The text message chat began heating up a few weeks ago, entering the Big East Tournament.
It was more active leading up to the NCAA Tournament.
Lately, it has increased in volume significantly.
Members of the 1980 St. John’s baseball team — the last group of Johnnies to reach the College World Series — are loving every minute of the Red Storm’s run to the NCAA Tournament’s Super Regionals.
“The best thing that you can say is that watching them, especially in the [Tallahassee] Regional this past weekend, it reminded me of olden baseball and the fact that they play together as a team. They support each other,” Frank Viola, the former Major League All-Star and ace left-hander on the 1980 team, said in a phone interview with The Post.
“The interview [catcher Adam] Agresti gave afterward about doing this for the alumni, for the students and for everybody, that goes a long way for us old folk to have them say nice things about all of us. It’s a pleasure watching northeastern boys — no expectations from anybody — surprise people. That was us way back when. Nobody knew who the hell we were. We went out there, we competed and that’s what they’re doing.”
“Now,” he added, “they’re two victories away from getting back to Omaha, which would be a helluva story after 46 years.”
Last weekend, St. John’s won the Tallahassee Regional, upsetting No. 10 Florida State twice to advance.
They will face national No. 7 seed Alabama this weekend in Tuscaloosa, Ala., with the winner of the three-game series booking a trip to Omaha, Neb., for the College World Series.
It has elicited pride in a baseball program that has been mostly dormant in recent years.
But St. John’s has a proud history, counting Viola, John Franco, C.J. Nitkowski, Joe Panik, Rich Aurilia and Craig Hansen among its most famous alums.
“Years from now, St. John’s fans are going to remember beating Florida State in Tallahassee the same way we remember some of the great moments in program history that already happened,” said Hansen, a former first-round pick of the Red Sox who played for St. John’s from 2003-05. “To get St. John’s baseball back on the map the way those guys did this past weekend is phenomenal.”
Hansen is particularly happy for head coach Mike Hampton.
Hampton was an assistant in Hansen’s playing days for the Red Storm, and had to deal with taking over the program from Ed Blankmeyer during the COVID-19 pandemic.
team that reached the College World Series in 1980. St. John’s Athletics
He also dealt with a rash of injuries that sidetracked potentially promising seasons.
Hansen runs Pro Pitch Labs in Garden City, L.I., and has gotten to know some of the pitchers on the roster through his baseball performance and motion analysis center.
“The conversations I have with fellow alumni, we’re so excited to see how this group of individuals is representing St. John’s and what St. John’s stands for as a whole,” Hansen said. “Every game they were down, they could’ve packed it in, but those kids have fight, and I’m very excited to watch the games this weekend and watch them fight now against the No. 7 team in the country.”
Said Franco, the former Met: “These guys are a bunch of grinders. People don’t give enough credit to the guys up in the Northeast because of the weather. Most of the teams down South and Southwest are outside playing in January and February, where these kids are in the gym or they’re outside on the turf field fielding ground balls in the freezing cold. That’s what brings out the toughness in the kids.”
The Johnnies last reached the Super Regionals in 2012, losing to Arizona.
That team, though, won 40 games and was nationally ranked throughout the year.
These Johnnies started 1-10 and were a No. 4 seed — out of four — in the Tallahassee Regional. They were picked to finish fourth in the Big East.
Just winning the Big East Tournament to reach the NCAA tourney was an accomplishment.
But they had bigger plans in mind.
This weekend, St. John’s will again be a major underdog, facing a loaded southern school that is expected to advance with ease.
Alabama is led by superstar shortstop Justin LeBron, a projected top-20 MLB draft pick, and went undefeated during the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament.
But Viola has already seen St. John’s shock another powerhouse, and he sees some of the same belief his team had way back in 1980.
“[They] still have that New York hard-ass attitude. You mention St. John’s, that’s the first thing you think about,” Viola said. “Typical New Yorkers: You tell them they can’t do something, they’ll tell you, ‘Watch this.’ ”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
