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In D3 World Series, Birmingham-Southern represents school that no longer exists: ‘Most insane story’
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They closed the doors to the private liberal arts college on Friday for the final time after 168 years.
Their baseball team could have quit, too, but refused.
Playing for a school that no longer exists, with a GoFundMe account set up for the team’s expenses, the Birmingham-Southern baseball team went out Friday and played in the Division III World Series in Eastlake, Ohio.
After losing the first game of the double-elimination series, the team extended its season on Saturday with a walk-off win.
They have become America’s Team.
“This is a story like no other, not anything I’ve been around,” Jason Sciavicco, who’s producing a documentary of the team, told USA TODAY Sports. “It’s the most insane story in a positive way.”
This is a team that was muddling along with a 13-10 record when the school announced it was closing May 31 because of financial woes, and the state of Alabama declining to bail them out for $30 million.
So, what do they do?
They went 19-4 to advance to the College World Series, including winning the super regionals when nearly half the team came down with food poisoning.
“It was crazy,” Sciavicco says. “They wake up with food poisoning, nine guys are throwing up, they had to get IVs just to play the game, one [closer Hanson McCown] is taken away by ambulance to the emergency room, and they win.”
They knocked off Denison, 7-6, earning an at-large berth in the Division III World Series, representing a school that no longer exists.
Birmingham-Southern’s most famous player is ace Drake LaRoche, who was last seen getting kicked out of the Chicago White Sox’s clubhouse as a 14-year-old kid, angering his father, Adam LaRoche, to the point that he abruptly retired.
He’s just one of the several storylines around the team trying to win for only the memories of a school that once existed.
“They don’t give out college scholarships,” Sciavicco said. “There’s no NIL money. It would have been so easy for these kids just to mail it in when they knew the school was closing. There are so many distractions.
“But to see how these kids have circled the wagons and have played for each other, for the love of the game.
“I’ve never been around a story as pure at this.”
Sciavicco, who has been in the film production business since 2005, has done plenty of sports films in his day, everything from college title runs to the New Orleans Super Bowl run, but nothing like this.
“This thing has been like a movie,” he said. “They are writing their own script. They don’t need any writers at this point.”
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