Tanner Leggett spent plenty of extra hours at Dudy Noble Field.
Alone, sometimes in the dark, the Mississippi State infielder did his best to learn to hit the one pitch he couldn’t handle very well.
“Nobody ever knew that Tanner Leggett stayed after practice to hit sliders, but he would do it all the time and work on it,” former MSU outfielder Tanner Allen said.
And when Leggett came up with a man on second in the bottom of the ninth inning of MSU’s College World Series bracket final against Texas, he smashed a hanging slider into left field to walk off the Longhorns and send the Bulldogs into the CWS championship series.
“I tell everybody I think it’s the biggest swing in Mississippi State history,” coach Chris Lemonis said.
Leggett’s extra work — and its impact on the Bulldogs’ championship-winning season — was revealed in the documentary “Banner Year: The Story of Mississippi State’s First National Title,” which premiered Tuesday evening on the SEC Network.
The hourlong special was short on shocking revelations but long on commentary as a long list of Mississippi State staff, players, alumni and fans discussed MSU’s first team national title in any sport.
“They earned this,” athletic director John Cohen said. “They deserved it. These players, the student-athletes, deserved it. The coaching staff deserved it.”
The Bulldogs finished the 2021 season with a 50-18 record, defeating Vanderbilt in three games in the championship series to win their first crown.
Mississippi State had made 11 previous College World Series appearances, but players like Rafael Palmeiro and Will Clark could never capture a title.
The 2021 Bulldogs changed that.
“The fans had kind of gone through a lot,” said pitcher Will Bednar, the 2021 CWS most outstanding player. “There’s been a lot of really good teams in Mississippi State history and a lot of teams in years past that have made it really far in Omaha but weren’t able to come through.”
What was different for MSU last season?
Coach Chris Lemonis mentioned a team never willing to give up as well as what pitcher Landon Sims called a “loaded” roster thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Bulldogs expected great things from a pitching staff that went on to set an NCAA single-season strikeout record with 817.
“If we’re going to win a national championship, I think it’s going to be this year,” Sims said he and his teammates agreed before the season.
Mississippi State was cruising to a sure top-eight national seed before faltering late in the season. The Bulldogs dropped two of three games at home to last-place Missouri, and two weeks later, they went 0-2 in the Southeastern Conference tournament.
Panic set in among a fanbase accustomed to more success.
“When you live in Starkville, Mississippi, the sky is falling,” Lemonis said.
But it wasn’t. The Bulldogs had still done enough to secure a top-eight seed and home-field advantage into Omaha. They swept through the Starkville Regional, beating Samford, VCU and Campbell.
In Super Regionals, MSU took advantage of what catcher Logan Tanner called a “tell” by Notre Dame pitcher Alex Rao, who was signaling with an inadvertent hand motion when he would be throwing a breaking ball.
Tanner hit a three-run home run off Rao in the second inning of the decisive Game 3, an 11-7 win to send the Bulldogs to Omaha.
Along came the fans, in droves, turning TD Ameritrade Park into what pitcher Houston Harding called a “sea of maroon and white” in a Twitter Space previewing the documentary on Monday.
“We don’t have professional sports really anywhere close to here,” said Chad Dacus, who runs the “One Tortilla Grill” in the outfield of Dudy Noble Field. “This is the closest thing we’ve got.”
The Mississippi State faithful watched as MSU won its first two games, sailing into the bracket final against Texas. Bednar struck out 15 Longhorns in six innings as the Bulldogs won their opener before a thrilling comeback against Virginia.
“Will Bednar in that first Texas game, that may be the best outing in College World Series history,” Lemonis said.
ESPN analyst Kyle Peterson noted any team hoping to make a deep Omaha run requires an ace like MSU had in Bednar. Bednar’s teammates said the same.
“To have him out there on the mound, you kind of just expected to win,” pitcher Preston Johnson said. “You just sat back and watched the show because he’s going to go six, seven, eight innings.”
Bednar went 6 1/3 frames in the Bulldogs’ bracket clincher June 26 against Texas. On just three days’ rest in MSU’s final game, he was called on to face Vanderbilt.
The right-hander said he wasn’t sure he was starting that night until he got a call from pitching coach Scott Foxhall.
“Hey, what are you doing at 6 o’clock tonight?” Foxhall asked
“Winning a national championship,” Bednar replied.
He tossed six no-hit innings against the Commodores, and Sims finished things off, coming out of the bullpen to seal a 9-0 win.
Sims and Tanner looked at the dugout and saw their teammates pouring out. After all the stress of the regular season and postseason, Sims said he felt “relief” as the Bulldogs prepared to celebrate.
They dogpiled to the left of the mound as confetti flew. Lemonis even joined in after refraining from previous celebrations.
“For me, I’ve dreamt of the streamers coming down my whole life,” he said. “I always told the kids I’m only jumping on one dogpile. That’s the one.”
Maybe it was only fitting for a unique moment in MSU history.
“It was Mississippi State’s time,” longtime team bus driver Everett Kennard said. “It was just our time to do it.”
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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