Kansas baseball coach Dan Fitzgerald, by his own admission, was a bit hoarse when he entered the Allen Fieldhouse media room for a press conference on Wednesday morning.
He attributed it to the unrelenting noise made by the resurgent KU baseball fan base.
“It’s because I’m trying to get our guys’ attention on the field,” Fitzgerald said. “Those guys are so loud.”
The Jayhawks welcomed Omaha to Hoglund Ballpark for three games as part of a four-game series last weekend to open their home slate. The level of engagement from the crowd, with a raucous student section leading the way as attendance cleared 2,000 fans on Friday, drew the notice of the college baseball community nationwide — not to mention the people on the field.
Fitzgerald called it “absolutely bonkers.” KU broadcaster Brian Hanni wrote in a post on X that it was the most impactful crowd he could remember in 20 years of doing KU baseball games.
“It’s a great atmosphere,” said transfer outfielder Tommy Barth, the Big 12 newcomer of the week, in a press release. “It would be great if they kept coming out and supporting us. It’s a huge help for us. I love it.”
The KU community will have a chance to replicate it beginning Thursday, when the Jayhawks welcome Milwaukee (1-10) at 3 p.m. to kick off another nonconference series.
Last weekend, Friday’s matchup featured the greatest attendance, but it was also the one game in the Omaha series the Jayhawks lost (even after a memorable set of back-to-back-to-back home runs) as they finished the weekend with a 10-1 record.
Thursday night’s opener had provided the highest drama, when KU poured on six runs in the ninth inning and Dariel Osoria hit a walk-off grand slam, before some of the fans streamed onto the diamond postgame in something resembling a field storming.
“I’ve coached some amazing places and in some incredible environments,” Fitzgerald said, “and I experienced stuff last weekend that I haven’t experienced in a game.”
Among a variety of student-section fledgling traditions in the making, there was even a “Pay Heed All Who Enter: Beware of ‘The Hog'” sign, a riff on the historic banner that hangs in Allen Fieldhouse (i.e., “The Phog”).
“I thought it was the coolest thing ever,” Fitzgerald said on Wednesday. “I thought it was great. The creativity of college students never ceases to amaze me.”
Of course, the constant rowdiness does present some challenges beyond forcing Fitzgerald to yell (even if, as he put it, “it’s an unbelievably awesome problem to have”).
“Most of the time as a baseball coach you are trying to get your guys up and ready to go,” he said. “It’s very rare that you have to work really hard to tone them down, so I told them the other day, I said, ‘Hey guys, the fans are incredible, the energy’s amazing, that doesn’t turn the plate into 20 inches wide. It’s still 17. Like, you cannot hit a grand slam with nobody on base.'”
The Milwaukee series unfolds similarly to the Omaha series, with Thursday, Friday and Sunday’s games at Hoglund Ballpark and Saturday’s at Equity Bank Park in Wichita. Then KU heads back out on the road for midweek battles at Minnesota before starting Big 12 play the following weekend.
