Dreams are as fleeting as a skittish bird.
They alight in your subconscious during slumber and then take flight from memory as soon as you awake.
But Sam Cohen had a dream 10 years ago that will remain forever nested in UC Santa Barbara baseball lore.
He’d made a bold prediction to his hotel roommate on the eve of the Gauchos’ game at second-ranked Louisville during the 2016 NCAA super regionals.
The Gauchos, Cohen announced, were going to upset the heavily favored Cardinals in dramatic fashion to advance to their first College World Series.
“We’re not just going to win it,” he told his roomie, “we’re going to win it in a walk-off.”
And then he nodded off into a dream in which he — a freshman, third-string catcher — delivered the fateful blow.
“When I woke up, I was pretty upset that it hadn’t been real,” Cohen recalled.
About seven hours later, it became an all-too-surreal premonition.
Cohen launched a pinch-hit, gran d-slam homer in the bottom of the ninth inning to shock Louisville, 4-3, and send the Gauchos to college baseball’s Big Show of Omaha.
ESPN shows the highlight-reel moment to this day.
UCSB coach Andrew Checketts kept replaying that video in his hotel room just hours after the game. He had to make sure it actually happened.
“I think I watched it 50 times that night,” he said.
Cohen and Co. are sure to replay that entire magical season during Alumni Weekend when UCSB celebrates the 10th anniversary of its historic run to the College World Series.
The team will be honored at about 3:10 p.m. Friday before the annual alumni game.
“Sam’s coming,” Checketts told Noozhawk. “He came back for last year’s Alumni Weekend, too … That group is really tight.
“Whether that’s a product of the winning experience, or the winning experience was a product of their being tight, the end result is there.
“They’re really very close.”
Cinderella Season
UCSB was in rebuild mode in 2016.
Nine of the 10 Gauchos drafted the previous year had departed for professional baseball.
They included three starting pitchers — first-round pick Dillon Tate, fifth-rounder Justin Jacome and 22nd-rounder Domenic Mazza — who’d helped UCSB earn a top-16 seeding for the 2015 NCAA tournament.
“We had some real athletic baseball players all around the field that year,” Checketts recalled. “I think going into 2016, there were some definite question marks.”
They did return Shane Bieber, a junior pitcher who would win the American League’s Cy Young Award just four years later.
“He did it on Friday … Went out there and showed everybody how to do it,” Checketts said. “He wasn’t the crazy, rah-rah type of guy, but he was solid and consistent and showed up every day consistent.”
The rah-rah guy was J.J. Muno, a redshirt sophomore who could play anywhere while batting a solid .291.
“He was the leader of that position-player group, for sure … Rallied them,” Checketts said. “If you go back to the highlights, you’ll see him in the middle of it.
“He kind of took over the last month of that season and was the motor.”
The Gauchos proved their mettle from the start, winning eight of their first nine games.
First baseman Austin Bush showed his lumberjack power by driving in four runs in an early season, 11-6 victory over UCLA.
Freshman outfielder Michael McAdoo then rapped an RBI single in the 14th inning to give UCSB an epic, 1-0 win at Oregon.
Another freshman, pitcher Noah Davis, combined with sophomore Kyle Nelson to allow only four hits in that marathon game.
The Gauchos were 18-3 by the time Davis and Nelson tag-teamed another quality win against USC, 5-2.
Both pitchers would later join Bieber in the Major Leagues.
“We had a Cy Young Award winner that year,” Checketts said. “We had two other big-leaguers and three Triple-A arms (Trevor Bettencourt, Joe Record and Justin Kelly).
“You look at it years later and realize, ‘Oh well, it wasn’t that much of a rebuild.’”
Fielders of Dreams
UCSB batted only .259 that season — the fifth-lowest team average in school history. Outfielder Devon Gradford’s .333 was the only average over .300.
But college baseball hitters in 2016 were limited by less-potent bats while facing pitchers armed with the more effective, high-seam baseballs.
“Offense was really hard to come by back then,” Checketts said. “Batted balls weren’t flying like they are now with the new balls.
“It was more team offense and on-base percentage, stolen bases, defense.”
Leadoff batter Andrew Calica led the running game with 18 stolen bases. Muno was close behind with 17 while Clay Fisher had 14.
Checketts also made sure to surround his strong pitching staff with Gold Glove defenders.
“Fisher was obviously a wizard at short,” Checketts said. “Ryan Clark was a shortstop who we moved to third base, and Muno was another shortstop who played second.
