CLEMSON — In a moment Clemson should have been celebrating following Alden Mathes’ go-ahead home run in the top of 13th inning Sunday, instead they were wondering why chaos broke out for the second time in the game.
Though Florida came back to win the game, 11-10, in the bottom of the 13th, the chaos that followed Mathes’ home run overshadowed the Gators’ amazing run to Omaha as they completed a two-game sweep of the Tigers in the Clemson Super Regional. The loss ended Clemson’s season at 44-16.
In all started following Mathes’ home run with two outs. After the right fielder’s home run, he looked at his teammates in the dugout and spiked his bat to the ground.
After Mathes’ touched home plate, home plate umpire Greg Harmon called for a meeting with his fellow umpires to discuss Mathes’ spiking of the bat, deciding if they needed to discipline the Clemson senior. Once they huddled, Clemson development coach, Jack Leggett, came out of the dugout yelling at the umpires.
“Alden hit the bomb and he did the bat flip, and he did not even do a bat flip, he just slammed it down on the ground,” Clemson third baseman Blake Wright said. “They (warned him) and Coach was pretty mad about it.
“I think someone got tossed. I don’t even know. It turned out to be chaos.”
Leggett was the first one to get tossed, along with assistant coach Griffin Mazur, and when Bakich came to Leggett’s defense, he got tossed as well. While he was walking off the field, Bakich gestured to the crowd to get loud and help carry the Tigers to victory.
Bakich was unavailable for comment after the game because the NCAA Tournament does not allow a coach or player that was ejected during the game to speak to the media in the postgame press conference.
“EB always has our back no matter what, so it was cool to see him go out there,” catcher Jimmy Obertop said. “We are all in this together and we cannot to this without him. He is a great guy, and I would not want to play for anyone else.”
What happened in the 13th inning was the second time the umpires lost control of the game.
In the top of the second inning, with a runner on second base and two outs, Clemson’s Nolan Nawrocki hit a dribbler on the first base side of the mound. Florida pitcher Jac Caglianone fielded the ball and tagged Nawrocki hard, who in turn lowered his shoulder and hit Caglianone in the base path.
The two then exchanged words and started to shove each other. A few players from Clemson’s dugout came out to defend their teammate. In the end, after a long delay as the umpires and the NCAA reviewed the incident, only one player was tossed and that was Clemson’s Jack Crighton, who was on second base and was rounding third base as the inning ended.
According to the NCAA, as told to all of us in the press box by a Clemson spokesperson, both dugouts received unsportsmanlike warnings. Crighton was tossed for “leaving his position on the field because he went to the site of the potential altercation.”
“Members of both teams were warned against any further unsportsmanlike conduct and if there are any issues the remainder of the game this would also result in an ejection for any given student-athlete, coach, or team personnel,” the NCAA said in the release of what happened in the second inning.
As for a statement from the NCAA on what transpired in the ejections of Leggett and Bakich, The Clemson Insider, as well as several other media outlets, requested an explanation that has not been issued by the NCAA at the time this story was posted.
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