Tennessee star Christian Moore can see baseball clearly. Can MLB?

OMAHA, Neb. — June 1956 was a different time in America. As a country, we had barely been blessed with the bittersweet technology of the snooze button on alarm clocks, and Elvis Presley was just starting to cause a ruckus by performing on TV without a guitar, making his hip gyrations on stage the stuff of national concern. It also happens to be the first time that someone ever hit for the cycle in the Men’s College World Series.

It was also the only time that such a statistically quirky but remarkable hitting feat occurred in the tournament’s history — that is, until June 14 at Charles Schwab Field. Now, Tennessee Volunteers second baseman Christian Moore has joined the list as one of only two people to ever hit for a single, double, triple and homer in a MCWS game, after Jerry Kindall, the legendary former University of Arizona head coach with three national titles. Kindall played for the Minnesota Gophers in 1956, and the series was still relatively new to Rosenblatt Stadium.

That world was very much still in black and white, in many ways. The young man known as C-Mo to his teammates did it this weekend to open the proceedings for the Volunteers in full color. Tennessee is back in action tonight against North Carolina (7 p.m. ET, ESPN2/ESPN+) in winners bracket play in Omaha.

“Christian Moore was a man on a mission tonight,” Vols coach Tony Vitello said after a thrilling 12-11 victory over Florida State in Game 2 of the MCWS. “That guy wants to win as much as anybody on the field. I don’t know how you define that, but that’s what makes his motor go. He’s not going so good when he’s not in that mode and he’s worrying about other things.”

Going 5-for-6 with 12 total bases, 4 extra base hits and 3 runs scored is enough to stuff the stat line, but how it happened was equally remarkable. He started the game with a leadoff triple, then basically plated another run (Florida State’s catcher dropped a sure out at the plate in a wacky play) the next inning and scored again himself. After a great piece of hitting netted him a single in the fourth, he homered to complete the task.

A gargantuan no-doubt shot to center field, it was clear there wasn’t going to be a better player on the field that night. And his two-out, 2-strike ninth-inning double was just a cherry on top of a signature performance that led to a win.

“I guess when you’ve hit for the cycle — was that in the sixth inning he had hit for the cycle — you know what you’re dealing with,” Florida State Seminoles coach Link Jarrett said after the game.

We’re not talking about a random anomaly of a performance or a blowout win where some guy is just filling up the stat sheet. They were down when that homer left the yard. The game was on the line when he locked-in late and kept the rally going to win in the ninth. Fun history aside, the top-seed Vols needed his night, in what was otherwise honestly a super-sloppy game in a thrilling MCWS which has seen three walk-off hits in the first three games.

“I would say the more unique thing was the reaction from some of the guys in the dugout,” Vitello explained with a laugh. “When you impress your teammates that way where it’s like a Shawn Kemp — for people old enough in the room — like a Shawn Kemp dunk and you’ve got everybody on the bench going crazy.”

But there’s a part of the baseball world that sees his talent, doesn’t really know the guy and sees the brash Tennessee team known for what we’ll just call their very collegiate antics and think well that guy doesn’t have the makeup to be a big leaguer or what have you and push him down their draft board.

Funnily enough, the inability to have a clear vision about what they’re seeing in front of them is something that also affected Moore himself. And he didn’t even know it.

“I would definitely say my freshman year here [I grew], and part of the reason why is because I couldn’t see,” Moore told Daron Sutton and Dani Wexelman on the Amateur Hour podcast June 3. “My vision was bad and I didn’t know it. And I got to college and they made me do a physical eye test, and my trainer was like, ‘Hey, you’re blind. You need contacts.’ … The first two weeks were really weird, my depth perception was really off. After that I kind of got used to it and it really helped me.”

A megastar at the amateur and prep level, he made it all the way to arguably the best baseball conference in the country before he could even properly pick up seam rotations in the batter’s box. Short version: That’s incredible. That’s a skill that batters use as basic advantage to get a leg up on pitchers, which is definitely hard but for many batters, a requirement to even have a chance. Playing while visually impaired from high school all the way to the Southeastern Conference is just astounding.

