How Oklahoma is Finding Joy During the Mundane, In-Between Moments

COLUMN

OMAHA, NE — Get on the bus. Go to practice. Back to the hotel. Shower, eat dinner and then team meeting. Tomorrow, game day, another stiffly regimented routine, same as yesterday.

Then do it all over again. And again. And again.

Tucked away as honored guests in the Heart of America, finalists in this year’s College World Series, Oklahoma baseball players — and those from North Carolina — have been sticking to pretty much the exact same routine since the teams arrived for nine days now.

And still, four more days lie just ahead.

And the Sooners wouldn’t have it any other way.

In baseball, greatness — even immortality — is found in the mundane, the routine.

“I think that's huge,” OU coach Skip Johnson said Thursday after practice — officially, their last practice at Bellevue East High School. “I mean, that's the biggest thing, is your routines are your lifeline, and you got to keep doing the same things over and over.”

The Sooners are here, still, thanks in large part to a winning routine.

Johnson said he’s not the man most responsible for all that.

“It really reveals probably one of the most important people on our team is Ryan Gaines,” Johnson said of his Chief of Staff. “I mean, he's the one that sets the schedule every day. He’ll talk to me about it. There's nobody in baseball better than that guy, and I mean, as soon as they get here, man, it's a daily schedule, exactly — boom, boom, boom, boom. It's been really good. He keeps them grounded.”

If that sounds monotonous, that’s fine with Johnson. Because this particular OU team has leaned into the monotony. They find comfort in the mundane, growth in the process, joy in the routine.

No doubt North Carolina’s team does as well, though they’re not the only two rosters who can figure out how to capitalize on moments otherwise boring and dull and repetitive, and then forge those into championship memories.

OU (41-22) and UNC (53-12-1) play Game 1 of their best two-out-of-three series for the CWS crown on Saturday at 7 p.m. (ESPN). Game 2 is Sunday at 1:30 p.m. (ABC), and if no one sweeps, they’ll meet for a decisive third game at 6 p.m. Monday (ESPN).

College baseball is weird. After a 56-game regular season routine and back-to-back weekends on pretty much the same schedule — essentially, three important games packed into three days — the CWS picks four teams to play on day one, then gives those squads the day off while four more take the stage the next day. The day off in between games is great for TV ratings and certainly helps fortify pitching rotations, but it can wreak havoc on trying to keep everyone swimming in the same current.

A group of 18-22-year old men in 2026 might feel they’re in need of constant stimulation. Young people of any generation get can get restless when they’re not properly entertained. New challenges, a changing horizon, giving in to distractions — it’s all perfectly normal.

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But at OU, there’s a new normal: patience, reserve, constraint, composure. With the right frame of mind, having a certain imperturbability among everyday situations can carry over to the diamond on game days.

“I think it's very important,” pitcher L.J. Mercurius said after practice Thursday. “I think baseball is all about consistency, and every day we play, and the next day we practice. It was huge for us to be out here and practice and just keep going.”

Johnson said it again Wednesday night after the Sooners finished off an 11-4 deconstruction of No. 3 seed Georgia: these guys find joy in the small things, the in-between moments, like waiting on the bus for him to finish one more media interview. Nobody’s antsy to get back to the hotel. They’re using the down time to just be boys again.

Johnson said it’s those moments that come up in future conversations and reunions more than the details of any game. That's likely what members of OU's 1994 national championship team will be discusing when they get together again this weekend in Omaha.

“When you meet up, you don't know who got the biggest hit or who threw the most important pitch,” Johnson said. “You don't. What you do (remember) is the fun times that you had together, the corniness, the jokes, all the stuff that happened. And I'm really proud of the guys to throw that aside and really be selfless and pull for each other.”

Designated hitter Trey Gambill agrees wholeheartedly with Johnson on that. The fun times that endure are usually the ones that aren’t planned.

“Oh, it's a dream being here with the guys,” Gambill said Thursday. “I said it yesterday, we would not rather be anywhere else. This team, in this moment, together — we’ve been on the road for like, a month, which has been so fun. People don't get to see how much bonding time we get to do at the hotels, practices, lifts. Like, we just love being around each other, and we just love being here.”

Johnson said balancing the tedium of stoic routine with the human need for joy is “probably the one of the hardest things to keep them grounded, keep them on a daily routine, on a daily schedule when there's social media, there's things that are pulling several different directions: a girlfriend, parents, you know, just trying to keep them (focused).

“Anytime you get to go to a baseball field, it should be fun. If it's not fun, then you know what? You ought to just go fishing, or hunting, or just quit, you know? Go to work, you know? I mean, it should be fun. It's called baseball. You get out here to work on your fundamentals — what's the first three letters in fundamentals? Fun.

“I think that's a big deal for these guys to have fun and to play loose to have this team spirit.”

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