Excerpt: The story and the emotion behind TJ McCants' CWS moments

The following is an excerpt from chapter 18 of Resilient Rebels: Ole Miss Baseball's Remarkable Path to a National Title, which chronicles Ole Miss' 2022 championship season and what led up to those months.

TJ McCants was an important part of that team, and he returns to Swayze Field after transferring to Alabama this past offseason. McCants persevered through difficult days during his time in Oxford, and the words below tell part of that story.

He was a Freshman All-American in his debut season and had two at-bats against Oklahoma in the College World Series championship series that led the Rebels to the title.

TJ McCants was just ready to see his parents.

McCants, a self-described mama’s boy, had fought through the hamstring injury he’d suffered a few weeks back against Auburn and was starting to play better as the Mississippi State series arrived. McCants had hits in three of his four previous games and scored twice five days prior in the finale at South Carolina.

While not back at his Freshman All-American form from the previous year, the improvement was evident. Getting his parents in town for the critical rivalry series, he thought, would give him an extra jolt, and his season could perhaps continue an upward trajectory.

“I don’t see my parents that much during the season, so you always get excited and want to perform when they are there,” McCants said. “You want to do good things always but especially then.”

McCants woke up that Thursday, the first day of the series, thinking things might be festive, a chance to celebrate them being together again, while the Rebels could maybe get off the recent slide threatening their season. Instead, he was hours away from everything changing with a single sentence.

It was May 24, 2021, when TJ McCants’ world perspective shifted.

The night before Ole Miss opened the Southeastern Conference Tournament with a win over Auburn, the first of three wins in Hoover, Alabama, that solidified the Rebels as a regional host, Tori and Felicia McCants sat down their son and told him that his mother had cancer. They had a plan, and there was hope, but they needed him to know. They felt he needed to know.

With the news fresh on McCants’ mind, he went 3-for-21 in the SEC Tournament and 2-for-15 in the Oxford Regional. Even with that streak of poor play, McCants hit .300 as a true freshman, starting 47 games and playing in 65. Tori McCants felt responsible for his son’s downward turn, but he knows it was the correct thing to do, even if it wasn’t easy.

“We didn’t want to wait to tell him, to just act like things were fine,” Tori McCants said. “He deserved the truth, though it’s hard to see your child go through that.”

Eleven months later, Tori and Felicia were back in the car and again headed to deliver somber news to their son right before a baseball game. The day before they arrived in Oxford for the Mississippi State series, Felicia had a doctor’s appointment in Pensacola, Florida. She’d initially improved following that diagnosis the previous year, but now the cancer had worsened and become terminal. It was stage 4 liver cancer, and the doctor estimated she had “a couple weeks” to live.

With the devastating news freshly marinating in their minds, Tori asked Felicia if she wanted to remain home instead of traveling the hours to Oxford for baseball. She stayed with the decision, knowing she wanted to tell TJ in person about the dire development.

“He took it so hard,” Tori said. “He literally cried two hours nonstop. We couldn’t get him to stop, and it was his mother’s words that finally got him to listen and believe.”

Tori heard the words come out of his wife’s mouth, and he knew she was serious. She wasn’t trying to placate her son or provide false hope. She simply relayed what she’d seen, what she believed.

“I’m not telling you this to stop crying,” Felicia told her son. “I’m telling you this because I felt it and saw it. God showed me that you guys are going to be in Omaha, and I’m going to be there. I don’t know if you win it, but I saw you all there, and I was there, and everybody was smiling.”

Ole Miss wasn’t even in position to make the SEC Tournament, much less the College World Series, but Tori needed to believe in his wife. He booked hotel rooms in Omaha within hours of what she told her son. The Rebels were 5-10 in the SEC, but Tori was making plans.

McCants found enough composure to play that Thursday against the Bulldogs. He went 0-for-3 and then finished 1-for-9 on the weekend. The Rebels, as had become a trend, won the opener before losing two straight to end the series. McCants’ mind was understandably not on baseball, and Mike Bianco was focused on his sophomore outfielder while also trying to manage the mess of a losing streak that was playing out.

Prior to telling TJ the news, Tori called Mike Clement and Bianco and gave them the grim diagnosis; it was an appreciated heads up so the staff could care for the 19-year-old and understand the situation when he got to the clubhouse. Felicia wasn’t feeling well, and there was no guarantee they could remain in Oxford all weekend.

Driving to Oxford on that Thursday, they’d considered waiting until the end of the trip to avoid potentially affecting his play, but considering the weight of the news and the uncertainty about when they’d need to return home, they told their son immediately and made sure his support system within the team was prepared to assist him as needed.

