With a man on second, senior right-handed pitcher Blair Erickson handed the lefty first year the baseball. Coach Serrano remained on the field while Daniel [Danny] Bibona warmed up on the mound, but never once touched the game ball – it went directly from Erickson to Bibona.
In the top of the eighth, Arizona State mounted a three-run, two-out rally for a 7-3 lead.
It was June 19, 2007.
UC Irvine was in the midst of its first trip to the College World Series in program history and had just handed the ball to its freshman.
Bibona had earned the starting Saturday slot earlier in the season, but lost his position in the rotation to Wes Etheridge and hadn’t taken the mound since May 15, that is, until that night on a national stage.
29,034 people were on their feet in Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha, Nebraska. It was the largest session nine crowd in men’s college world series history and the second largest crowd in MCWS history to date at the time.
Seventy-nine degrees, partly cloudy and a slight breeze ruffled the flags behind the box office.
In his time as an ace at UC Irvine, Bibona led one of the most decorated careers in Anteater history. The two-time Big West Pitcher of the Year became UC Irvine’s all-time leader in strikeouts with 332 and received the Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award in his senior campaign. Bibona collected five All-American honors and was a two-time all-conference first-team selection before going in the eighth round to the St. Louis Cardinals after completing his four years in an Irvine uniform.
Despite his success as an upperclassman at UCI, Bibona will tell anyone that asks that he learned the most in his first year when he struggled for consistent playing time.
“I knew what it was like to get the opportunity to pitch and I knew what it was like to lose your job. I wasn’t going to let that happen again.”
Bibona rode his success with a realistic and grounded head on his shoulders, never expecting the attention his talent rendered.
The lefty from Santa Margarita High School nonchalantly recalls making what was a simple choice to play ball for the ’Eaters and made a deal with his parents that if he went to school so close to home where they could watch him play every weekend, he would get to experience living on campus.
His parents obliged.
Danny took the ball from Erickson and turned it over in his hands.
“Happy Birthday,” said Serrano as he left the infield and turned toward the home team dugout.
“That was the last thing he said to me,” recalled Danny, “and it sort of just relaxed me a little bit.”
It just so happened to be Danny’s golden birthday as the newly 19-year old got set on the most storied mound in college baseball.
Sun Devil sophomore Brett Wallace walked up to the plate. The 2007 Pac-10 Player of the Year, who finished the season with a .404 average and 107 hits, and led the conference in batting average, hits, RBI (78), home runs (16) and slugging percentage (.687), got set in the box.
Danny got off of the phone with fellow Big West pitcher and Cardinal-signee Joe Kelly.
“Sign, you have to get out here,” said Kelly.
In June of 2010 Danny heard his name called in the eighth round of the MLB draft by the St. Louis Cardinals. A month later on July 30, just a month after graduating from UC Irvine with a degree in Sociology and a minor in Education, Danny signed his first professional contract.
Kelly, who played his collegiate career at UC Riverside, and Bibona knew each other long before they were Big West athletes as they played on the same travel ball team at 16.
In 2009, a year before Bibona signed with the Cardinals, St. Louis drafted Kelly in the third round and Bibona in the 16th.
While Bibona decided to return to Irvine for his senior season, Kelly signed and joined the organization a year ahead of his Big West counterpart.
When Bibona did sign in 2010, the Cards sent him to the same full season team as Kelly.
“I remember showing up to the airport and there was no one to get me,” recalled Bibona as his eyes widened just as they must have four years ago when he took a taxi from the airport to the field on game night.
“I know you’re not going to believe me,” said the newcomer to the ticket office, “but I’m on the team.”
With his two bags in tow, Danny was shown to the locker room, where he saw the first familiar face.
Kelly immediately took Bibona under his wing, helping Danny find his locker and offering a ride to his hotel or a place on Kelly’s couch for the night.
Danny spent the rest of the summer on Kelly’s couch before moving into a vacated bedroom when one of Kelly’s roommates was reassigned to another team.
In 2010 with the Quad City River Bandits, Bibona was 4-0 with a 1.91 ERA, five starts and 33.0 innings pitched, holding the opposing team to a minimal .198 average.
Squaring off was the 6’1”, 245-lb third baseman in Brett Wallace versus the 6’0”, 170-lb lefty Anteater.
First pitch: fastball for a strike, 0-1.
“You never know what doors are being opened for you,” said Bibona.
After the 2010 season, an MRI in mid December revealed a tear in Bibona’s left shoulder.
He went to Florida for spring training and began an extensive rehab regimen to test whether surgery was a necessity. By the end of spring training, Bibona underwent surgery and rehabbed in Florida from April through October.
Returning to California, Danny rehabbed in his home state through the middle of January and had worked his way up to a throwing program and bullpens.
Back in Florida, the lefty finished rehabbing by extended spring training and was sent to Batavia, New York, where he pitched twice before his release from the club.
