OMAHA, Nebraska — After the University of Oklahoma baseball team sealed an unexpected national championship Monday night by beating North Carolina 13-2, I received a text from a friend.
“There was an angel watching over OU.”
On the morning of May 31, Sooner baseball fan Jason “J.T.” DeBerry died in his sleep at age 39, a shocking development that spelled a sad start to the summer.
DeBerry had been a friend of mine since the mid-2000s when we got to know each other at OU baseball games. Watching the ups and downs of Sooner squads over the years — more on that below — we shared many a laugh over shuffleboard, the strategy of Sand People in Star Wars movies (“they always travel in single file“) and our inability to beat the latest incarnation of Bald Bull in the Punch Out!! video game series.
Over the last decade, J.T. and I hadn’t seen each other as much as we once did, with a combined seven children between us taking priority over long weekends at L. Dale Mitchell Park. Still, we continued to share texts and FaceTimes about Star Wars, Star Trek, OU softball and, as always, OU baseball.
On the Sunday of his passing, J.T.’s wife, Lindsey, alerted me and a handful of others by texting us from his phone — a brutal message to receive that took more than a moment to sink in.
Over the next three weeks, however, that text thread took a life of its own. We continued to ping each other – and J.T. — about OU baseball before, during and after games as the Sooners went on their wondrous postseason run. The posts ranged from baseball strategy, to general silliness, to R-rated ribaldry — all things we would have texted with J.T.
The day our friend left us, the Sooner baseballers somehow, improbably, inconceivably, recovered from a six-run deficit against second-ranked Georgia Tech in the NCAA regional round. It started an incredible run that saw OU seemingly transform into a different team. They kept winning, and winning, and winning, until they finally hoisted the College World Series trophy Monday night.
Baseball is a game often known for superstitions. Like my friends on that text thread, I’d like to think it was no coincidence the OU baseball turnaround started that awful day. If you knew J.T. Deberry and his spirit, it would make sense to you, too.
Always worried more about others than himself, J.T. was quoted in a 2019 NonDoc series about head injuries on the football field. An employee of BancFirst, J.T. was also a longtime high school football referee, and in that role he spoke up about a key difference in the intentional grounding rule between high school football and higher levels of the sport. Long story short, the high school version gave quarterbacks fewer options to avoid massive hits, and J.T.’s advocacy as a respected OSSAA-sanctioned referee helped spur a national rule change three years later.
As I think about J.T.’s impact and friendship, many kudos must also be given to OU baseball radio play-by-play announcer Toby Rowland. During the ninth inning of the final CWS game, as OU coasted toward the last out and the national championship, Rowland called out J.T., as well as many of those who have watched OU baseball for decades.
“There’s a lot of people in a moment like this that come to mind. Happy for all Sooner fans, but especially the diehards (…) the guys and gals, the men and women who are with them rain or shine, win streak or losing streak,” Rowland said. “Kal, Al, Randy, Shep, Kurt, Greg, Warren, Kyle (…) Eric, Jeremy, Heath, Tyler, Randy, Chris, Glenn, Craig, Lumber Lady, Dru. We lost J.T. DeBerry a few weeks ago.”
With Toby’s shoutout meaning so much to many of us, I know J.T. would want me to mention another member of our baseball crew who left us far too early. Geoff Roughface died in February 2019 at just 29-years old, only hours before he planned to meet many of us at the park for an OU baseball game. J.T. and Geoff were good friends, and the realization they’ve both left this mortal coil is enough to take the shine off a national championship trophy — if I let it.
But that’s not what either J.T. or Geoff would want. With their memories in mind, let’s take a deeper look at the latest championship for a baseball program that means so much to so many.
Questions answered in Omaha
Upon meeting a close buddy in Omaha during the first weekend of this year’s Men’s College World Series, I was hit with a question.
“So … are they loving you back now?” asked longtime Yardbird Kurt Keeley.
My friend’s query was legitimate, with “they” being the OU baseball program. Kurt and I had each traveled seven hours north to watch the squad open what became its first national championship run in Omaha since 1994. While my pal had been stolid in support of Sooners baseball teams over the last decade, I had found my faith to be a bit more fickle.
The OU Sooners improbably captured their third national championship in baseball with a 13-2 win against North Carolina on Monday night. Of all the national titles Oklahoma has won in any sport, none might have been less likely. From freshman pitchers to bats that caught fire and final-at-bat homers for opposing-team brothers, the improbability has been well documented by this point in national news and local coverage alike.
