All Things Are Possible
Gary Gilmore and Tom Hager
In partnership with Athletes For God
I’ll never forget walking into that locker room.
It was June of 2016, and as I entered the clubhouse, I had a room full of young men looking to me for inspiration. To tell them things were going to be okay. Normally as a coach, you have the answers prepared before your players even ask the next question, but on this particular night, I didn’t know what to say or do.
We had just lost the first game of the College World Series against Arizona, and now our team was on the brink of elimination. We were playing in a best of three series to win the National Championship, so now that we were already down 1-0, we would need to win the next night just to force a Game 3. But as I looked around at my players, I wasn’t even thinking about tomorrow. I was trying to think of what I needed to tell these kids right then. And at that moment I decided to do something I’ve never done before.
“Guys, just give me a couple of minutes,” I told them. “I’ll be right back.”
With everybody waiting on my next word, I went into the coaches’ office and shut the door. I got on both knees and began to pray.
God, you’ve led us here. What is your will? You have far exceeded anything I could have dreamt of at this point. If this is it, so be it. I do ask one last favor of you God…I need you to help me with this one. I need to walk into that room right now and I need to give them a plan that they can believe in. One that makes them feel like they didn’t lose today, and they’re just going to win tomorrow and the next day, like today never happened. I need them to know how much I love them and I need to reinforce in them how much they love each other. That’s all I ask of you.
As I walked back in that locker room, all eyes turned on me. And with everybody hanging on my next word, my mind just went...blank.
Okay God, anytime now. I’m waiting here.
I had felt his presence just days before in a must-win game earlier in the tournament, and I expected the same response this time. And yet, when the words from God didn’t come to mind, it was almost like Him telling me “You got this.”
There were over 35 young men and coaches waiting for my next words, and as I started to speak I finally found a moment of clarity. I could have talked about what happened that night, or what our game plan would be for the next day, but I decided to do something completely different. A year earlier God had given me one of the most profound experiences of my life, and now it was time for me to share what I had learned with my players.
What happened next is a story that only God could have written.
In many ways, the speech I was about to give was 21 years in the making.
When I arrived at Coastal Carolina in 1996, the College World Series was the last thing on anybody’s mind. Or rather, it was the last thing on the administration’s mind. I believed from the day I got there that we could get to Omaha, where they host the CWS every year. I really did. The only issue was getting anybody to believe me.
The first hurdle to overcome was the talent level at the program. I had taken a huge risk to move from USC-Aiken, where we had built up a consistent winner at the Division II level. Moving to Coastal Carolina was an upgrade in competition, but it was actually a downgrade in terms of the program itself. Our DII school could have beaten CCU most of those years, so if we were going to build a winner in Conway, we would be starting from scratch.
The second obstacle was our playing field…when I tell you that our field was bad, I mean it was really bad. The Toronto Blue Jays had used our facility for one of their minor league affiliates, but they left two years before I got there. By the time I had arrived, the entire field was in disrepair. Imagine trying to recruit kids to play in a field infested with mole crickets. The whole thing had turned into a swamp, and it wasn’t until our school president got his shoe stuck in the outfield that we got the money for an upgrade.
The third problem – and by far the biggest – was just getting anybody to believe in the program’s potential. That would include the administration, who had no ambitions of getting to Omaha. The College World Series was the last thing on the administration’s mind. All people wanted to do was remain a sleepy little college out by the beach, and if we could just win our conference each year, that would be perfectly fine. Anything else in their minds was just unrealistic.
By my third year, I was starting to believe that maybe everybody else was right.
We had lost way more games than we had won, and it didn't seem like we were even heading in the right direction. It got to the point where I had applied for another job. Not another coaching job, but to be a P.E. teacher up the road in Myrtle Beach. The offer was now on the table, and I’ll never forget talking with my wife about it.
“I think I need to do this for my sanity,” I told her. “I’m working 80 hours a week. We’re gaining no ground. Eventually, I’m going to get fired - if I don’t get fired right now.”
At that point, I wasn’t thinking about Omaha…I just wanted to stay employed. The pay was going to be the same, and I would get off at 4 or 4:30 every day with no work on the weekends. It meant that I would have to abandon my dreams of winning a National Championship, but we would be able to carve out a nice life for our kids.