Separate from the physical abilities and growth, Moore comes from that generation of kids who had their high school experiences very oddly reshaped by the coronavirus pandemic. He technically only played one season of baseball for his high school, after a travel and showcase career of legend. It wasn’t an easy route before or during.

“There was an old boys’ club of New York, had a program where they had a baseball piece,” Suffield Academy coach Bryan Brissette pointed out Saturday. Moore’s older brother C.J., who was drafted by the Arizona Diamondbacks but went on to play college ball at Lamar University, graduated from there in 2014. The pipeline from Brooklyn, New York, was established then.

“When C.J. was here, Chris was probably about 10 years old. And C.J. kept telling us he was a good player in his own right. He got drafted by the Diamondbacks out of here, ends up going to Lamar instead. But C.J. kept pointing to this little kid running around in our games and going, ‘Hey, coach, that’s the guy you gotta go after.’ He said, ‘You think I was a decent player? He’s the one.’ I’m watching this 10-year-old run around, playing and throwing a baseball around, and I’m like, ‘wow, OK.’ So that’s how Chris really got on my radar.”

After a couple trips to different prep schools and even taking a route through Tennessee as a young man and committing to the Knoxville program, he came back to finish high school at Suffolk and boom: pandemic time.

“He was a free safety on our undefeated football team. Some people don’t know that about him, right? We won the championship. And then that spring, schools shut down, everything shuts down. It’s spring of 2020. So, we didn’t have a baseball season. And then when he came back in the fall, it was totally disjointed,” Brissette said. “And then that spring, he had a baseball season finally, so he only played one season for me, but it was tough, you know? We had kids on campus having to wear masks and it just such a disjointed time to be a young person. He came in with a lot of accolades, but I think also a lot of pressure. He had a bull’s eye on his back, every game we played, you know. Kids knew about him, and they wanted to get under his skin, or they wanted to get the best of him or, so it was unfair.”

It was a circumstance that over time led to Moore himself knowing that maturity was something he needed to work on and fast, even if some people looked at the kid from Brooklyn as some sort of a problem child because he actually liked to express himself on the field through his energy.

“I think I’ve grown a lot, coming in as a freshman, very immature, didn’t know much [and] thought I did and, you know, got humbled real quick,” Moore said frankly after Game 2 before going to hang out with his parents. “Being the SEC that fall, I knew I had talent. I knew I just needed to figure things out. And I did. I think having guys like Evan Russell, Drew Gilbert, Jordan Beck, guys before me who kind of started me in the right direction [helped].”

A lot more of this will likely be seen over the course of the tournament. Clearly a team leader, Moore is one of those kids who college has done wonders for who he is as a person, never mind a ballplayer. In a day in which we’re genuinely seeing more Black kids make it to high-level Division I programs, how that translates to the next level is a continuing question not just for Moore, but for a lot of who are watching who still see us as just twitchy talent to be controlled instead of real cornerstones to be invested in talentwise.

“He had to turn down really good money in order to come here. I was going to save this for later, but I think he’s kind of battling a little bit of the reputation that people throw around right now from others that we dealt with three years ago,” Vitello said Friday. “We had some concepts there [from others]. ‘That’s not a guy that says no to good money and [that’s not a guy who] wants to play team ball’ and things like that. We knew right away, once he was on campus, we were wrong. But we also had to do some things. Like any freshman, he needed to mature, and he’s gotten to that point right now. So, it’s fun to watch.”

Vitello wasn’t going to spell it all the way out, but the point was made. Guys from certain places who look like us have automatic assumptions made about them that often are surface level and inaccurate.

Even if the official NCAA account is still confusing Black players for one another on its Twitter feed, Moore is clearly someone whose name will not be forgotten — not by anybody who was watching under the lights Friday, either. Incredible composure at the plate, A-plus motor and energy, a bat barrel that can handle almost anything in and around the zone, and a winning mentality.

There’s a point in a young athlete’s career when he has not exactly outgrown his surroundings but is clearly skilled and poised enough to make that work on a bigger stage. You’ll see a lot of talk about guys who are projected to do this and that, but beyond the University of Tennessee records for career home runs (60), single-season home runs (33) and single-season total bases (226), the eyeball test is still very much a thing.

Hopefully, some of these big league front office can finally start seeing clearly, too.