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 Power play FSU stuns Stanford in 13, meets Miami for CWS title
Posted: Friday June 18, 1999 10:00 PM OMAHA, Neb. (AP) -- The ball came off Karl Jernigan's bat and just kept going, taking Florida State into the championship game of the College World Series. Jernigan's three-run homer in the 13th inning gave Florida State a 14-11 victory over Stanford on Friday and put the Seminoles into the title game for the first time since 1986. With runners on first and third and no outs, Jernigan said he wasn't trying for dramatics. "All I was trying to do was get a ball to the outfield and bring in a run. The last thing on my mind was a home run," he said. It will be an all-Florida final Saturday when the second-seeded Seminoles (57-13) meet top-seeded Miami (48-13). The Hurricanes won five of six regular-season games against Florida State this season. Bobby Spano started Florida State's 13th with a leadoff walk. He went to third when Ryan Barthelemy bounced a single over the glove of first baseman John Gall, who charged after trying to hold Spano. Jernigan then hit a 1-0 pitch from reliever Tony Cogan (7-4) into the left field bleachers. He pumped his fists as he rounded the bases, and the Seminoles swarmed him at the plate. Amid the celebration was Florida State coach Mike Martin, who has brought his team to Omaha 18 times in his 19 seasons but has never won it. Arizona beat Florida State 10-2 in Martin's only other final in 1986. The Hurricanes owned the season series between the teams and Martin has few options on the mound after using seven pitchers against Stanford (50-15). But he showed little concern in the interview room. "We're going to be on time and we're going to fight for 27 outs," Martin said. "It's an uphill battle, but thank the good Lord, we're going to play for it all tomorrow." Nick Stocks (13-2), Florida State's No. 1 starter, threw the last two innings in relief. Stanford, which trailed 7-2 in the seventh, appeared to have it won with a 9-7 lead going to the bottom of the ninth. Cardinal coach Mark Marquess elected to leave in right-hander Jason Young, who already had three complete games in the postseason. It turned out to be the wrong choice. Young issued a leadoff walk to Jeremiah Klosterman and Kevin Cash then hit a two-run homer into the left center bleachers, tying it 9-9. It was Young's 167th pitch. "The only time to extend him is in the postseason," Marquess said. "We talked to him. To be honest, I thought he had a better fastball in the eighth and ninth than he had in the fourth and fifth." Stanford got the lead right back with two runs in the top of the 10th on run-scoring singles by Josh Hochgesang and Damien Alvarado. "After we took the lead with Tony on the mound, I thought we had a chance to win it," Hochgesang said. "But they continued to take it to us, and that's what it was going to take today." The Seminoles again came up with two runs to tie it as Marshall McDougall led off the bottom of the inning with a homer to left, and after an out, Sam Scott homered to left on the first pitch. "Even when we were down, we told ourselves we weren't going to lose," Scott said. There were plenty of highs and lows for both teams, with each doing anything to produce runs each time up. The Seminoles wore their hats backward in the dugout and the Stanford players rubbed the bills of their caps on every pitch. It was also a script that went exactly as Miami coach Jim Morris had hoped as he watched from the stands. After Miami reached the championship game by beating Alabama on Thursday, Morris jokingly wished for extra innings to tire whichever team survived to play the Hurricanes. "There's no question they threw a lot of pitchers today," Morris said. "They did go a lot of innings. You do whatever you need to do to win. To be honest, that's the same thing we would have done." Seminoles starter Jon McDonald left in the seventh after issuing a leadoff walk to Eric Bruntlett and going 1-0 to Craig Thompson. At the time, the Seminoles were trying to protect a 7-2 lead. John Gall pulled the Cardinal within 7-6 with a grand slam off reliever Mike DiBlasi. Left fielder Chris Smith closed on the ball and leaped as it cleared the wall, missing the catch by a few inches. Five batters later, Edmund Muth homered to right center, a two-run shot that put Stanford ahead 8-7. "We were all on a high in the seventh but I don't think any of us looked past the next out," Gall said. "Immediately after those big hits, we knew we needed to get back out there. We knew they were going to come after us again."
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