I rode back to the school with my contract in hand, but as I began to pass by our church it almost felt like something was tugging the wheel to go in. I hadn’t set up an appointment or anything, but I pulled into the church and it just so happened the pastor was able to talk with me. We sat there for probably three or four hours, just talking about life and my relationship with God. I had to just trust in Him and realize He wouldn’t have opened this door if it was a door to failure.
I’m just sitting there, crying half the time. I was so distraught about the way things were going, but leaving a program at rock bottom didn’t seem like the right solution either. My dad reminded me that some of the greatest coaches had fallen along the way before they found success. All you needed, he reminded me, was to find a group of players who would fight for you. If I could find that, maybe I could actually turn this program around.
It turned out I would be staying in Conway after all. Getting to that locker room in Omaha, however, was a whole different story.
The turning point of Coastal Carolina baseball came during one of the worst losses of my career.
It was during that second year, when we were trying to record our first winning season with me as a manager, that we blew a 12-1 lead. At no point during the game did I feel comfortable with the lead, and as one inning gave way to the next, that margin began to get smaller and smaller. By the sixth inning, the lead was down to 12-9, and I basically lost my mind. I poured out a bucket of balls in front of our dugout and asked our team who had the guts to go in the bullpen and get three outs.
None of the pitchers wanted to go out there. We hadn’t come up with a clean-inning in what felt like forever, and they didn’t want to be the one to finally give up the lead. Well, our third baseman – who had never worked as a pitcher – volunteered to step up and pitch. He went out there and went 1-2-3 in the next inning. Then he went out there and did the same thing the inning after that. Now we ultimately lost that game something like 19-14, but I finally found what my dad said I needed. A group of guys who believed in this program.
Slowly but surely, the turnaround began to happen, from 23-31 my second year to 31-29 my third year. From there things began to take off…over the next 14 seasons, we averaged nearly 44 wins a year and went to 11 NCAA Regionals. I take no credit for any of that success, other than the fact I believed all of this was possible.
But as much success as we were having within our program, we couldn’t break through on the national stage. In 2005, we had a 49-14 record and with a # 1 seed in our Regional. The only problem was that our facility was so run down that the NCAA sent us to play the # 2 seed (Arizona State) at their place. We lost two of our three games against ASU, and just like that our season was over.
The 2010 tournament was even more painful. We entered the Super Regionals – two wins away from Omaha – with a 55-8 record. We lost the first game 4-3 to South Carolina, and in the second contest, we were four outs from forcing a decisive Game 3. We had a 9-7 lead in the bottom of the eighth inning before surrendering a three-run home run to lose 10-9.
That was the most crushing defeat of my career. It was the most talented team we’d ever had at CCU, and I knew that opportunity might never come my way again. I tried to hide it from my family, but that loss devastated me. I wouldn’t say we ever had marital problems, but I hid it from my wife how much I internalized that loss. For about two years it was just crushing me.
I don’t know if I stopped believing in God, but there was definitely some resentment there. I had always told people I would never pay for my own ticket to Omaha, and that I would only go when I was coaching a team that played its way there. After the 2010 loss, the frustration began to boil over.
You’re just never going to let me have this, are you God?
I tried to hide it from my kids, but I had basically turned emotionless. The thing I really wanted was to simply go to the CWS, and every day without a trip to Omaha I felt like a failure to my family and to myself. My wife was there for me through everything, and yet she was the person I had a hard time talking to.
For the next several years our program struggled to capture the magic of the 2010 season. We dropped from 55 wins to 42 each of the next two years, down to 37 in 2013 and down to just 24 in 2014. It was my first losing season in 17 years, but to make things worse, we had stopped doing our Bible study in the Athletic Department.
Finally, one friend approached me to see if we could start one up again. Of all the people on this Earth, I told him, I need to get together for sure. But the offer came with a stipulation: he wanted me to read a book.
“I don’t want to hear any lip about you paying me for it,” he told me. “I’m going to give it to you as a gift. It will change your life.”
He was right. I just didn’t realize that book would become the inspiration for that speech in Omaha.
By my own admission, I’m not a reader.
