The team that won the ninth of those championships not only produced eight future big leaguers, including All-Stars Roy Smalley and Fred Lynn, it posted a record of 51-11, including a victory in perhaps the greatest College World Series game ever played.
No, we don’t have the hindsight of history to measure this team like we do with the other candidates, but while we can agree it might be too soon to judge the most recent CWS champ as its best ever, we can also agree that the 2019 Vandy Boys deserve to be in the conversation.
The Sun Devils rank fourth all time in CWS appearances , but their best team was the ’77 squad that bulldozed through the season with a 57-12 record, thanks to a starting lineup that included five future big leaguers and a whopping seven players drafted that year alone, including MLB All-Star Hubie Brooks and current Blue Jays bench coach Dave Hudgens.
No team has ever stormed through Omaha like these Hurricanes: a roster that had 11 players drafted played like pros all season long, racking up a record of 53-12 and ending the year on a 17-game winning streak.
What’s more, right smack in the middle of their title run, the Horns had a Texas-sized haul of eight players taken in the MLB draft.
While other squads might have had more future MLB All-Star talent in the dugout, there was no better true “Hold the rope” team than the ’97 roster that won the Tigers’ second consecutive CWS title and the fourth of Bertman’s five championships.
But even with all of that veteran talent, the CWS MOP went to freshman outfielder Paul Carey, who hit a 10th-inning opposite-field homer to beat LSU in the semifinals and went 3-for-5 while accounting for four of Stanford’s nine runs against Oklahoma State in the championship game.
Then they won the ’95 CWS with another perfect 4-0 mark, sweeping its games against Stanford Brian Lloyd and Jeremy Giambi joined forces with Kotsay to generate “The Greatest Show on Dirt” while pitcher Ted Silva went 18-1, all guided by the hand of Augie Garrido, the greatest coach in the history of the game.