WVU baseball's record crowd flatters Mazey

They all were wondering, as his final season as WVU coach roared past the halfway point with his team ranked in the national polls, what was going through his head.

As he was being asked by the Dominion Post’s Justin Jackson if “at any point in the game, did you take that moment to look back at the crowd and take it all in,” you could sense the emotion welling up in Mazey.

His Adam’s apple began bobbing up and down as he swallowed hard and you could almost tune into his thoughts at that moment.

“When they played that one song ...,” he began, pausing for a moment.

Normally, he would be referring to “Country Roads,” but that is always saved for last, for the moment of victory, a wonderfully, warm yet chilling tradition of how one song can bring an entire state together, arms around each other, swaying back and forth.

But this time it wasn’t John Denver but instead Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” he was speaking of. It is as if Pitt has adopted as its version of “Country Roads”, only it’s hardly an anthem when it’s sung by a crowd of 4,600 WVU fans, doing some rewriting of Diamond’s words with insertions for emphasis that are left unwritten here but you may assume have something do with the ingestion of something that rhymes with Pitt.

“It was just amazing,” Mazey continued. “I looked up there and my wife is crying like a baby.”

Mazey tried to say something more at this point but tears came to his eyes rather than words to his mouth. Again he swallowed hard, the emotion of the moment building with him.

“Look, there she goes again,” he said, briefly brushing away moisture from his own cheek, quietly looking back at her alongside the dugout. “I know what I’m going to get when I go home ... ‘This is your last Brawl in Morgantown as the head coach here, so what a great way to play my last home game against Pitt.’”

It was quickly brought up that the record crowd, the mocking echoes of the song “Sweet Caroline” emphasizing the intensity of the rivalry, it all was a tribute to Mazey — no, make that the Mazeys — and what they have done for WVU baseball, the school, the community, the state.

“Part of what I said 10 years ago was coach speak, that we know what we can do with this program, but to actually see it come to fruition is another thing. All 4,600 people that were here tonight, I wish I could just go aisle to aisle and shake everybody’s hand and thank them for the support they have given this program.”

That was not coach speak. That came from the heart. When Mazey gathers his team on the first-base line after victories to sing “Country Roads,” he has seen to it that they know the words, no matter where they are from.

He lets them know what it means to be a Mountaineer, to feel what West Virginians feel, the pride of being from this beautiful state, the history that brought it to this point and how much and why the state university means so much to them.

And if you love West Virginia, you hate Pitt; the word hate being used in the most loving way.

There is no rivalry, you see, without Pitt. There is no meaning to the rivalry if it isn’t hotly contested between two cities near the border of the two states, two cities vastly different in demographics but whose hearts really beat as one when it comes to cherishing their schools, their traditions, their history.

Right now, on the baseball side, the scale tips in WVU’s balance and that can be attributed to Mazey’s time at the school. The Mountaineers have won the last seven meetings between the two schools and have one more this year, that to be played in the Pirates’ home PNC Park, which will give it a whole different feel than it had as the broke an attendance record — and probably a beer sales record — at Kendrick Family Ball Park.

You often hear Mazey talk of what he inherited when he came to Morgantown from TCU, where he was serving as an assistant coach. Hawley Field was, quite frankly, bush compared to the stadiums he would play in throughout the Big 12.

Because of that, he was facing a terrible recruiting disadvantage, yet he proved himself to be a different kind of coach, playing a unique style of baseball that came to be known as “Mazeyball”, and creating a different atmosphere than ever was there before.

So, they built him a ball park.

There is something about the new name of the stadium that creates so much pride. Kendrick Family Ball Park may be named for the Kendrick family, but it is being adopted a meaning far beyond that.

This is the Mountaineers family’s ball park.

They come wearing gold and blue, they come with their friends, their wives or husbands. They bring their kids and, on Bark at the Park night, they bring their dogs, too.

It is the personification of the family atmosphere Mazey has given the team, with so much added by his wife, Amanda Ross Mazey, who became a fixture in the seat alongside the dugout. She is the den mother, so to speak, yet also has contributed as a part of the package.

The TV broadcast noted that she was professionally supposed to be the dugout reporter for the game, but had asked out of that so that she could sit in that seat and be a fan for the night, enjoying her husband’s final Backyard Brawl at home.

The Mazeys have shared their lives with us from the moment they came to town. The joy of seeing her son, Weston, known as Wammer, as a mere tot serving as batboy, watching him grow into the young man he now is, ready to come to WVU to play baseball having survived a near tragic on-field head injury.

He and sister, Sierra, grew before our eyes and became part of the community, of the fan base, an extension of the coach himself and his vision of what he wanted playing at West Virginia to be.

They’ve all played a part in it and they included the fans themselves as part of the journey, for Mazey really believes that their support is a large part of the winning tradition that is now being established.

“The support they have given this program makes it hard for Pitt’s pitchers to throw strikes and for Pitt’s hitters to hit when our crowd is so into the game. I’ve always said we put an entertaining product on the field. Come and be entertained, but come and help us win, too. And I think that’s what they do,” Mazey said.