Twenty years ago a bunch of non-scholarship dirtbags (the most affectionate of all baseball descriptors) put the Chico State baseball program on the map. Sunday, the 1997 NCAA Division II National Championship team was celebrated prior to the Wildcats' series finale against Cal State San Bernardino.
That team went 52-11, won the Northern California Athletic Conference (NCAC) title, the program's first NCAA Championship West Region crown, and eventually the national title in walk-off fashion with two runs in the bottom of the ninth. The Wildcats piled atop Ryan Sasser, who scored the winning run, and arguably the most improbable NCAA Baseball Championship run was complete.
Just four seasons prior, the Wildcats had won just seven games. And in 1997, the NCAC was the lone remaining non-scholarship conference in Division II.
Ryan Sasser prepares to score the winning
run in the 1997 NCAA Championship game.
The Wildcats won it all anyway, winning four games in a row at the National Championships in Montgomery, Alabama. They crushed SIU-Edwardsville 25–5 to open the Division II College World Series, surprised top-ranked Tampa 5–3, scored four times in the final three frames to nip Kennesaw State 4–2, and then beat Central Oklahoma in a roller-coaster-ride of a winner-take-all National Title Game.
"Winning was in our blood," Sasser explained to Mike Baca of AM-1290 KPAY–who was in his first season of broadcasting the Wildcats–prior to Sunday's game.
Sasser was the first of 17 members of the program in 1997 in attendance to walk through a gauntlet of the current Wildcats, exchanging high-fives and words of encouragement.
The current Wildcats were wide-eyed and curious about the history and lives of the 1997 players. The members of the 1997 team were encouraging the younger generation to go get the program's third NCAA title. (They won a second title in three seasons in 1999.)
The celebration concluded with two-game 1997 College World Series winner John-Eric Hernandez and 1997 First Team All-American Josh Osborn sharing first-pitch duties. They threw strikes to Bryan Burchit and Eric Christiansen.
As the day wore on and the 2017 Wildcats' game got underway, the 1997 Wildcats trickled out of Nettleton Stadium to head home to their families and jobs throughout the state. They took something with them that only they possess: the pride of knowing that their success kick-started what has become one of the great collegiate baseball programs in the nation and that grows as this season's team continues to carve up the opposition.
Josh Osborn (left) and John-Eric Hernandez throw out the first pitch to Bryan Burchit (left) and Eric Christensen.
Current Head Coach Dave Taylor, who was the pitching coach in 1997, gets some love from his team.
Ryan Sasser walks through gauntlet of current Wildcats with the 1997 NCAA Championship trophy.
