With CWS National Title at Stake, Oklahoma's Ryan Gaines Reflects on the Glory of '94

Gaines is Skip Johnson's right-hand man, who was around (sort of) when the Sooners won their last College World Series crown.

Oklahoma baseball Chief of Staff Ryan Gaines | John E. Hoover / Sooners On SI

COLUMN

OMAHA, NE — The last time Oklahoma won a national championship in baseball, Ryan Gaines was about as far away from eastern Nebraska as he could possibly be.

Now, Gaines is the man at the very center of the Sooners’ latest push for a College World Series title.

OU plays North Carolina on Saturday at 2 p.m. (ESPN) in Game 1 of the CWS Championship Series.

Way back in 1994, as Larry Cochell guided the Sooners to an unforgettable title run, Gaines was helping then-OU assistant Sunny Golloway put together the second of their two straight National Baseball Congress championship teams for the Kenai Peninsula Oilers.

As OU catcher Javier Flores threw out Georgia Tech’s Jason Varitek for the final out, and as the Sooners dogpiled on the infield, and as Cochell raised the NCAA championship trophy over his head and rode off the field on the shoulders of his players, Gaines was finishing a plate of pancakes in British Columbia, Canada.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Gaines told Sooners On SI on Thursday from the first base dugout at Charles Schwab Field.

Gaines is now OU coach Skip Johnson’s right-hand man, for 20 years the Sooners’ director of operations, and now even carries the title Chief of Staff.

Gaines’ online OU bio says he’s “responsible for the day-to-day operations off the field, including team travel, serving as a liaison with the training room, equipment room, media relations, strength and conditioning, athletics administration and the Sooner Baseball Family. He is also the camp director for the Oklahoma baseball camps.” 

Earlier this week, when answering a question about how OU players maintain such a high level of execution in Omaha while keeping to such a strictly regimented routine, Johnson gave credit to Gaines.

“It really reveals probably one of the most important people on our team is Ryan Gaines,” Johnson said. “I mean, he's the one that sets the schedule every day. He'll talk to me about it. I mean, there's nobody in baseball better than that guy. I mean, 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.”

The beautiful thing is that Gaines isn’t just some guy hired by a baseball coach who’s no longer even here and then got to stick around. 

He grew up in Harrah, OK, where his dad was the high school baseball coach. He fell in love with OU football while Barry Switzer was becoming The King of Norman. In high school, his football coach asked Gaines if he wanted to interview with longtime OU athletic trainer Dan Pickett, so he spent five years studying the craft and graduated from OU in 1996. As a student athletic trainer, Gaines worked for the baseball team in 1992, 1993 and 1995.

That’s right — he missed the 1994 season due to a school rule limiting student trainers to no more than two years.

But as a coach, Golloway always surrounded himself with talent, and as he was taking the Oilers to back-to-back NBC championships, he put Gaines in charge of organizing things for the semipro team of collegiate players while Golloway helped Cochell and the Sooners finish things in Omaha.

“We were going up there to get the same thing (as 1993) set up,” Gaines said. “Yeah, the team had already started playing. We had played a game or two in Canada, and I guess we got invited to a pancake breakfast there.”

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The CWS went to a best two-out-of-three championship series in 2003. So in 1994, the Sooners and the Yellow Jackets came through a double-elimination bracket and played just one time for all the marbles — and OU won 13-5.

The game started at 11 a.m. Central, meaning 9 a.m. in BC.

“So we stood there and watched the whole thing on a little — I don't even know what it was — it was a portable TV that was probably the size of this phone,” Gaines said. “But it was cool, though. I mean, it was … it was exciting to watch all that.”

Of course Gaines regrets not being there to celebrate the trophy with his closest friends. While there was a profound satisfaction watching them live out their childhood dreams, there was also a void in not being there. But, there was also an immutable reality about the whole thing, a lasting perspective.

“I think really and truly, what gives me even more of an appreciation for all of it, I guess, is standing right here in 2022 watching Ole Miss take the trophy home,” Gaines said.

OU’s last trip to Omaha, four years ago, was pure joy — until it wasn’t. 