“We had a really good defender behind the plate with Dempsey Grover and speed in centerfield with Calica.
“We had several outfielders in and out of the corners, but when Gradford, McAdoo and Calica were out there, we had some guys who could really run it down.”
The Gauchos, however, ran into a prolonged slump midway through the season.
They won only 19 of their last 39 regular-season games and finished just 13-11 in Big West Conference play.
UCSB placed third behind Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State after losing its final league series to UC Riverside, two games to one.
The Gauchos were shut out by the Highlanders 6-0 in the regular-season finale … but to their relief, were not shut out of the postseason.
The NCAA seeded the Gauchos second for the four-team regional at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
“Our RPI was still in a good spot, but it felt like we were limping into it a little bit,” Checketts said. “We weren’t playing great … We were playing a little tight.”
Kids Play
He decided to loosen up his players with a game of Wiffle ball the day before their regional opener against Washington.
“We took them out to practice and played Wiffle Over the Line for an hour,” Checketts said. “I told them, ‘Play like that … You were playing and going for it and not worried about the results or the fans or the crowd or the pressure … So take that mentality.’
“Whether that had anything to do with it, or if it was just luck, who knows?”
But the magic was definitely back.
Bieber, Nelson, Bettencourt and Kelly battled the Huskies for 14 innings, allowing just eight hits with 17 strikeouts.
Washington, held hitless over the last seven innings, did scratch out an unearned run in the top of the 12th.
But Gradford responded by belting a tying home run in the bottom of the 12th.
“It was the only right-handed home run he hit in his whole college career,” Checketts said of the switch-hitting outfielder.
Two innings later, Bush walked off the 3-2 victory by slugging a leadoff homer over the right-field fence for the first of his four postseason homers.
“It’s definitely a moment I’ll remember forever,” Bush said afterward.
Checketts joked that the team had a “Magic Homer Button.”
“They would push it when we needed it,” he said. “We had the Gradford homer and the Bush homer … and then the Cohen homer.
“Those three were pretty magical, clutch homers.
“For a group that didn’t hit a ton of homers, they hit them at the right time.”
Bush homered again the next day to help beat Xavier, 5-4. Fisher drove in three of the runs with a single, double and a triple.
The Gauchos left nothing for doubt when Xavier faced them again after emerging from the loser’s bracket.
Bush, the regional MVP, and Fisher backed up Record’s pitching gem with a pair three-run homers. They also had three hits apiece, as did Calica, who scored three of UCSB’s runs in a 14-5 rout.
“Winning the regional is definitely a highlight of my career,” Checketts told reporters afterward. “We played up to our potential and played as a team.
“We turned ourselves into a good baseball team that achieved.”
They then took a bus from Nashville to Louisville for even greater glory at the super regionals.
Super Men
The unflappable Bieber, backed by Nelson’s two innings of one-hit relief, pitched UCSB to a 4-2 victory over the Cardinals in the best-of-three series opener.
“I just went out there and told myself I’m going to attack guys with a similar mentality as any other game,” Bieber said.
“Thankfully, I was able to do that, and my defense made plays behind me like they have all year.”
UCSB did have to rally from an early deficit. Fisher and Kyle Plantier supplied RBI doubles, Bush hit another homer, and Muno added a run-scoring single.
That sent Cohen to bed that night with his dream of destiny.
The 4,784 fans at Louisville’s Jim Patterson Stadium the next day figured the Cardinals held all the cards in Game 2 after taking a 3-0 lead in the fourth inning.
Zack Burdi, a 100-mph reliever who had just been picked by the Chicago White Sox in the first round of the MLB draft, took the mound for Louisville in the bottom of the eighth inning.
“He was probably the hardest thrower in college baseball,” Checketts said.
But four innings of scoreless relief from James Carter, Bettencourt and Kevin Chandler had kept the Gauchos in the game.
Muno lit another spark when he led off the bottom of the ninth by banging his second hit of the game up the middle.
That’s when the phone began ringing in the Gaucho bullpen … but not for another relief pitcher.
Checketts wanted the bullpen catcher.
“They called to say that I needed to run down to the dugout to get loose,” Cohen recalled.
“They told me to get ready to hit.”
Checketts had a hunch about Cohen, whose third-string status was more a result of a sore arm than a weak bat.
“He’d hit some big doubles for us and shown some real gap power,” he said. “He’d put on some pretty good shows in batting practice, putting the ball over the fence.
“With (Burdi’s) velocity, that matchup was the best we had available at the time.”
