Horns are now America’s Team by Professor Larry Carlson
Subject: Horns Are “America’s Team”
UT: America’s College Baseball Team
By Larry Carlson https://texaslsn.org
There’s no other program like that Longhorn baseball program.
Most trips to the College World Series. Check. It’s now at 39, as the Horns head to Omaha for big steaks and bigger stakes.
Biggest representation in the College Baseball Hall of Fame? Check. There are even four coaches (Billy Disch, Bibb Falk, Cliff Gustafson and Augie Garrido) among the dozen Longhorns honored.
And nowadays, the Longhorn roster is heavily peppered with players from across the greatest country, the one celebrating its 250th birthday. From the West Coast to the East Coast, from Kansas to Wisconsin, states are no longer red or blue, they’re burnt orange.
It hasn’t always been that way. Not at all.
Of UT’s eight players enshrined in the College HOF, all came to the Forty Acres from Texas high schools. You know the names. Odessa High’s Richard Wortham. Brooks Kieschnick (Carroll) and Burt Hooton (King) of Corpus Christi plus Greg Swindell (Sharpstown), Kirk Dressendorfer (Pearland) and Jim Gideon (Bellaire) of Greater Houston, along with David Chalk (Dallas Kimball) and Keith Moreland (Carrolton) of the DFW Metroplex.
A half-century ago, a star player such as catcher Bill Berryhill (Bartlesville, OK) was just about the only out-of-state regular on the UT roster. “Foreigners” Buck Cody and Dooley Prince jumped out on the roster of the Horns’ most recent national championship team, the 2005 squad, just because of their lack of Texan grooming. But Cody was an I-35er from OKC and Prince was from Sulphur, LA, just a 30-mile pirogue paddle from Orange.
Even a couple of years ago, players like outfielders Eric Kennedy, LeBarron Johnson and Will Gasparino were outliers. The former two hailed from Florida and Gasparino was an Angelino who went home and played for UCLA this year.
It’s a new day, suffice to say, with the transfer portal and NIL in full bloom. During UT’s super regional win against Oregon, only two members of “the Texas nine” out on the field — infielders Ethan Mendoza (Bedford) and Adrian Rodriguez (Flower Mound) — had landed in Austin from schools within the Lone Star State.
The Horns’ five most decorated players — LHP Dylan Volantis, C Carson Tinney, RF Aiden Robbins and freshmen (LF) Anthony Pack, Jr. and (RHP) Sam Cozart — come from, respectively, California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, California and North Carolina. Other notable out-of-staters include infielders Casey Borba (California),and Temo Becerra (California), Ib/OF Ashton Larson (Kansas), CF Dariyan Pendergrass (South Carolina) and P Thomas Burns (Wisconsin). Many of those Longhorns transferred in, though Volantis and Borba have worn the burnt orange since leaving high school.
It’s likely that most Texas fans care little about the players’ origins. What matters is that coach Jim Schlossnagle has constructed a World Series roster by utilizing all the tools available and necessary in contemporary college ball.
But if you’re looking for a “die-hard” Texas player who has been a hoss throughout his collegiate career, you might pull for number 53 as number one in your heart. Big (6-2, 220) lefty Luke Harrison excelled as a steady standout since arriving on the Forty from Friendswood. And he’s a graduate student, having already earned a UT degree.
It was Harrison, UT’s number two starting pitcher, who came to the rescue in relief in game one of the super regional, putting out a growing Oregon fire with a bases-loaded strikeout. Now, he’s rested for Omaha.
Bring on the steaks. And stakes.
(TLSN’s Larry Carlson is a member of the Football Writers Association of America. He teaches sports media at Texas State and lives in San Antonio.)
