FSU Baseball: How CWS title game loss still hurts 20 years later

FSU Baseball has played for the national title three times in their history, but it was the last setback two decades ago that still hurts the most.

Come Saturday night, the FSU baseball team will take the field for the 24th time in their history in the annual battle of the last teams standing known as the College World Series – and for the 17th and final time, they will be led on the field by their long time head coach Mike Martin as they hope to get him his first title in his final chance.

For the Seminoles, they have had chances before to win a national title in college baseball. In 1970, the Noles went into extra innings before suffering a setback to eventual champion USC while the 1986 team made it to the title game – thanks to two wins over rival Miami while in Omaha – before getting beat by Arizona.

But, it was the last time that the FSU baseball team played for the title that still gets to the core of those in garnet and gold – a single game that took place two decades ago that still has so many variables in it as to why it strikes a cord with fans of the Seminoles.

Florida State Seminoles

First off, let us go back to before the Seminoles got to Omaha to explain everything. The 1999 season was the first in which the Super Regional round took place – but even that didn’t stop a Noles team that came in off a five game sweep of the first two rounds, including two Super Regional wins over Auburn to head to Omaha with a 53-12 record.

This was a team with names like Marshall McDougall (coming off his six homer game earlier in the season), John-Ford Griffin, the brothers Zach and Matt Diaz, future Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash and plenty of others who came into the tournament as the No. 2 national seed in the country – behind those hated ‘Canes from South Florida.

It was a tournament in Omaha where the Seminoles dropped their second game played against Stanford – and came back through the loser’s bracket to face the Cardinal again. Down to their final chances, the Seminoles tied the game and in the 13th inning it was Karl Jernigan whose three run homer sent them to the finals against Miami.

This was a FSU baseball team that had the lead against their rivals before Miami got a five run inning thanks in part to a three RBI double and appeared in control – until the Seminoles scored two runs in the seventh inning and got a RBI triple in the eighth from Miami native Ryan Barthelemy to cut the deficit to just one run.

That would be as close as the Seminoles would get to winning the first national title in program history – and two decades later, it still remains the furthest the Noles have gotten in all their trips to Omaha since that point.

Can the FSU baseball team continue the magical run for the final time under No. 11? The odds are stacked against them, but that’s the way they have been through this entire postseason so maybe this is the chance – both for Martin and to erase what took place two decades ago.