Editor’s note: For more than six decades, the UA has been college baseball royalty, making 17 College World Series appearances and winning four national championships. The Star is re-living each of the team’s trips to Omaha.
1958: Cats make quick exit
What went down: The Wildcats were eliminated in two games during their fourth College World Series appearance in five years. Clemson beat the UA 4-1 in the teams’ opener, and then USC went and eliminated the Wildcats with a 4-0 win.
From the archives: The Star’s Abe Chanin wrote that the Trojans ace Bruce Gardner “shut the door” on the Wildcats, adding that the “stylish lefty” held the Wildcats to one run on six hits. He added:
Oddly enough Arizona got some of its finest College World Series pitching from Norman Popkin, in the first game, and Jim Ward, in the second. And the Wildcats weren’t badly outhit. Clemson had seven hits to Arizona’s six in the first game and it was the same ratio in the USC game. But Arizona left its wreckage on the basepaths. A total of 17 Arizona runners were left on bases, seven in yesterday’s game with the Champions of the Pacific Coast.
He said it: Chanin wrote that “the folks here expect USC to go on and win the 1958 championship despite the Trojans’ first-round loss to Holy Cross.”
“The folks” were right: USC went on to win the College World Series title, rallying from a 4-0 deficit to beat Missouri 8-7 in 12 innings in the winner-take-all championship game.
After Omaha: Richard Griesser, a member of the 1956 U.S. Olympic team, was named a 1958 All-American. After college, he became a noted teacher and coach at Flowing Wells High School.
He was inducted into the Pima County Sports Hall of Fame in 1998 and the UA Sports Hall of Fame in 2013. Griesser continued to take part in UA alumni games well into his 70s. He died in 2009.
The big number: 1. Arizona scored just one run in its Omaha trip, a club low.