“When there are personal issues like that, these are decisions that are bigger than baseball and bigger than what we’re doing,” Bianco said. “We put our arms around him best we could and wanted to make sure he could do whatever he needed for himself.”

When the State series ended, McCants told Bianco he’d like to go home, an obvious request considering the recent news. With no return date planned, Ole Miss booked McCants a flight to Florida to be with his family. While Ole Miss beat Mississippi State in the Governor’s Cup that Tuesday in Jackson, the final game of four straight against the Bulldogs, McCants and his two siblings spent time with their mother.

McCants’ brother, Jordan, who coincidentally signed with MSU out of high school, is in the Miami Marlins organization, and their sister, Joi, is a member of the United States Navy. She was “in the middle of the ocean” serving as a retail service specialist aboard the USS Harry Truman when the Navy granted her clearance to join her family at home.

The Pensacola doctor who delivered Felicia the death sentence followed it up with recommendations for hospice, a palliative care option that carries an end-of-life connotation. The McCantses discussed the possibility but refused the care. The doctor had given up, but Tori and Felicia went a different direction. They chose hope.

“We canceled hospice because I didn’t want hospice at our house,” Tori said. “Hospice is a mindset. People automatically assume you’re dying. And if you have that mindset, then you will. I needed her to be positive and focus on life. That’s what we’ve been doing, and it’s working. Your mind plays a big part of your health and to believe in life versus death, that weighs a lot, and our belief is in God and to focus on life while she is here. I couldn’t bring hospice around. Hospice is giving up.”

Felicia enjoyed her children being home and with each other, but after a couple of days, she needed them to get back to their lives. Besides, she had plans, as well. They found a doctor in Tampa who would take her case, and those visits would begin in earnest as quickly as possible. Felicia promised TJ she would be ok, and he boarded a flight straight to Fayetteville.

“I didn’t want to let my teammates down, and my mom wanted to watch me play,” McCants said.

Aware of what was happening, McCants’ teammates did all they could to distract him and keep his mind anywhere other than Felicia three states away. They got him hooked on a couple of card games that were popular on bus rides and made sure he had social outlets whenever he needed them.

“We just wanted him to know we loved him and wanted to help,” senior pitcher Max Cioffi said. “He had us and we’re not his family, but we’re a family. We played a lot of cards and laughed and kept things light.”

McCants struggled the rest of the season, the weight of the situation certainly and justifiably the reason for his malaise. He only had one more multiple-hit game the rest of the year — on May 20 against Texas A&M — despite routinely starting until he injured his thumb in the regional against Miami. When Ole Miss lost to Vanderbilt in the SEC Tournament, McCants thought the season was over. He called home and was emotional about what was the likely end to his sophomore year. Felicia again repeated her story.

“I’ve already seen it,” she went through it again. “We’re in Omaha together. Trust me and trust God.”

She’d earned that trust. It was four weeks after she’d been given two weeks to live when she implored her son to not give up after the loss to the Commodores. Things looked dire, but baseball was just a game. If she could work on a bigger miracle, he could believe on a much smaller scale.

Felicia was still seeing the doctor in Tampa, and, at minimum, there was a pause button. Despite good days and bad days, she was holding up her end of the vision she spelled out the day her son wouldn’t stop crying. McCants, listening to his mother and calming down, did the same.

When the Rebels punched their College World Series ticket against Southern Miss in Hattiesburg, which included McCants’ pinch-hit home run in the eighth inning of the clincher, Tori McCants looked at his wife and knew he had to help her complete what had become their guiding light.

“She wasn’t feeling well and didn’t want to travel, but I told her, ‘You told TJ you were going to be there,’” Tori said. “I told her if she wasn’t going, I’m not going. She told him in April she would be there. It was a two long weeks, but it was definitely worth it.”

Ole Miss wasn’t just in Omaha; the Rebels were up 4-2 in game one of the College World Series final against Oklahoma. After the commotion of the review and Ole Miss running itself into two straight outs, McCants stepped back to the plate. Hayden Dunhurst was on second base.

And in row 17 and seats 27 and 28 just behind the first base dugout, Tori and Felicia McCants watched their son. There were nerves and emotion, but Tori had noticed something in the minutes before that. He had leaned over to Felicia and whispered.

“TJ is locked in.”

