69 ERA) will opposed Texas redshirt sophomore Pete Hansen (11-2, 3.40).
Hansen, by the way, hails from former Notre Dame QB Ian Book’s old high school, Oak Ridge in El Dorado Hills, Calif.
Both Bertrand and Hansen uncharacteristically struggled in their most recent starts. Hansen lasted four innings and gave up six runs in a 13-7 Super Regional loss to East Carolina. Bertrand gave up six runs in 4 ⅔ innings in a 12-4 loss to Tennessee in the middle game of their Super Regional.
“We need Bertrand to be on his ‘A’ game,” Jarrett said. “I think his secondary-pitch usage, in conjunction with that fastball command being to both sides, (is critical) and really (needs to be) dialed in better than his last start. That’s key.”
The park and the format of the tournament may play into Notre Dame’s favor. Home runs are harder to hit, though strong winds can change that from day to day. The thick grass at the 24,500-seat facility makes the ball play slower, Jarrett said.
The biggest change from the regionals and Super Regionals is the spacing between games. The team in Bracket 1, for instance, that stays in the winner’s bracket, will have a day off between games 1 and 2, and two more days off between games 2 and 3.
That allows teams with strong bullpens to continually recycle their top relievers. It also presents an option to bring back a starter on short rest.
“I try to be protective of what those guys are asked to do,” Jarrett said. “This might not be the end of their baseball when they wrap up their Notre Dame careers. Like, I want these guys to have a chance to continue to go on.
“I don’t ever want to ask somebody to do something that’s beyond what their physical capabilities align, in my opinion, to do.
“But this is a time where you may have an instance where somebody has come off a short start and says, ‘Coach I’m 100% fine. I may not give you six innings. I might go out there and give you three or four.' Those are discussions we have to have.”
Some of the most enjoyable discussions for Jarrett regarding the third CWS in ND history continues to be the ones with the man who piloted the school’s second appearance, in 2002 — Paul Mainieri.
One year retired from a long run at LSU after leaving ND, the 64-year-old Mainieri actually first contacted Jarrett the day he got the job in mid-July of 2019. Jarrett remembers sitting in a Starbucks in Greensboro, N.C., where he was living, and taking notes for 40 minutes.
"His son, Nick (Mainieri), was our academic adviser,” Jarrett said. “And he literally sat in my office with me whenever I asked him to. And he talked about the travel and the classes and when we should practice and how long we should practice. And what days we should have study hall, what days we should lift.
"What day should we do tutors. Should we do them at night? Should we try to fit them in in the morning? So, those guys got me off the ground here.”
And a couple of months ago Mainieri and the 2002 team visited the current team for the weekend and took in a series with Boston College. The bond has only grown stronger since. Mainieri and several members of that team have plans to be in Omaha to cheer the 2022 team on.
Of the relationship and the parallels between the two teams. Jarrett offered, ‘It’s magical.”
And for the moment, so are the mustaches.
“If we win this thing,” second baseman Jared Miller said, “this mustache might stick with me for a really long time.”
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