But along the way — and not just this season — there were plenty of times the OU baseball program didn’t have much love to spare for anyone, including myself.
The Sooners had been sitting on two baseball national championships for seemingly forever — the past 32 years to be exact. The previous championships, in 1951 and 1994, might as well have taken place on a different planet.
Two everyday OU starters on the 1994 team, for example, combined for 19 walks in 357 at bats. Nowadays, that type of plate discipline would go over as well as a fart in church, but it warranted nary a side note in the pre-Moneyball 1990s.
Four decades earlier, things were even more strange. Despite winning a conference title, athletic director Bud Wilkinson refused to believe the 1951 Sooners were good enough to compete for the national title. So, he denied their request to go to Omaha to compete in the College World Series. Luckily, OU President George Lynn Cross stepped in to overrule Wilkinson and let the team travel north, where it became the first one to run through the championship bracket undefeated.
So, the world of 2026 was quite different from previous victorious Omaha excursions, and the transitional years had not always been kind.
Despite trips to the College World Series in 1995, 2010 and 2022, plenty of tough times drew grumbles among the program’s strongest fans at the erstwhile L. Dale Mitchell Park (now called Kimrey Family Stadium):
- In 2005, head coach Larry Cochell infamously used a racial slur to NOT describe one of his players. He was relieved of his duties soon thereafter;
- At the end of the 2005 season, Wichita State head coach Gene Stephenson was named the leader of the OU program. Stephenson even took part in a press conference to announce his hiring. Less than a day later, however, he changed his mind and skedaddled back to Wichita;
- The coach hired to fill the hat Stephenson briefly donned — OU assistant Sunny Golloway — certainly had success in an eight-year run that included a CWS berth in 2010, three super regional appearances in 2006, 2012 and 2013, and plenty of wins along the way. Golloway, however, was a divisive figure to say the least, especially among OU baseball alumni. Former OU and major league player Joe Simpson, also an announcer for the Atlanta Braves, memorably noted, “(OU) could hire a basset hound and it would be an improvement.”
- Golloway left in 2013 for what could best be described as a lateral move to Auburn, a tenure that ended in a lawsuit. Stops followed in Division II ball before his most recent coaching gig at an Ardmore high school. When Golloway left, the Sooner athletic department chose Virginia Tech head coach Pete Hughes as its proverbial basset hound. Not to be overly dramatic, but Hughes’ tenure rivaled the Soviet Union’s unleashing of “Tsar Bomba” in 1961 for the biggest bomb in the history of humankind.
- The Sooners missed the NCAA tournament in each of Hughes’ first three seasons, which marked their longest drought since the 1960s. Combined with a lack of winning on the field, Hughes’ time in Norman drew criticism for an alleged lack of responsibility for the program. Under Hughes’ direction, for example, the Sooners decided to eliminate dirt and grass from their home stadium’s playing surface and replace it with chewed-up automobile tires.
- When Hughes was mercifully fired in 2017, Skip Johnson took over. Initially, it appeared more of the same might be on the horizon. In his first season, OU surprisingly jumped out with two opening wins in the Tallahassee Regional of the NCAA Tournament. The team subsequently lost back-to-back games by a combined score of 21-6 before failing to make the postseason the next two years.
- Even when things seemed to go hunky-dory on the field, the greater universe seemed to have different plans. Johnson’s 2020 team was 14-4 with a no-hitter win against LSU under its belt before the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the season. By that point, it felt like the program had stopped loving me and my fellow OU baseball fans.
The worm started to turn five years ago, however, when Johnson’s Sooners somehow skipped their way to Omaha and the championship series against Ole Miss. Two years later, OU captured its first regular season conference championship since 1995.
Which all led to my encounter with Mr. Keeley in Omaha this month. Kurt had put up with my lamentations about the program and its lack of that loving feeling toward fans for years. As we hugged upon reuniting at a bar outside the stadium in Omaha, he posed his question — one I was hesitant to answer right then and there.
This week, though, as the Sooners hoisted the championship trophy and were celebrated in their home stadium by thousands of adoring fans. Thinking about J.T., Geoff, Kurt and the rest of OU’s diehard Sooner baseball fans, I felt the love that could only receive one response: Boomer, Sooner!
