Cal’s unbelievable baseball season, which started in September with the news the team would be cut because of budget cuts, only to be resurrected in April when supporters raised $8 million, came to an end Thursday when the team was eliminated from the College World Series.
Virginia, the No. 1-ranked team in the nation, defeated the Bears in an 8-1 victory before a crowd of 25,833 in Omaha, Nebraska. It was a bittersweet finish for a team that had surmounted so many odds this year, including a brief death knell, losing some key players, gaining a spot in the series for the first time since 1992, and winning five postseason elimination games.
“We’re proud to be one of the eight teams in the College World Series,” Coach Dave Esquer told the Daily Californian, a few days after winning the national coach of the year award. “We’ll never forget this.”
“It was not exactly how we wanted to go out,” catcher Chadd Krist told the San Francisco Chronicle. “We made it to Omaha, something a lot of people can’t say they’ve done. We did it with our best buds. … We’re disappointed, but we’ve got to celebrate the season a little bit, too.”