“This is a giant spot now for OU,” ESPN’s Kyle Peterson said to the television audience as TJ McCants adjusted his batting gloves and stepped back in against Oklahoma left-handed reliever Chazz Martinez. “If you can get off the field, get this offense back in there, which has been fairly quiet today, but it’s still only a two-run game.

“It feels like it may be a little bit bigger, but it’s only a two-run game. You get McCants here, and you’re still in business.”

Tori McCants eyed his son in the on-deck circle before the inning seemingly went all to hell, and while it was a slight difference, he could see a change.

Sometimes when McCants struggles, his on-deck swings are more of an uppercut, a going-through-the-motions movement that doesn’t coincide with timing the pitcher’s delivery in front of him. But instead, McCants was focused on Martinez and swinging through his chest. It was on plane. McCants’ eyes never left the pitcher.

Less than two seconds after Peterson finished the final syllable of “business,” McCants uncoiled on an 83 MPH slider that stayed mostly on plane and sat over the inner part of the plate. The ball launched off the bat and was destined immediately for a landing spot beyond the playing field.

Josh Mallitz, who was warming up for the Rebels, caught the ball in the right-field bullpen and raised both hands in the air. McCants rounded first and pointed toward Mallitz while fist pumping his way to second base.

BOOM!

The Rebels performed their home run celebration as McCants reached home plate, timing his first bump with the loud simultaneous “boom” roar and a team-wide jump up and down to match, as well. The score was 6-2, and bedlam broke out inside Charles Schwab Field.

The decibels rose, and Ole Miss fans pelted the area with cheers and beer showers and the unbridled exuberance that accompanies a four-run lead in the eighth inning of the national title series. It seemed, at the time to be the pinnacle image for the evening, with McCants unleashing an emotional scream in the corner of the dugout.

Instead, it morphed from a moment to part of a movement within minutes.

Calvin Harris, next up for the Rebels, swung through a fastball on the first pitch, and Martinez tried to go right back to it. This time, Harris dropped the hammer, pulling the 92 MPH offering over the right-center wall. In this park of all parks, it takes a mammoth blast to exit. This was that, as it went out in a hurry and again unleashed the crowd that was causing pandemonium.

BOOM!

Another celebration, with the 20,000 Rebels joining the players’ collective scream. Harris hugged each teammate on the way through the dugout. Kemp Alderman flexed a bicep as he grabbed Harris.

The Rebels were feeling the power surge. Meanwhile, Oklahoma head coach Skip Johnson stood expressionless, overcome by the sights and sounds of the Ole Miss awakening around him. His players mimicked their coach — the looks in the faces showing this game was decided. The Rebels, however, weren’t finished.

“The two dugouts will tell you exactly what is going on,” ESPN’s Karl Ravech said.

Justin Bench fouled the first pitch he saw straight back, barely missing the barrel. After a ball inside, Martinez served it up, an 85 MPH cement mixer that didn’t break or dance, and Bench didn’t miss it. It exited just over the 375 sign in left-center, setting off one final cacophony of chaos. Each blast brought out louder cheers, and now the nonexistent roof was blown off.

"I have never heard anything like that,” Mike Bianco said. “Just impressive. Thankful. I think as a coach, it's really neat to sit back. And you don't do it too much in the game, but it was so loud that a couple of times you did. You look up and go, wow, all these people showed up here. It's not an easy place to get to. It's not a cheap place to get to. A lot of people, it meant the world for them to be here this weekend. They're passionate, aren't they?”

BOOM!

That was the end for Martinez, as he looked shellshocked while waiting on the mound for the next OU pitcher. McCants, who started this barrage, was jumping and fist-pumping outside the dugout, and it was the first time there were back-to-back home runs since in the College World Series since 1998 when LSU’s Brad Cresse, Wes Davis and Clint Earnhardt executed the trifecta versus Mississippi State.

McCants and Harris both missed time during the season with injuries. Bench, despite being a top-of-the-order catalyst, is one of the more underrated Rebels in recent memory. Harris and Bench had only seven combined home runs on the season. McCants hit eight counting that one.

Mike Clement stood in the third-base coaching box staring at the spectacle around him. As he’d done several times throughout the postseason, he got emotional for a brief second before settling back in. He told himself, much like Carl Lafferty would a day later, to enjoy this, that it was the coolest thing he’d ever experienced.

“Our fans were losing their ever-loving minds,” Clement said. “And we were on the brink of winning a national championship. I know it was just game one, but that played into it, as well.”

Ole Miss was done for the half inning. Oklahoma was done for the night.

** Felicia McCants passed away on September 12, 2022