LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Louisville’s baseball team wore Muhammad Ali on its helmets long before it played a game in Omaha. But in the middle innings of Sunday's 8-3 elimination game comeback over Arizona, it got something even better than a decal.
A reminder.
A not-so-gentle reminder that it's never really out of a fight. In the sixth inning, ESPN cameras caught Dan McDonnell in the dugout, surrounded by his team, his voice rising, his arms moving, his body leaning into them.
It wasn’t quiet counsel. McDonnell was challenging them. Pushing them. Breathing fire.
This wasn’t the team he brought to Omaha. Not the way it was swinging the bats. And he didn’t want to see it go out like that.
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“I challenged them in the dugout,” McDonnell told Sean Moth in his postgame radio interview. “‘We can’t wait for the ninth. You can’t live and die in the ninth.’”
Then he added: “Hey — we did it in the eighth. So they’re very coachable.”
Yes, this is a column about the Cardinals channeling Ali.
Detail of the back of a Louisville baseball helmet, showing the Muhammad Ali butterfly symbol.
But they didn’t throw haymakers. They didn’t need to. Trailing 3-2 in the bottom of the eighth, Louisville didn’t smash the door in — it jimmied it open, walked inside, and made itself at home. Earned runs are nice. But unearned are even sweeter.
They blooped. They bunted. They flicked singles over the infield and whispered them inside the base lines. They didn’t bludgeon Arizona. They feathered them. Soft singles, softer landings — a six-run pillow fight that left the Wildcats gasping.
The rally started with a misplayed grounder. Then came a single. A bloop. Another. The big swing was Zion Rose dropping a soft liner just inside the right field line that scored two and gave Louisville the lead.
At this point, Arizona was wobbling. The Cardinals made Tony Pluta, college baseball’s Stopper of the Year, look dazed and confused. They hit changeups. They hit fastballs. They hit nerves.
Even when things went wrong, they went right. They got crossed up on a squeeze play, but when Pluta went to tag Garrett Pike on his ill-fated, dead-to-rights dash to the plate, he dropped the ball. Cards by three. Might as well have been twenty.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, pitcher can't tag what his eyes can't see.
Better off leaving the poetry to the champ.
“He's going to fall in eight / to prove that I am great.”
– Muhammad Ali
By the time the inning ended, the Cardinals had scored six runs on six hits, and Arizona — which had led nearly the entire game — was stunned.
Lonnie Ali cheers the Cards during their Super Regional Game 3 win over Miami in Jim Patterson Stadium.
“We kept believing,” McDonnell said.
It’s one of this team’s superpowers. Maybe not one you'd pick, like blinding speed or x-ray vision. But one they’ve learned to live with. And win with.
“We think we’re the best late three-inning team in the nation,” Kamau Neighbors said, after going 4-for-4, all singles.
Louisville has come back all season. From injuries. From pitching problems. It rallied after losing six of its last seven games. It rallied in the Super Regional. And it rallied here — when the season was six outs from done.
“I think we got their attention now,” McDonnell said.
He wasn’t just talking about Arizona.
He was talking about his team.
They’ll play again Tuesday at 2. An elimination game against Oregon State. And yes, they’ve got things to clean up. They left runners on base. They ran into outs. They looked like a team on the ropes.
Or was it a rope-a-dope?
McDonnell had, after all, hugged Lonnie Ali, the widow of the late Muhammad Ali, before the game. The coach can usually look around and find Ali’s son, Asaad, shooting video.
McDonnell may wish his team wasn’t quite so familiar with the ropes. He’d like to see them throw a punch or two before the eighth.
They didn’t knock Arizona out with one swing. But when the bell rang in the eighth, they answered. And by the end, they were the ones still on their feet.
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