Manny Marin looked toward the dugout.
There stood teammate Andrew Fischer, looking back, pounding his fist against the Power-T emblem on his chest. The Tennessee junior knew the meaning of the moment. The biggest at-bat of the freshman Marin’s career stood in front of him.
“I rarely try to tinker with the freshman when they are in the on-deck circle,” Fischer said. “They are still pups out there, and they are still figuring it out. I looked at Manny, and sometimes you never know what’s going through his head because he doesn’t say much, but he just kind of had a little bit of a different presence about him in the on-deck circle. When he looked at me, he just kind of nodded, and I was like, ‘Let’s go. Let’s do this.’”
Runners stood on first and second as the Vols had just come back to take a 3-2 lead over Wake Forest in the deciding game of the Knoxville Regional. Marin dug into the box as he usually does in the nine spot of head coach Tony Vitello’s lineup. The young third baseman received a high and away fastball as time slowed down. Marin connected, sending the first pitch flying above the right-center field wall for a three-run momentum shifter.
His third homer of the season may as well have been the biggest.
“It feels good,” Marin said. “It’s where I wanted to be, the moment. It’s why you come here to Tennessee. On deck, I looked through the corner of my eye, and Fischer was there. I knew after his energy was given, that it was going to be good.”
Fischer himself had the closing act of the seven-run frame. After Gavin Kilen ripped a single to right, Fischer found time in between the action to amp up the home crowd. As he approached the plate, he turned towards the crowd and repeated his chest motion as the roars got louder.
It seemed inevitable.
Fischer took a few big swings to quickly get himself into a two-strike count. He wouldn’t be fooled for a third time. He smoked a down-and-in fastball screaming over the right field fence to make it an 8-2 game. His 24th long ball of the year brought the house down as he galloped frantically around the bases. Marin’s big swing was much to credit for the first baseman, even though he has had many in a Tennessee uniform.
“He just got it done, and I just lost my mind,” Fischer said. “I think from that moment when he hit the ball, I just blacked out. I don’t remember any of it.”
The atmosphere at Lindsey Nelson Stadium was expectedly at one of the top levels all season, a plea from Fischer himself.
“I was definitely pleased with the crowd tonight,” Fischer said. “I was just happy with the way the crowd showed up and was behind us. It really swung some of our momentum. These guys, they deserve — whether we play here again or not, moving forward for the next season, the season after, and the season after that — the crowd should be like that every single time. We work too hard for that to not be the case.”
