Baseball success will come

Good Lord, sports are cruel.

When Scott Effross’ pitch came off Tommy Edman’s bat in the bottom of the ninth for a walk-off home run and IU’s season ended, the air out of Bart Kaufman Field left just as fast as Edman’s hit left the park.

IU lost to Stanford, 5-4, in the regional championship Monday. The Hoosiers’ historic season is finished.

No super regionals.

No return trip to Omaha, Neb.

No national championship.

The Hoosiers lost in one of the most agonizing ways possible. They were two outs — two outs — away from moving on to play Vanderbilt in the super regionals.

The night before, they were just four outs away from victory before Stanford came roaring back and continued to write its own Cinderella story.

You can play the what-if game until you’re blue in the face.

What if Ryan Halstead, the all-time saves leader in IU history, hadn’t torn his ACL on a freak play back in March? Would he have been able to close out those games?

What if IU Coach Tracy Smith had brought in ace Joey DeNato a batter earlier to face Edman?

What if Brad Hartong hadn’t lacerated his spleen against Youngstown State on Friday?

IU fans asked themselves those questions the past couple days.

But there’s one more question that needs to be asked.

Was this IU’s best shot to win a national championship?

IU had astounding success these past two seasons under Smith, there’s no denying that.

But sometimes, a moment that seems like promise for the future can turn into a peak, in hindsight.

So, was a a trip to the College World Series last season the peak of Hoosier baseball?

Or, is this just the start of a reign of terror Smith and his program will inflict on the Big Ten, and IU will become a baseball blue blood program for years to come?

It’s a legitimate question to ask, whether this is the peak or not. This team was absolutely jacked with talent. Of the 13 first team All-Big Ten selections, the Hoosiers had eight.

They also had four All-Americans: Kyle Schwarber, Sam Travis, Joey DeNato and Dustin DeMuth.

Those four served as the cornerstones for this program. Smith and the younger players often spoke of their leadership and the way they carried themselves.

But DeNato and DeMuth graduated.

In all likelihood, Schwarber and Travis will forgo their senior years and enter the MLB after being drafted in the early rounds.

Schwarber is a top 20 prospect, and Travis is top 60.

Smith can build programs. That’s apparent. He built Miami (Ohio) into a mid-major force and IU into a national force.

But sustaining success is a different animal all together.

It could have been that this gob of great baseball players came together in a perfect storm for IU baseball, and this was the program’s one chance to be crowned king in Omaha, Neb.

Personally, I don’t think Smith and IU are done. The Hoosiers have a state-of-the-art stadium in Bart Kaufman Field, and Smith will continue to find hidden gems like DeNato and Schwarber.

There will always be more prospects. More chances. More opportunities for a hallowed return to Omaha.

But there will never be another 2014 IU baseball team.

It was a special one both from a talent standpoint and a personality standpoint
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It was a joy to cover the diverse personalities that were so different from the typical robotic cadences athletes usually talk in.

Hearing Smith talk about what Netflix shows he’s watching. Seeing what antics Casey Smith would get into in his weekly videos, which were genuinely hilarious.

It’s a shame most of those players will leave. But so goes the song of college athletics.

IU should roll back into prominence in the coming years. As long as Smith stays, this 2014 team will be looked back on as the first of many great Hoosier baseball teams.
But, man.

It’s impossible to not think about this season and say, what if?