“Baseball is a cruel game.â€Â I have heard that venerable adage my entire life as a baseball player, coach and fan. Usually the statement is spoken as a universal truth by a losing manager or coach or by a player who did not succeed when success mattered most. I considered the phrase to be avoidance of acceptance of personal failure:  if baseball indeed is cruel, then the Game must have caused the bad result, not any personal failure by team or player. For me, baseball was a simple game with no inherent cruelty: get 27 outs and score more runs than the other team. One of the defining moments of my baseball life caused me to reflect, however, on heart-breaking events inextricably interwoven with the 27th out and to wonder if there is truth to the adage that the Game itself is cruel.
On May 19, 1967, the University of Texas Longhorns and the University of Houston Cougars prepared to play the third and deciding game of the NCAA’s District Six playoff series. To the winner would go a berth in the College World Series in Omaha. The teams had met in the 1966 District Six playoff, and Texas advanced after a 2-1 series win. For Texas, trips to Omaha were commonplace, but Houston was a relative newcomer to NCAA playoff baseball and had been to the World Series only once previously. To add to the significance of the day, this game would be the final Austin appearance for Bibb Falk, the legendary Longhorn coach who was retiring at the end of the 1967 season.
The 1967 Longhorns were not expected to be preparing for a playoff contest. Picked to finish in the second division of the Southwest Conference, Falk told the media that he hoped for a .500 season. Gary Moore, a pitcher/outfielder and the 1966 team’s MVP, had signed a professional contract with the Dodgers. His defection left the pitching to Tommy Moore, a hard-throwing senior righthander from Austin, Gary Gressett, a soft-tossing senior lefty from Mississippi, and a whole bunch of nobodies. I was one of the nobodies and was headed into my senior season in 1967. Pitching was expected to be a serious problem for Texas.
My UT baseball career prior to my senior year can be described as bad luck and bad pitching. I was a relief pitcher in the eyes of the coach, and to understand the role of a relief pitcher on the Longhorns in 1967, one must understand the rules governing SWC baseball at that time. The small schools dominated the Southwest Conference because, simply put, they could outvote Texas and Texas A&M. Consequently, the SWC did not allow fall baseball practice and strictly limited the number of games any team could play. In 1967, for example, UT played 25 regular season games, and West Coast teams often played more than 50. Because of the limited number of games, Coach Falk would use three pitchers predominantly—two starters and a reliever. If the reliever failed in his first appearance, he went to the back of the line to wait his turn for another chance. Often, that second chance never came.
