Top-10 power Arizona completed the 1974 baseball regular season by drawing 22,786 fans at Hi Corbett Field to a raucous three-game sweep over Arizona State.
The crowd was so juiced that two UA fans carrying brooms jumped over a chain-link fence on the Sun Devil dugout and swept the cement surface as the crowd cheered.
Most in the crowd thought they were looking at the first NCAA championship team in Arizona history.
The Wildcats posted the best regular-season record in school history, 56-4, and set still-standing school records in runs (700), shutouts (14), team ERA (2.06) and winning percentage.
Arizona led the NCAA in batting average (.348), doubles and triples. Coach Jerry Kindallβs second UA team was so stacked that sophomore third baseman Ron Hassey of Tucson High School β who set a school record with 86 RBIs and hit .421 β sometimes batted eighth in the lineup.
A week later, Arizona won the first round of the NCAA regionals by slamming BYU in Utah, 14-5 and 16-5. Quoting a popular Beach Boys song of the day, Kindall told reporters βI have good vibrations on this team.ββ
All that remained for the β74 Wildcats was to beat small-school Northern Colorado in the West Regional finals in Greeley, Colorado, in a best-of-three series.
How tough could that be? UNC was a mere 29-11, seemingly out of its element against the No. 2-ranked Wildcats. When the two teams last met in the NCAA playoffs in 1963, Arizona won with ease, 13-0 and 10-0.
Kindallβs pitching rotation for the first two games in Greeley was intimidating. Senior Dave Breuker of Amphitheater High School was a nation-leading 15-0. Fellow senior Dave Schimpf was 13-0.
A UA player scores against New Mexico during a game at Hi Corbett Field on April 27, 1974.
No wonder the Wildcats had produced winning streaks of 13, 11 and 11 during the regular season. They had four players hitting .400 or more: Hassey, future big-league outfielder Dave Stegman, first baseman Marv Thompson and shortstop Ben Heise. Former Amphi outfielder Jim Filippelli also had an outstanding season.
βWe have talent,ββ said Kindall. βWe have spirit and we have a vision to win a championship.ββ
And then it all went up in smoke.
Northern Colorado swept Arizona 6-5 and 6-2 at the schoolβs modest Jackson Field, which normally seated about 750. But on that graduation weekend, more than 5,000 UNC fans turned out to create a wild home-field advantage.
A few years ago asked Kindall about that β74 team, its premature exit and failure to become the UAβs first-ever national championship team, any sport, and he didnβt have an answer.
Arizona baseball coach Jerry Kindall, left, holding the Western Athletic Conference trophy with UA athletic director Dave Strack on May 29, 1974.
βThat might be the best team I ever coached,ββ he said, acknowledging his 1976, 1980 and 1986 College World Series championship teams. βBut (UNC) captured the momentum and we could never get it back.ββ
In the small-world department, I was playing golf last summer in Grand Lake, Colorado, and placed in a foursome with a tall, athletic man named Byron Hanson of Greeley. He had worked for years in the Colorado Rockies organization and told me he had played college baseball.
Where, I asked?
βNorthern Colorado,ββ he said.
I asked if he had been at UNC when the Bears stunned Arizona in 1974, when the Wildcats hit into six double plays over the two games.
βI was at both of those games,ββ he remembered. βI was wild. It was graduation weekend and the whole town went to the ballpark. It made a big difference for us.ββ
A UA player attempts a steal at second base against New Mexico at Hi Corbett Field on April 27, 1974.
The inability of the β74 Wildcats to get to the College World Series in Omaha ate at Kindall for years. His team won the WAC with a 16-2 record, the best in UA history. It placed seven players on the All-WAC first team.
But Kindall believed the loss also created a hunger that led to the UAβs stunning victory over No. 1 ASU at the 1976 College World Series and the national championship. Holdovers Hassey, who would play 14 years in the big leagues, and Stegman, two consensus All-Americans, celebrated on the field at the β76 World Series.
It was a good eraser. That β74 series in Greeley? The books were balanced.
