June 22, 2007

By Adam Lucas

OMAHA--Any good Carolina hitter knows you don't go to the plate against a new pitcher without checking the scouting report taped to the dugout wall.

That's what Kyle Seager did when Rice sent Cole St. Clair to the mound in the bottom of the fifth inning of Thursday night's elimination contest. Carolina held a 5-2 lead, but the Owls had already stormed back from a 10-4 late-inning deficit against Louisville, so insurance runs were precious. The Tar Heels had runners on second and third after a precise sacrifice bunt from Chad Flack, and there was one out.

The scouting report Seager saw on St. Clair read this way: "100% fastballs."

Of course, Seager knew that. He faced St. Clair, a hard-throwing lefty with an awkward motion that makes it tough for hitters to pick up the ball out of his hand, on Sunday. He laced an opposite-field single in that at-bat on (of course) a fastball.

Then the freshman from Kannapolis consulted with assistant coach Chad Holbrook, who is the Tar Heel hitting guru. You might know him as the man responsible for Dustin Ackley's recent hot streak, which now includes a majestic home run to dead center field that provided Carolina's first run of the game.

Holbrook's advice to Seager: "This guy throws nothing but fastballs."

Just to double-check, Seager got some tips from Tim Federowicz, who played on Team USA with St. Clair last summer. "He doesn't like to throw his curveball," the Tar Heel catcher told his teammate.

Armed with this information, Seager strode to the plate in perhaps the season's biggest spot. Carolina had already squandered a couple of scoring chances and was now facing Rice's best bullpen arm. Another empty inning, especially after the good bunt, would have considerably tightened the final four innings.

Seager is a player, like many on the 2007 Diamond Heels, who has had to adjust to unfamiliar roles. A star in high school, he was perhaps Carolina's best hitter during fall practice. Some early-season struggles opened the door for Garrett Gore to seize the second base job, which moved Seager into the designated hitter spot. That's a position where veteran players often languish because they find it hard to stay mentally in the game when their only on-field action in a three-hour game is four quick at-bats per contest. Now Carolina was asking a true freshman to do it. Dismal results seemed inevitable.

Instead, Seager is hitting .314 and has played in 64 of Carolina's 71 games.

"It says a lot about him," head coach Mike Fox says. "I talked to him at one point this year and told him I was going to continue to play Garrett at second base, but that he needed to be ready because he was our next infielder. He's continued to work hard, even in a new situation, because he's a player who is used to being in the field. You have to give him a lot of credit. And to a certain extent, I think that's the trademark of our team, because we have a lot of guys who have accepted their role. That's a sign of a good team."

That's some background on the player standing in the batter's box looking out at St. Clair's awkward delivery. The front leg kicked, the ball stayed hidden at waist level, and then it came out of his hand...

Spinning. A curveball. For a strike.

"I was very surprised," Seager says. "He's known as a fastball pitcher. And now he throws me a curveball."

Down 0-1, Seager geared up for the fastball he knew was coming. Again, the front leg kick. Again, the ball stayed hidden. And again...

A curveball. For another strike. Not just any curveballs. These were snappers, probably two of the best breaking pitches St. Clair has thrown during the 2007 season.

"He looked at me in the dugout like, `Thanks, Coach,'" Holbrook says.

Seager had studied his scouting report. He'd researched the pitcher. And now he was down 0-2 against one of the nation's toughest lefties, a seventh-round pick of the Cleveland Indians.

"I had seen the two curveballs pretty well," Seager says. "I thought that if he threw it again, I could react to it."

Understand this: Cole St. Clair is not a pitcher who makes mistakes on 0-2. He is a pitcher who entered the game having fanned almost one batter per inning, and Seager was due to be the next statistic.

The lefty came back 0-2 with a fastball, one that was probably designed to be out of the strike zone as a waste pitch. Instead, it caught too much of the plate and Seager slapped it right back up the middle.

"That might have been the biggest swing of the bat in the game," Fox says. "That really dealt a blow to them."

The four swings that resulted in home runs--Ackley, Josh Horton, Seth Williams, and Tim Fedroff--will get more attention. Adam Warren's evolution from midweek starter to biggest-game-of-the-season starter will earn plenty of ink.

But without Seager's two-strike, two-run single, Carolina might not be making plans for a second straight championship date with Oregon State. Imagine those last two teeth-grinding innings with the score 5-4 instead of 7-4.

Now exhale.

"Whew," Fox said in the media room. "Well. I don't know where to start. We're all exhausted, for one. And elated."

Exhausted and elated is a great way to phrase it. That's how these last three weekends have been. They're the type of games that completely exhaust you--and then you get home and discover you're so keyed up that sleep is an impossibility.

Friday will be another sleepless day for the Diamond Heels. After all, there's a new scouting report to prepare.

Forgive Kyle Seager if he doesn't memorize it.

Adam Lucas's third book on Carolina basketball, The Best Game Ever, chronicles the 1957 national championship season and is available now. His previous books include Going Home Again, focusing on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.