Tom Petty Strikes Again
6/24/2010 12:00:00 AM | Baseball
June 23, 2010
OMAHA, Neb. -- There must be something about Tom Petty and TCU.
The 2009 Horned Frog football team used the Tom Petty song "I Won't Back Down" as motivation for its BCS run to the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. The 2010 TCU baseball team now feels like it is Runnin' Down A Dream.
Petty was in Omaha Wednesday night. His concert at the Qwest Center, across the street from the Horned Frogs' hotel, was taking place simultaneously as TCU was rallying from five runs down to stay alive at the College World Series with a dramatic 11-7 win over Florida State.
An eight-run eighth inning was keyed by a two-out grand slam by Matt Curry to straightaway center, helping catapult the Horned Frogs into the Bracket 1 championship game Friday at 3:30 p.m. versus UCLA. If the Horned Frogs are victorious, a winner-take-all Saturday 1 p.m. meeting with the Bruins would determine who advances to next week's championship series.
The Horned Frogs were down to the final four outs of their record-breaking season and Curry was behind 1-2 in the count, but he didn't back down.
After battling back to force a full count and with over 22,000 fans at venerable Rosenblatt Stadium on their feet, Curry unloaded with his team-leading 18th home run of the season Into The Great Wide Open for his first career grand slam.
While Curry thought he had enough on it from the moment it left his bat, most of the partisan-TCU crowd, his teammates, coaches and a national television audience weren't so sure.
Florida State centerfielder Tyler Holt appeared to be camped under the ball ready to make the catch short of the warning track. However, the ball cleared the batter's eye in center and sent Rosenblatt Stadium into a frenzy. The shot heard 'round Omaha gave TCU a 9-7 lead.
Two batters later, Jantzen Witte also went deep for the Horned Frogs to provide the final margin of 11-7.
"It's definitely the biggest hit of my career and it could have been my last college at bat," Curry said. "I wasn't going to go down striking out.
"I happened to get a hanging curve ball, and I just squared it up and hit it as hard as I could. It was an awesome feeling."
That feeling was echoed by Horned Frog catcher and team leader Bryan Holaday, who was on second base after a run-scoring double.
"When he hit it, I knew it was gone," Holaday said. "He hit it well and I was just pumped up. I was ready for him to touch home so I could slap him in the head a couple of times."
With their run to Omaha and now being one of just five teams still playing, the 2010 Horned Frogs are Learning To Fly among the nation's elite.