That book, titled “Lead … for God’s Sake”, sat on my desk for two months before I opened it. For some reason, in the late summer of 2015, I finally decided to give it a shot. My wife, who reads her Bible every night, sat next to me in the bed as I started reading. The next thing I knew, I had been reading for two hours without blinking an eye, and she was completely out. The next night, when we sat down to read again, she couldn’t help but take notice.
When she glanced over at me, my shirt was soaking wet. She thought I was soaking in cold sweat and getting sick before I explained that those were just big crocodile tears.
“The darn book is about my life,” I told her. “The main character is me…all the failures that this man had, I have.”
The book is about a high school basketball coach and a custodian. The coach had a talented team coming back with two future NBA stars on it, but the team just couldn’t find success. No matter what he tried, the wins just wouldn’t come. It gets to the point that one of his star players breaks his hand by punching a wall.
Eventually, the coach finds out that his players have been seeing the custodian for advice. The coach, curious as to why this is happening, eventually sits down to talk with the custodian himself.
I won’t ruin the ending for you, but the book had a huge impact on me. As the fall semester began in the 2015-2016 school year, I gathered my players around to tell them I was a changed person. I was going to tell every player and every coach how much I loved them, and truly mean it. Now that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to get on them or challenge them to reach their potential, but at the end of the day I was going to love them.
For my older players, I think they were confused by my evolution, like who is this guy? But I truly meant what I said. Every time I would see a player in the hallway, I would tell him that I loved him. I never pushed my faith on any of my players, but I definitely wanted to try and set an example for them. I started bringing my Bible with me on the road trips, and by the end of the season a good percentage of our players were believers.
And although I did not change my behavior so we could win more games, it started to have that effect. We put together a 12-game winning streak late in the season, sweeping through the Big South Tournament and putting us into the NCAA Regionals. We won our first two games there, giving us two chances to win just one game and advance to the NCAA Super Regionals (a best of three series to reach Omaha).
We lost the next game against N.C. State 8-1, setting up a rematch against the Wolfpack just a few hours later. Fans packed the stadium in Raleigh for the decisive game that would determine the fate of both our seasons. We were clinging onto a 3-2 lead heading into the bottom of the sixth inning when things started to come apart. We gave up two runs in the frame, and another in the bottom of the eighth, forcing us to come up with two runs in the top of the ninth if we wanted to save our season.
As we stared at the 5-3 deficit, the rain began to fall. We led off the inning with a pair of walks to put the tying run on board with no outs, but with each pitch, the rain began to fall harder and harder. Raindrops poured off the lid of Connor Owings’ helmet as he stepped up to the plate. He laid down a terrific sacrifice bunt to put both of our runners in scoring position with just one out.
Then the downpour happened.
By the time Zach Remillard walked out of the on-deck circle and into the batter’s box, the entire infield was just glossed over with water. Each puddle seemed bigger than the next, so when Remillard found a pitch to hit, the ball only skated across the infield for about 60 feet. Remillard darted for first base before anyone could make a play on him, and all of a sudden we had the bases loaded with one out. We were a double play from our season being over, but also just one hit from taking the lead. The Super Regionals were within our grasp.
And with all the tension building up to this moment, the umpires called the game.
The final score would have to wait until tomorrow.
This might surprise you, but handling all that pressure was the least of our worries that night.
We had checked out of our hotel earlier that day, so we had planned to return to Conway regardless of the outcome of that day’s game. Those plans suddenly changed when the game was postponed, so we returned to the hotel, only to find out that they were fully booked for that night. All of a sudden it was 1:30 in the morning and we still didn’t have a place to sleep. The conclusion to our game was in less than 13 hours and our team had yet to find a place to crash.
Of course, our team wasn’t just going to be battling fatigue. We were also battling the mental game because we had N.C. State against the ropes and now all our momentum was gone. I remember praying to God to give me the right words to say to my team, and as we sat on the team bus, I called for everybody’s attention.
“If you go there locked in, we’re going to find a way to win tomorrow. I guarantee it as I’m breathing and standing here,” I told our players. “Coming from here (pointing to my heart), it’s bigger than just me. I know this for a fact we are going to win. The thing I don’t know is which one of you will ultimately be the hero.”
