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MORGANTOWN - It was Monday and normalcy was returning to the West Virginia University campus after a difficult weekend for the three men who had lifted the Mountaineers baseball to a new level.
Hopes for a celebration of a Super Regional victory were over, as was the Randy Mazey era as coach and JJ Wetherholt’s run as the best player ever to wear a Mountaineer uniform.
It ended with the bases loaded; the tying run 90 feet from home plate in the ninth inning of a hard-fought loss to the nation’s No. 4 team, 2-1.
The story of that game, though, had been written much earlier. First inning, first pitch, Carolina’s star outfielder Vance Honeycutt had hit the game’s first pitch over the left field fence, just as he had hit the last pitch the night before over that same fence for a two-run walk-off home run and 8-6 Tar Heel victory.
Bottom of the first, leading off, WVU star shortstop Wetherholt, seemed to have matched Honeycutt’s feat with a towering drive to right field, a ball that stayed airborne seemingly forever, but lost its battle with gravity at the base of the wall, where it was nothing but an long out.
And so, the story of the weekend was written. One star carrying his team, the other unable to deliver the same magic.
It had been a tough couple of weeks for Wetherholt to end a season that had been a tough four months, having torn a hamstring in the season’s first game, forcing him to miss 24 games. With that he lost the precision that comes from preseason preparation and what a year ago was a .441 sophomore season - honest, that was his average and is not a typographical error - became what would end as a .331 junior season.
Cheers turned to tears.
You can point no fingers at Wetherholt, but his final eight games as a Mountaineer were hardly the ending the story he had been writing his whole time at West Virginia needed.
In the final regular season game, two games in the Big 12 Tournament, both losses, three games in the Tucson Regional, all victories, and the two North Carolina losses Wetherholt had managed to bat just .161 with five hits -- all singles -- in 31 at bats.
Five of the eight games saw him go hitless.
He actually hit the ball better than that. Three balls went to the wall, a number of hard-hit balls were right at fielders.
But Lady Luck is a fickle mate and as it turned out, she was not on West Virginia’s side on this last weekend.
It sent Mazey into retirement without enjoying a trip to the College World Series as a going-away prize. It sent Wetherholt into the Major League draft later this month in the midst of a dreadful slump.
And it was equally unkind to another Mountaineer baseball legend.
Mazey’s final press conference would see him acknowledge not only Wetherholt but Alek Manoah of the Toronto Blue Jays in his final press conference as coach.
“Some guys,” he said, “come along in your career that can single-handedly change the face of an entire program. Alek Manoah did in 2019 when we hosted a Regional and JJ Wetherholt has changed West Virginia baseball for that.”
Wetherholt offered his thanks to all who had helped him along the way.
“It’s been awesome. It’s been the best three years of my life,” Wetherholt said. “I want to thank Coach for believing in me, my teammates for pushing me and the entire coaching staff for making me the player I am today.
“I wanted this one so bad, but that’s just how the game goes sometimes. It’s a tough game.”
“JJ knows this, but my relationship with him is not over. It’s just beginning. I won’t be coaching him anymore. I’ll always be a fan of his, not just as a player but as a person. His family and what they stand for and I could say the same thing about every one of the guys on this roster.
“I love these guys. I’ll never forget any of them. I am going to take this team picture and put it in the office in my house and look at it.”
Mazey, Manoah and Wetherholt had changed the face of WVU baseball, but now Mazey was retiring, Wetherholt moving forward and Manoah, it was announced on Friday, undergoing the surgeon’s knife.
A first-round draft selection of the Blue Jays, Manoah had burst on the major league scene in 2021 by going 9-2 with a 3.22 earned run average in 20 starts then followed that up in 2022 by going 16-7 with a 2.24 ERA while finishing third in the American League Cy Young Award voting.
But things went haywire last year when he suffered problems with his right shoulder in spring training and then again later in the year, finishing a 5.87 ERA and winding up the year in the minor leagues.
He got a late start on this season and seemed to be coming on before leaving his May 29 start against the Chicago White Sox with elbow discomfort that he had first felt in his previous start against the Detroit Tigers.
A visit to the noted orthopedist surgeon Dr. Keith Meister produced a second opinion that recommended elbow surgery, either Tommy John or internal elbow brace surgery that would put him out of action a year to a year and a half.
Now all three of them move on to the next challenges ahead.