In a game that featured 33 combined hits, it took Texas A&M baseball junior RF Braden Montgomery’s leadoff double in the bottom of the 12th inning for senior 1B Ted Burton to be sure that the Aggies were going to emerge victorious over Auburn.
“I knew we were going to do something special,” Burton said. “I knew there was going to be some Olsen Magic.”
The dose of Olsen Magic came just two at-bats later, when Burton’s walk-off single drove in Montgomery and secured A&M’s 10-9 win over the Tigers and the Aggies’ first SEC series sweep of the season.
“They’re so rare, you know? It’s like seeing a polar bear in College Station,” coach Jim Schlossnagle said. “A sweep in the SEC, that doesn’t happen much. And it’s just so hard to do. It’s so hard to beat a team three days in a row at any level. Baseball is not built for that.”
Out of the 15 combined pitchers that saw the mound over the 12-inning late-night marathon, it was freshman RHP Weston Moss who led them all in strikeouts, with four — and he didn’t see his first action until the 11th inning.
“Moss to me was the highlight of the night,” Schlossnagle said. “To get [sophomore C] Ike Irish striking out looking, which never happens, it was awesome.”
The game-saving performance came after a disappointing outing the day before that saw Moss pulled after just 12 pitches.
“Yesterday, they were kind of on me a little bit,” Moss said. “But I had good stuff and I was in the zone so I just forgot about that day and moved on, and it was opening day.”
The bats started the night off hot for both teams. After a scoreless first inning, A&M added eight runs to its tally in just four innings to take an 8-5 lead into the sixth inning — including a home run from Montgomery in the third that soared 457 feet deep into center field.
Montgomery wasn’t the only power-hitter in Olsen, though. Auburn was able to rally and tie things up thanks to a 3-run eighth inning that began with a leadoff home run from graduate PH Christian Hall.
“You’ve got to give Auburn a lot of credit too,” Schlossnagle said. “It’s just razor thin margins, man.”
A&M was able to take a one-run lead into the ninth inning after forcing Auburn to use four pitchers in the eighth inning alone — something Burton says the Aggies were able to overcome.
“I think your approach kind of has to stay the same, but at the same time, to see different arm slots and spins and whatnot, it’s definitely challenging,” Burton said. “But we did a good job with just staying with what we know,”
The Tigers had one more mood-shifting swing left in them, with another leadoff home run in the top of the ninth, this time from sophomore PH Gavin Miller.
But it was the Aggies who were able to wrestle back control of the game until Burton’s walk-off finally brought things to a halt just minutes before Easter Sunday.
“It was just a roller coaster of a game,” Burton said. “They’d get a big hit, and same with us. Just to be able to stay locked in, the momentum we try to keep on our side at all times. But when it wasn’t our way, we did everything we could to get it swayed back to us.”