As night gave way to morning and we headed back to the ballpark, the stands were packed once again with fans just as anxious as us to see the end of the game. G.K. Young stepped to the plate with the bases loaded with one out and drilled a grounder to the first baseman. There was a chance they could have turned a double play by going for the force out at second base, but N.C. State decided to play it safe and take the one out.
The deficit was now down to just 5-4, but we were also down to our last out. This was it. It was all going to come down to Tyler Chadwick, the kid who had come through for us two years earlier when injuries beset our team. When we literally had no healthy catchers left on our squad, Tyler was the one who stepped up to learn a position he had no experience playing.
I was watching from about 90 feet away at the third-base coach’s box as Tyler immediately got behind 0-2. I called a timeout to just break the thing up for a second and the entire time I was walking I’m praying.
If we don’t win, it’s fine. I can love these guys forever. I’m asking you, God, this is a favor. I need this thing…please God, no matter what, just please don’t let him strike out. Do not let him be the last out. If the next guy does, that’s fine, just please don’t let him be that guy.
Sure enough on the next pitch, he gets plunked right in the leg. I’ve never seen a guy so happy to get hit by a pitch in my life.
Now the bases were loaded for Seth Lancaster, and on a 2-1 pitch, he smacked a line drive to the outfield. Their right fielder came charging toward the ball, but just before he could lay his glove under it, the ball bounced off the ground. We had just taken the lead! On the very next pitch, Billy Cook hit a ball in almost the exact same spot to give us an insurance run, setting the stage for Mike Morrison to enter the game and close it out for us.
First guy – strikeout. Second guy – groundout. Their third batter hit a shot to right center, but Billy ran it down out of nowhere to end the game. We were heading to the Super Regional!
The next series against LSU was just as dramatic. We faced off in a best of three series, and after beating them 11-8 in the first game, we played an instant classic in the second matchup.
We took a 3-2 lead into the bottom of the eighth inning, and even though the game was in Baton Rouge (La.), this was technically a home game for us so we batted last. We were hoping to get an insurance run, but what happened next was a worst-case scenario. Lancaster – who had won the game at N.C. State and had seven hits in his last two games – was involved in a collision at home plate. As he made contact with the catcher, he tore something in his knee…not only was he out for the rest of the game, his season was instantly over.
The kid who replaced him in the top of the ninth was a freshman who had only started three or four games all year. I put him in at second base, and on the first play of the ninth inning a three-hopper ate him up in the infield. LSU now had a runner at first with no outs, and all 19,000 people in the crowd started going crazy, to the point where I could feel the concrete underneath me pulsating.
That play unnerved our pitcher, who walked the next guy on four pitches to set up men on first and second with no outs. I knew they were going to bunt those guys over, but their batter came up and laid down a bunt that was so perfect, I couldn’t have walked over and placed the ball in a better spot for him. We tried to make a play to no avail, and all of a sudden we had a one-run game with the bases loaded and no outs.
Bobby Holmes, our pitcher, came up with the gutsiest performance of his career to salvage the game. The first hitter tapped a comebacker between the pitcher and first base and we get the out at first but the tying run scored. With runners on second and third, the next batter walked to load the bases with one out and the game tied. He then struck out the next hitter and was able to get a fly out to left field on the next batter to send the game to the bottom of the ninth.
The entire time this was happening, my assistant coach was looking at me as I grasped the rail, just asking God what was His will. I would get that answer moments later.
After the final out was recorded in the top of the ninth, I told my assistant coach to give me 15-20 seconds. I needed some alone time, and right there I asked God for my kids to see confidence in me, to give them a plan they believe in.
I called on Anthony Marks and Michael Paez.
Marks was our leadoff batter, and I looked right at him in the eye.
“Anthony, you know how much I love you.”
“Yes sir, coach, I love you the same way.”
“Believe in me right here. You’re going get to first. It may be a hit, walk, hit by pitch, but believe me you’re going to get to first. With our track record, they’re going to expect a bunt 100 percent. We’ve practiced for four years, you stealing the base in life that matters. This is the one. Right here."
“Yes sir.”
I then spoke with Mike, our next batter. I was telling him the same thing, that I love him too. And even though he hated to bunt, he told me he was going to lay the down the best bunt of his life. I just laughed it off.
“No Mikey, I got a different plan for you today. When he gets to second, I so believe in you, I want you to pick the pitch you like and you’re going to put a swing on it that sends us to Omaha.”
