When Kansas baseball coach Dan Fitzgerald finalized his lineup just minutes before Sunday night’s first pitch against Arkansas, he didn’t even bother to tell Dariel Osoria that he would play second base.
“I just went up to the lineup board and saw Osoria, 5-hole, second base and I'm like, all right, man,” Osoria explained in a postgame interview with R1S1 Sports. “Just have to step up and just be ready and go after it out there.”
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Neither Fitzgerald nor Osoria could have known then that the move would pay off in such a major way during the Jayhawks’ 13-10 regional-title-clinching win over the Razorbacks.
But both knew that Osoria would be ready.
“I didn't even think to talk to him about it,” Fitzgerald said. “I just posted the lineup. … He's just a consummate professional. He shows up every day and works.”
Every day means every day.
Every day he takes ground balls at second base just to make sure he’s ready, even though he had not played the position in a game since mid-March.
Every day, he shows up to the ballpark trying to find that one more way that he can help his team win.
Every day, he prepares to play somewhere and at some point, even if there’s no indication that he’s going to be in the lineup.
“He needed to play second base tonight,” Fitzgerald said, noting that regular starter Cade Baldridge was out with an upper-body injury. “And the confidence that he played it with was incredible. He takes ground balls there every day and has worked every single day like he’s gonna go out there and start.”
The way Osoria sees it, that doesn’t make him special. It just makes him a good teammate.
On Sunday, he was the greatest teammate when the Jayhawks needed him to be the most.
After ripping a leadoff double off the wall in left-center to open the second inning, Osoria ripped a fourth-inning at-bat to nearly the same spot, only this time it cleared the fence.
At the time, the Jayhawks trailed 5-0. And while his solo blast that sparked a 6-run inning only cut into that deficit by a run, it was what it represented that truly mattered.
“We needed that home run,” Fitzgerald said. “We were down 5-0, he goes home run, and then we go single, single, single, single, home run. So that was a huge stretch. … He's just such a pro, and he cares at such a high level. Couldn't be more proud of him.”
Added KU shortstop Tyson LeBlanc, whose 4th-inning home run on the back end of that stretch mentioned above, gave the Jayhawks a lead they never relinquished: “That dude's a warrior. We've been saying it all year. He's one of the best hitters to come through here, and he showed up when the stage was the biggest. He picked us up tonight.”
“That dude's a warrior. We've been saying it all year. He's one of the best hitters to come through here, and he showed up when the stage was the biggest. He picked us up tonight.”
— KU shortstop Tyson LeBlanc on 2nd baseman Dariel Osoria
Osoria’s ability to do so didn’t stop with his trot around the bases.
When he returned to the Kansas dugout after the solo homer, he made sure to talk to every one of his teammates about what came next.
“I just went into the at-bat thinking, ‘All right, this guy's up five, he's going to come with a heater, just be ready for it,” Osoria said of the home run, his 9th of the season.
“It felt really good in the moment, but knowing that we were still down, I just tried to keep calm and just go in the dugout and be like, ‘All right, come on, guys, let's get it rolling, like, we're good, like, we've done this plenty of times. I just made sure I told everybody, ‘Come on, bro, we're not out of this. We're still in this game. It's just four runs. We’ve come back from more.’”
That gesture, by the second-year Jayhawk, was indicative of what this team has been about all season long.
Fitzgerald has said before that sometimes he feels like he should go out of his way to give his guys teaching points or a daily lesson. But more often than not, he lets the thought go without acting on it.
That same line of thinking was why he didn’t feel the need to talk about the lineup move with Osoria before Sunday’s game.
“These guys are so connected and so tight,” Fitzgerald said. “There are a bunch of parts in the game where, you know, I think, ‘Man, should I be saying something?’ Then it’s like, no, they've got it; they're saying plenty.”
Osoria was part of another such instance in Sunday’s win, when he returned to the dugout and “barked,” according to Fitzgerald, at first first baseman Josh Dykhoff for sneaking too far into the hole off of first base on a ball hit Osoria’s way.
“You cover first, I’ve got that,” was the meat of the message and Fitzgerald absolutely loved it.
“Just the confidence that I have in myself as a player, I just always take my reps serious at second base,” Osoria told R1S1 Sports. “And just knowing that I had to come out and play second wasn't really any nerve-wracking feeling for me. I just went out there and just played, did the best that I could and played to my ability.”
That approach led to a 4-for-5 night at the plate, with a double, the key home run and him legging out a bunt single that came when he was just trying to move the runners over to add to KU’s lead in the 8th.
“Beating it out was awesome, man,” Osoria said of the bunt. “I knew once I laid it down, I was like, ‘Oh man, I actually probably have a shot to beat this out.’ I just looked down and kept it moving.”
It’s that type of player that this Kansas baseball team is made of; every one of them is there to help the team before he worries about himself.
The fact that that philosophy has taken them to the first Super Regional in program history is both validation that the approach works and absolute euphoria in seeing where it can lead.
“It feels amazing,” Osoria said. “Just coming back here, and obviously being one of the returners, and just trying to help lead with the special group of guys, such as Dom (Voegele), Balls (Brady Ballinger) and Manning (West), Cannon (Karr), just all the returning guys that we have, it's just an amazing feeling.”
Next up, Osoria and the Jayhawks will open play next weekend in the school’s first ever Super Regional, either at home against Oklahoma or at Georgia Tech.
Those two play a winner-take-all game in Atlanta at 2 p.m. Monday to decide who wins the Atlanta Regional and moves on to face Kansas.
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