“When I was throwing, I knew I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t able to perform.
“If I’m going to get released,” he thought, “I want to coach. I don’t want to try to chase this. I want to chase a different dream.
“I’m so grateful [the Cardinals] fixed me. I throw a lot of BP [now].”
Rosenblatt held its breath. Second pitch from Bibona: breaking ball for a ball, 1-1.
On July 19, 2012, the Anteaters officially announced the return of their southpaw to the UC in the OC.
In a series of fortuitous events, Jason Dietrich’s move to Cal State Fullerton vacated UC Irvine’s volunteer position as Bob Macaluso moved into the full-time position.
"I'm looking forward to the opportunity in front of me and am excited to be back at UCI," said Bibona to the school’s athletic department at the time. “I am grateful Coach [Mike] Gillespie has the confidence in me to lead the pitching staff this upcoming season. This program has been built around pitching from the time it was brought back and I don't intend for that to change."
Once described by Kendall Rogers as: “Great pitcher. Student. Leader,” Bibona had been given a chance to chase another dream, one as a leader, and one that would put to use all of his experiences as an Anteater and as a Big West student athlete.
“I played in the Big West; I’m familiar with it. I know how the game’s played on the field. I know what to do in the classroom. I liked it, that’s why I’m back.
“I love it here; I want to stay here.”
At 1-1, Wallace connected and sent one high to center.
Bibona whipped his head around just as Ollie Linton made the easy catch to end the top half of the inning.
“I threw three pitches to Brett Wallace,” said Bibona. “Got him to pop out to center and that was it. That was my third of an inning in Rosenblatt, and it was the best third of an inning of my life.”
The Anteaters forced a tenth inning after a four-run rally in the bottom of the eighth and eventually sent the Sun Devils home on a walk-off RBI single from Linton for an 8-7 finish.
Bibona and Irvine would go on to defeat league rivals Cal State Fullerton, 5-4, two days later before Oregon State would end the Anteaters’ historic run in a 7-1 loss.
In their first NCAA DI CWS appearance, the ’Eaters went 2-2 and were 7-2 in postseason games after winning the Round Rock Regional and the Wichita Super Regional.
After back-to-back extra-inning wins over ASU and CSF in elimination games, the Anteaters became the first team in CWS history to accomplish the feat.
It had been seven years since the Anteaters last flew into Omaha as UC Irvine had yet to christen the new TD Ameritrade Park.
Bibona’s pinstriped squad was the first and last to represent UCI in Rosenblatt, and seven years later, he boarded another flight with a plane full of Anteaters eager to experience the College World Series for the first time.
On June 18, just a day before his 26th birthday, Bibona jogged from the home team dugout just like Serrano had seven years earlier.
Barely making it into the 64-team field, Irvine capitalized on its postseason opportunity as the winner of the Corvallis Regional and Stillwater Super Regional, and here were the Anteaters back in Omaha for the second time.
Senior pitcher Evan Brock made the run from the bullpen to the mound as Evan Manarino handed Brock the reigns, and the game ball.
Bibona never touched the baseball.
“I won’t touch the ball during the game, it’s the way coach Serrano was. It’s me not wanting to make it about myself because it’s not. It’s about them.
“At the end of the day it’s about the student-athlete and what’s best for the student-athlete.”
While Bibona has experienced a lot of what his players are experiencing now, he recognizes the fine balance between offering an anecdote and allowing the player to figure it out on his own.
As someone that never shies away from a challenge, that’s one of the things that Bibona enjoys about coaching.
“That’s the cool thing about it. You’re never going to have it figured out.”
In a game where he once stymied batters with everything from a changeup to a slider, or what he calls his best pitch, a cutter, he now calls pitches from the dugout.
“It’s all about execution,” he said, again making the point that it’s the players’ game, not the coaches’.
“It all depends on what the hitters’ weakness is. The chess match is more fun.
“And I have faith that [our guy] can get it done.”
After UCI’s CWS run ended in a 1-0 loss to Texas, Bibona boarded the plane with his coaching staff and players back to the Golden State.
After a 41-25 season that saw the resurgence of ’Eater Nation and a postseason run similar to the one seven years before, Bibona is already thinking about next season.
ASU coach Pat Murphy called UC Irvine “a team of destiny” in a postgame interview with ESPN after the Anteaters had eliminated his team from Rosenblatt, a team that hadn’t lost two consecutive games since March.
And perhaps it was destiny that took Irvine to Omaha twice despite the odds, and that brought Bibona back to the Anteaters.
“You have to trust God’s plan,” said Bibona.
When asked where pitching in Rosenblatt ranks in terms of the best birthday gifts he’s ever received, Danny responded: “I know [coach Serrano] would probably say it wasn't a gift because he would only do what was in the team’s best interest of winning. But it is one of my all time best memories.”
Story by Olivia Phelps (@OliviaGPhelps).