What was shaping up to be the worst year of Danny Oh’s sporting life began with an email.
It was late September of last fall, and the University of California junior was catching up on his correspondence when he saw an invitation to a meeting with the school’s compliance director. He thought
little of it, believing the Sept. 29 meeting would involve all the Cal athletes on campus and that it would address some of the rumors floating around about the possibility of the athletic department cutting programs.
Only when Oh and his Cal baseball teammates showed up at Haas Pavilion did it became apparent they were walking into the fire. They noticed athletes from just five of Cal’s 27 athletic programs. They saw a group of women’s gymnasts crying outside the gym.
And then it hit the Cal baseball players.
“We figured out we were in the same boat,” Oh said of the realization that Cal baseball had been cut from the athletic curriculum, effective at the conclusion of the 2011 season. “It was a pretty emotional day for all of us.”
Less than nine months later, Cal is on top of the college baseball world.
The program raised enough money — nearly $10 million — to keep the sport alive, and on Sunday morning the Bears play their first College World Series game since 1992 when they face Virginia in Omaha, Neb.
As if it could get any better than that, the Cal players can rest assured that this won’t be their final week of baseball after a flood of alumni donations helped keep the program alive for the foreseeable future.
“Everything seems to be working out pretty well,” said Oh, a Mill Creek native and former star at Jackson High School.
The free trip to the CWS certainly has helped ease the blow of a painful year for Oh. After starting more than 100 games over his first two seasons as a Cal outfielder, he came out of the gates slowly this year and eventually got benched.
While Oh watched from the dugout, his teammates found their stride. The Bears (37-21) eventually won six consecutive postseason games en route to this weekend’s CWS opener.
“I got off to a slow start, and coach (David Esquer) gave some other outfielders a chance, and they’ve been getting it done. You can’t blame him,” said Oh, who has just one at-bat in Cal’s seven postseason games. “But I’m happy for all of us. It’s been a great season. It’s a learning experience for me, and I have to come back and play better next year.”
As if the benching wasn’t bad enough, Oh expected to be selected in last week’s Major League Baseball, only to see 50 rounds pass without his name being called. Considered one of Washington state’s top prospects when he was a senior at Jackson in 2008, Oh very nearly found himself in baseball limbo.
But thanks to the generosity of about 40 donors — including baseball agent Scott Boras and former National League MVP Jeff Kent — he has one more season to prove himself at the school.
Starting this weekend, Oh and the Bears have a chance to thank those donors on college baseball’s biggest stage.
“We went through a lot this year,” Oh said. “We’ve come together as a team. This is the closest team I’ve ever been a part of. We’ve dedicated (the season) to the donors who helped bring us back. It’s for them.”
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