Walks to Grover and Billy Fredrick loaded the bases and gave Cohen his big chance.
Dreams of a grand slam, however, were long gone after Burdi got ahead with a one-ball, two-strike count.
“I was just trying to get that big, home-run-swing mentality out of my head,” Cohen said. “All I wanted to do was put the barrel on the ball and put it into play and get the next guy up there.”
The next guy would never get to bat.
Slammin’ Sammy
Burdi tried to fool Cohen with an inside changeup, but the 19-year-old, left-handed swinging Gaucho saw it coming.
“I put it into my wheelhouse,” he said. “I knew I’d hit it solid, but it wasn’t until I saw it really take flight that I thought, ‘Oh my God! That might go out!’”
He watched it clear the right-field fence just before he reached first base.
And then he “blacked out.”
The only other memory he had of his tour around the bases was of seeing UCSB’s dugout “going nuts.”
And even then, it didn’t all sink in “until I touched home plate.”
Checketts had been thinking about which pitcher he should start in Monday’s rubber match with Louisville when Cohen’s prodigious blow got him counting the baserunners.
“You know a grand slam wins it, but I was double-checking,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Wait a minute … that means the game is over, right? … You mean we’re not playing tomorrow?’”
Cohen was greeted at home plate by a mob of teammates that engulfed even umpire Danny Everett. He had stuck around to make sure that all four Gauchos touched home plate.
“I’d been in a few dog-piles when we won high school league championships, but I was usually on top of those … and they were nothing like this,” said Cohen, a graduate of San Juan Capistrano’s JSerra Catholic High.
“I was at the bottom. But honestly, I was so numb by then I couldn’t feel the weight of everyone on top of me.”
When both the dog pile and his head finally cleared, he headed straight for the grandstands to celebrate with his family. He and his mother, Lynda, clasped hands through the backstop netting.
“Mom was crying,” Cohen said.
Off to Chomaha
ESPN’s SportsCenter was the first of many media outlets that wanted Cohen to talk about his Walter Mitty moment.
“He’s a superstar now,” Checketts said at the time. “He saved me from having to do a bunch of interviews.”
Cohen’s slumber, so restfully joyous one night earlier, was ruined altogether when told that he would be a guest on ESPN’s Dan Patrick Show the next day.
“I Googled him,” Cohen said, “and when I saw his picture, I went, ‘Hey, that’s the guy in those Adam Sandler movies! No way! I’m talking to that guy?’
“I had a hard time sleeping that night, thinking about that, and replaying the game in my head.”
Final examinations added to the mental exercise.
“After winning the super, we stayed there in Louisville to take finals at the hotel before heading to Omaha,” Checketts said. “It was quite the trip.”
UCSB’s three-week journey entered its final leg at Omaha’s then-Ameritrade Park with opening ceremonies on June 17.
Hundreds of Gaucho fans made the trip, too. They came armed with signs that read “Chomaha” and “Why Not UCSB!”, while highlighting the letters US.
“The opening ceremony was one of the most memorable moments of the postseason run for me, being able to let everything about the experience sink in,” Clark said. “It felt like time was standing still.
“It’s a moment I will remember for the rest of my life.”
Bieber lost a 1-0 pitcher’s duel to Oklahoma State starter Thomas Hatch in the World Series opener.
The Gauchos bounced back two days later, however, with a 5-3 victory over third-ranked Miami.
This time it was Ryan Cumberland’s turn to come off the bench and play hero. He lined a single down the right-field line to score Muno and Gradford and give UCSB the decisive margin.
“I don’t get that opportunity without the guys getting on in front of me,” Cumberland said later. “I went up there, got something up in the zone, and it happened to find a hole.
“But it’s an at-bat I’ll remember forever.”
Two days later, on June 22, seventh-ranked Arizona ended the Gauchos’ season, 3-0.
The road trip had lasted 22 days, with Checketts sharing a hotel room with wife Michelle and their three young children the entire way.
“It was a lot of fun and the experience of a lifetime for our family,” he said. “But there were some days I had to exit and go get some work done.
“My wife is a champ.”
Checketts’ eldest daughter, Amelia, who was 6 years old at the time, took it the hardest when the Gauchos made their final out.
“She cried for hours,” he said.
This weekend will show, however, that it never will be over for UCSB’s baseball family of 2016.
Muno explained it best right after that final game.
“It’s been a very special ride,” he said. “I think this group all cares for each other and we all have each other’s backs …
“And we all love each other.”