Sure enough, Marks walked on a 3-2 fastball out of the zone. On the very next pitch, he ran from first to second in 3.19 seconds….that’s something that 1 percent of 1 percent of major leaguers can do. That’s insanely fast. And moments after that, Paez hit a big chopper over the drawn-in third baseman who was expecting a bunt, down the third-base line. As their outfielder made the throw toward home and Marks raced toward the plate, my life actually began to flash before my eyes.
I had been dreaming of this moment for 21 years, but in reality, this dream started long before that. Coastal Carolina was the place I had gone to school and was the place I decided to stay in 2008 after passing up a job at Auburn. I remember the tears streaming down my wife’s face when I told her we were staying put at CCU…there was no guarantee we’d ever get to Omaha at Coastal, but this was going to be our home. We had come so close to Omaha for so many years, but as Marks rounded third, none of those things mattered. He had a chance to change all of that right here.
The throw was great but Marks was even better. He slid safely into home plate, and just like that we were heading to Omaha!
But that’s not where the story ends.
After that loss to Arizona in the opener of the College World Series final, that’s when I stood up in front of our team. It was a rectangular room, and when I stepped out from that office and back in front of my players, all eyes turned on me. And even though moments earlier I had no idea what to tell them, I found inspiration. I was going to act like that coach from the book.
“Before we talk about tomorrow and the next day, I want you to do something. I want you to spend 6, 7, 8 minutes whatever it takes. I want you to take the time to go one guy by one guy, and I want you to eyeball each other. I want you to look in the eyes of the guy across from you, the guys sitting beside, the guy in the corner. Through that eye contact, I want you, without saying a word to him, I want you to show that you’re there for him for the rest of his life.”
That’s really what God wanted from me. He didn’t care if I was the brightest mind in baseball. He cared if I loved my team and my family and that I showed it.
When I returned a few minutes later, my players were all locked in. They were all in on everything I was about to tell them…I needed that because what I was going to say was going to sound crazy. I was going to have Mike Morrison, our closer, start Game 2 and go 100 pitches. The rest of our staff was so depleted at this point, it needed to be done. I then told Bobby Holmes, our setup guy, that he was going the rest of the way in Game 2. Nobody else was pitching in the game. Sure enough, those two guys fought and battled to a 5-4 win.
We were now 5-0 in elimination games, but the last one would count the most. This was the decisive Game 3 of the College World Series.
By the grace of God the next day’s game was rained out, giving our star pitcher another day to rest. Andrew Beckwith, who finished that season with a 15-1 record, would be that much more rested for Game 3. I told our players exactly what was going to happen…Andrew was going to go approximately six innings. And when he leaves, it’s not because we’ve got a big lead, but because we’ve got dudes all over the bases and we would have to make a change. I then turned to Bobby Holmes, who had rescued us in the LSU game, and said he was going to come in and give us whatever gas was in the tank. And Alex Cunningham, who had never saved a game for us before, was going to win us the National Championship.
Well, sure enough, Andrew goes 5 2/3 innings and leaves with a 4-2 lead but the bases were loaded. Bobby comes in and gets a lineout to first base to help get us out of the jam. And in came Alex to try and give us the title. He cruised into the ninth inning, leaving us just three outs away from the Title. But Arizona wouldn’t go down without a fight.
After a fly out to start the inning, Arizona got a walk and single to put runners on the corners with one out. A sac fly cut our lead to 4-3, leaving us one out away, but the tying run was still on first. On the next at-bat, Alex gave up a line drive to the left field corner…now nine times out of 10 (especially with the game on the line) the team is going to send that runner. But Anthony Marks, our left fielder, made such an outstanding play on the ball to run it down that they held the runner at third. Now the tying run was 90 feet away and the winning run was in scoring position.
Alex then worked his way to a full count in the next at-bat. This was it…Three Balls. Two Strikes. And One National Championship on the line. And when it counted the most, Alex smoked a fastball right by the batter for the National Championship. The school that once had mole crickets and no dreams of reaching Omaha had just done the impossible.
But it wasn’t just that we showed people that you can accomplish almost anything. It was that I got to do it with players I loved, and by honoring God. And that’s what sports are all about.