Tennessee star Christian Moore can see baseball clearly. Can MLB?
Volunteers slugger became only the second person in Men’s College World Series history to hit for the cycle
June 1956 was a different time in America. As a country, we had barely been blessed with the bittersweet technology of the snooze button on alarm clocks, and Elvis Presley was just starting to cause a ruckus by performing on TV without a guitar, making his hip gyrations on stage the stuff of national concern.
It also happens to be the first time that someone ever hit for the cycle in the Men’s College World Series.
It was also the only time that such a statistically quirky but remarkable hitting feat occurred in the tournament’s history — that is, until June 14 at Charles Schwab Field.
Now, Tennessee Volunteers second baseman Christian Moore has joined the list as one of only two people to ever hit for a single, double, triple and homer in a MCWS game, after Jerry Kindall, the legendary former University of Arizona head coach with three national titles. Kindall played for the Minnesota Gophers in 1956, and the series was still relatively new to Rosenblatt Stadium.
That world was very much still in black and white, in many ways.
The young man known as C-Mo to his teammates did it this weekend to open the proceedings for the Volunteers in full color. Tennessee is back in action tonight against North Carolina (7 p.m. ET, ESPN2/ESPN+) in winners bracket play in Omaha.
“Christian Moore was a man on a mission tonight,” Vols coach Tony Vitello said after a thrilling 12-11 victory over Florida State in Game 2 of the MCWS. “That guy wants to win as much as anybody on the field.
I don’t know how you define that, but that’s what makes his motor go. He’s not going so good when he’s not in that mode and he’s worrying about other things.”
