"The Banner" Connects Notre Dame's College World Series Teams, Twenty Years Apart
That banner. It only flew in public for one season, but nearly two decades later that banner is the symbol of what connects Notre Dame baseball’s past and present, the latter of which is now on college baseball’s biggest stage at the College World Series.
The banner flew over Notre Dame’s Frank Eck Stadium during the 2003 season, the season after head coach Paul Mainieri led the Irish to only its second College World Series appearance.
That 2002 College World Series banner was the first in a new tradition Mainieri established going forward. With each new season, a banner would fly over Eck Stadium at Notre Dame that would display the previous season’s greatest accomplishment.
Before last weekend, June 12th to be exact, Mainieri says he hadn’t laid eyes on the banner since it was put away in storage after that 2003 campaign. The Hall of Fame coach had left Notre Dame for LSU after the 2006 season with eight straight NCAA Tournament appearances and a Big East record five consecutive conference titles in his pocket.
Then after Link Jarrett’s Irish took two of three games from No. 1 Tennessee to send the program to its first CWS since Mainieri’s gold standard 2002 squad, the current group did something that brought Mainieri to tears.
They unfurled that banner in celebration on the Lindsey Nelson Stadium infield for all the world to see.
“I can’t even describe in words what that meant to me and to all the players from that (2002) team,” Mainieri told Irish Breakdown. “When they showed on television, them holding that flag in front of their team, I’m not ashamed to tell you that I lost control of my emotions. I was sitting all by myself in my little theater room here in Baton Rouge, Louisiana crying my eyes out, because it meant so much to me.”
Exactly who procured the banner for the 2022 team to tote to Knoxville is not completely clear. Jarrett wasn’t sure, but there is more behind what that banner means than just the four interlocking ND logos.
The banner is a symbol of the bond that connects the two teams that made trips to Omaha with 20 years between them.
“When I got the job, (Manieri) called me, and Nick, his son, is our academic adviser. So, before I ever got here, Paul was like ‘I’m going to tell you some of the things I think you need to know as you enter Notre Dame’,” Jarrett said.
“And we talked. I sat in a little Starbucks near my house in North Carolina for 40 minutes and I literally was like writing things down," continued the Irish head coach. "Some of the stuff I one hundred percent agreed with and did. Some of the things I said, that’s probably .... I didn’t tell him, but I said that’s probably not my style of doing it. Every coach has to have his style.”
“And that was call one. His continued advice on how to navigate some of the things that make Notre Dame very special, but very unique, he guided me.”
This being the 20th anniversary of that 2002 Irish team, the now mostly 40-somethings gathered back on campus in April. They watched two of the current team’s games against Boston College. Mainieri threw out at the first pitch before game two of the series on April 30th and then the two teams shook hands and exchanged greetings before the Irish beat the Eagles 11-5.
“It wasn’t just a high-five and work your way through the line, like at the end of a ballgame,” Mainieri said. “They would literally shake each other’s hands, look each other in the eye and exchange (comments) like ‘You can do it guys’ or ‘We’re proud of you’ (and) ‘Hey, thank you for what you did for the program’. There was so much great interaction.”
It wasn’t the first time Mainieri had interacted with the current Irish team though. He was back in South Bend for a football game last fall and when Jarrett found out, he invited Mainieri to speak to his team after a Friday practice.
“I said, Coach I want you to come talk to the team after practice,” Jarrett explained. “So, he came out there and I think him talking to that group meant a lot to the group, but also, when I say full-circle it kind of closed that circle for him to and now we get to see that circle play out, that circle be together and there’s not a better place to do it.”
Mainieri jumped at the chance to meet Jarrett’s squad. It was the first time since he left Notre Dame in the summer of 2006 that he had the chance to speak to a Fighting Irish team. He relayed to them the similarities the two teams had in past disappointments and how they could use that as fuel to reach higher future goals.
Mainieri’s 2000 Notre Dame team had fought through the elimination bracket of the Mississippi State Starkville NCAA Regional, only to fall to the host Bulldogs in the championship game. It was an experience similar to the 2022 team’s Super Regional loss at Starkville to eventual national champions.
“I explained to the guys that although we lost that Regional, and although (they) lost the Super Regional, I know our team, way back then, grew from that experience so much that it gave us unbelievable confidence the next couple of years,” Mainieri recounted. “I said to them, I’m going to predict that you guys are going to find a way to win this year in the postseason and make it to Omaha. I’m predicting that and when you get to Omaha, I’ll be there rooting for you.”
Mainieri kept that promise. He and his wife Karen, along with 2002 Irish pitching coach Brian O’Connor, who’s been the head coach at Virginia since 2004, and several other ‘02 Irish players watched the current squad in their Friday CWS win over the Texas Longhorns.
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