In 2008, Johns Hopkins baseball was one out away from clinching its first-ever national championship, but the Blue Jays came up short in a dramatic title game.
Fifteen years later, in 2023, the Jays had the chance to erase the ghosts of years prior.
All eyes were on No. 1 seed Hopkins heading into the Division III College World Series. Despite a hiccup against Baldwin Wallace, the Jays found themselves in the best-of-three championship series.
All that stood in the way of Hopkins’ first national championship was Lynchburg, and it came down to a winner-take-all Game 3. Despite a program-record 48 wins, Hopkins came up just short in a 7-6 loss to the Hornets in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Still, nothing could take away from the triumph and success of the season as a whole.
“Team unity was incredible this year,” Hopkins head coach Bob Babb said. “Different guys stepped up basically every game. Everyone trusted one another. It was really quite a fun year to be around. … This team was more confident of itself than any team I’ve been a part of for a long time.”
This marked the Jays’ second College World Series appearance in three years. They caught fire at the right time during the COVID-shortened 2021 season and made a run. However, injuries in 2022 depleted the pitching staff and the team hovered around .500 for most of the season before getting bounced in the Centennial Conference tournament.
Once fall camp started ahead of the 2023 season, there was a sense among players and coaches about the potential for success given the talent on the roster.
“There was something special when we all got on campus,” starting pitcher Gabriel Romano said. “Just being able to help out as much as I could when I first got here and finding my role. Thankfully, it clicked, the team has worked well and we got this far. This season, it was just a special team.”
Romano, who had spent the previous four seasons of his college career at Quinnipiac, used his fifth season to come to Baltimore. The style of play, while different from what he had experienced in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, was something he quickly took to.
The move from Division I to Division III paid dividends as he strung together one of the best seasons of any pitcher in Johns Hopkins history. In 14 starts, the 6-foot-5, 215-pound right-hander went 11-1 with a 1.56 ERA. He allowed 35 runs, 17 earned, in 98 innings. He struck out 79 batters and walked just 17.
“I had to work for it in fall ball,” Romano said. “I eventually started that first game and after that, I just went from there. Coming in, I knew I could make an impact. I knew what I could do. It was just about proving that and getting that spot.”
Romano also had four complete games, including a 164-pitch effort in Game 2 of the championship series to keep Hopkins’ season alive.
“We kept asking him, ‘Are you OK?'” Babb said. “He said, ‘I am finishing this game. I’m probably never pitching again in my life. My arm feels great. My body feels better than it’s felt in a long time. I’m not coming out of this game.’ And he did a great job.”
Pitching was a strong suit for the Jays in 2023 despite some high-scoring affairs in the College World Series. All told, Hopkins pitching posted a 3.29 ERA. Jays hurlers allowed 240 runs, 183 earned, in 501 innings while limiting opponents to a .236 batting average.
Hopkins had one of the highest-scoring offenses in college baseball, averaging more than 10 runs a game while hitting .335/.429/.584 as a team. The Jays scored runs in bunches, often using the long ball to do so (114 home runs overall).
“Last year was a down year for the program, but it was also my first year,” senior outfielder Matthew Cooper said. “I didn’t know what to expect coming into last year, but this year we had a lot more experience overall.”
Cooper hit .405/.496/.863 with 25 home runs and 71 RBIs this year. The 6-foot-2, 205-pound outfielder shattered the program’s single-season home run record by eight and fell two RBIs shy of etching his name in the No. 1 slot in that category.
Cooper finished his Jays career with 37 home runs, two more than John Christ’s longstanding program record of 35 home runs.
Romano and Cooper stood out, but what made this Johns Hopkins team nearly win it all was confidence.
“Our team motto this season [was] leave no doubt,” Cooper said. “There was never a [lack] of confidence with this team. It was always, ‘Oh, they beat us Game 1, no big deal. We’re going to bounce back, play our game and commit to our approach we had the entire season.'”
Babb, one of the greatest coaches in college baseball history with more than 1,250 wins to his name, noticed that a quiet confidence spread almost immediately during the preseason.
Babb separates this season into segments, from the preseason to a trip to Florida in March to Centennial Conference play to the postseason. Each segment produced dominance. That began and ended with leadership from the team’s upperclassmen.
“The leadership of our seniors and grad students was incredible from the first day in the fall until the last pitch was thrown,” Babb said. “They did all the right things. … This team was as close as any team I’ve ever had. … They helped change the culture of the program.”
A much-needed break is now underway for everyone involved in the program, but the team is striving to be the last one standing in 2024.
“Our goal now is to try to get back there,” Babb said. “… On our bus ride from Iowa back to the Chicago airport, we were already talking about things we need to do differently in the fall. We’re already looking forward to it, but we’re also looking forward to some time off the field this summer.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Johns Hopkins Athletics
Originally published June 15, 2023