The Sooners roared through bracket play to the championship series, but then dropped both games to the Rebels.

Oklahoma baseball Chief of Staff Ryan Gaines (right) and OU deputy athletic director/operations Greg Tipton have been friends for decades and have spent a lot of days together in the OU dugout. | John E. Hoover / Sooners On SI

For Gaines, being at a pancake breakfast in western Canada and being in the dugout for Ole Miss’ celebration allowed him a teaching opportunity.

So when this year’s squad pounded Kansas in two games at the Lawrence Super Regional by a combined, all-too-comfortable score of 21-3, Gaines decided he wanted to share that perspective with the players,.

“We got back to the hotel, like, right after we got back,” Gaines said. “And I said, ‘You know, this feeling that you have, the excitement about going to Omaha is great.’ I said, ‘But we're not going to Omaha to celebrate going Omaha. Because the most miserable feeling in all the world is watching the other team dogpile on the field.’ 

“I said, ‘That was definitely, in ’22, a much worse feeling than I had in ’94. Because all my really close friends in college were celebrating victory, and I was so thrilled for the program, and those guys.’ So it was definitely awkward to see it from afar, but I had that thrill — but just the reverse of that in ’22 has really made me appreciate the journey of all this even more, for sure.” 

When Sooner On SI interviewed members of the ’94 team four years ago prior to the showdown with Ole Miss, they spoke with great reverence about those times, their relationships and their respect for Cochell and the all the work and sacrifice it took to make history. 

“You know, it’s an awesome feeling,” said closer Bucky Buckles, who pitched the final 3 2/3 innings for the save. “Everyone always remembers that last out, so I guess I get a lot of praise for it.”

“I just – it was like a dream,” said All-American second baseman Ricky Gutierrez . “Honestly, I can’t explain it. But it was something that everybody at the same time just felt that electric – I’d never felt that before.”

They also spoke at the time about how similar they thought the ’22 Sooners were to their squad.

“It just brings back a lot of memories,” said first baseman/DH Damon Minor.

“They were like us,” said Gutierrez. “They were not ranked high, they were not expected to do big things. But they got hot at the right time.”

“If you pay attention to it,” said relief pitcher Russell Ortiz, “then you start to see those similarities.”

Gaines also said in 2022 he thought the teams were similar — and he draws even more comparisons this year between the ’94 team, the ’22 team and the ’26 team.

“These guys and those guys are all going to be really close to one another for a long time, no matter what, because of the bond they've created, which is really unique,” Gaines said. 

“There's some really mature older players on our team, and you mix that with some really young, talented freshmen, and it gives you a pretty good mix of players,” he added. “And if you look back in that ’94 group, you had some talented older players, like Rick Gutierrez, Rich Hills, and then you mix it in with some the (Damon and Ryan) Minor brothers and Javier Flores. Those guys were young, so I mean, there's just a lot of parallels to these teams.”

Athletes of different backgrounds, some with scholarships and some with nothing, meshed flawlessly in ’94. Now those types of differences are more NIL-related. But between the ’94s and the ’26s, nobody cares.

“A lot of those guys were paying their own way to go to school — 11.7 scholarships (the newly revised NCAA limit is 34). And you just look what we're faced with today, you could see where some guys might be jealous of one another, things of that nature. This group's been really selfless in that regard.

“Nobody really cares about how much money somebody might be getting or not getting, and I would say that's probably why we're still here.”

Gaines saw the quote from Johnson, and he turns the credit back toward the Sooners’ deer-hunting, bass-catching, tobacco-chewing, Jesus-loving Texan who seem to really enjoy the idea of a summer home in Omaha.

“The thing that I really appreciate: Skip, he's been the reason why we have the success that we have had here,” Gaines said, “and it’s because he's so selfless. He's been so great to my family. 

“He does that with everybody. He wants no credit for anything. I mean, obviously I got a lot of experience of doing this job now. He does rely on me quite a bit. But I appreciate the fact that he does listen, and it's just a nice compliment from someone I respect a lot, you know?”