Mizzou vs Vanderbilt: The delay and the homer that wasn’t.

I’ve covered a lot of sports games over the past 5-6 years. Heck, I’ve covered a lot of strange Mizzou sports events over the past four years. What occurred Friday night was one of the wackiest, most chaotic sports games that I’ve seen, bar none, without a doubt. Fittingly enough, the biggest moment of the game, I couldn’t see.

The ending and delayed start time are what have me typing this up long past midnight in the dark hallows of my apartment, and what kept me and my amazing Rock M photographer, Dan Murphy, at Taylor Stadium past the midnight hours.

For Missouri baseball, coming into this game alone, it’s been a year that’s brought three game cancellations due to rain and a 95-minute light delay. Mother Nature decided it wanted to add a couple more pages to this repetitive cycle.

In a game that was originally scheduled for a 6 p.m. first pitch, it became 7 p.m. due to incoming rain.

As the rain continued to pour down, a delay till 7:30 p.m. became 8:55—the final extended time extension that a procrastinatory student would want for an assignment, not a college baseball game.

The buildup

Before the eighth-inning madness occurred, the night looked to be another one of a theme that’s occurred in a multitude of games for Missouri in the Southeastern Conference this season. The Tigers’ pitching staff kept the game competitive while the offense never quite arrived. Until a lead-off single by Kam Durnin in the sixth inning, the Tigers didn’t have an extra-base hit.

In the first and second innings, the Tigers had their chances. In the first, Blaize Ward’s attempt to stretch a single into a double backfired, as he was thrown out at second base by a wide margin. He tried to advance after Durnin moved to third following an infield single one at-bat earlier.

Jackson had previously discussed freshman mistakes this season, specifically referencing Ward after he narrowly missed out on an identical play against Illinois earlier this season. That time, Ward was safe; this time, he was out.

Mateo Serna then flew out to end the inning. Instead of having runners on the corners with one out and a 1-0 lead, the Tigers exited the opening frame scoreless against Commodores starter Connor Fennell.

That theme carried into the second. Donovan Jordan reached base on a hit-by pitch but three straight groundouts left him stranded at third base. Vanderbilt, meanwhile, took more advantage of its run scoring opportunities. An RBI groundout in the second, two more runs in the fourth on a string of singles and a wild pitch, and a solo homer in the fifth pushed the Commodores ahead 4–0. McDevitt still battled, striking out six and limiting the damage where he could, but the offense behind him stayed quiet.

Dane Bjorn took over in the sixth and kept Vanderbilt off the board for an inning before giving up a solo homer and an RBI single in the seventh. Missouri finally scratched across a run in the bottom half on hits from Kam Durnin and an RBI single. by Blaize Ward, but it wasn’t enough to spark anything bigger.

Through seven innings, the Tigers trailed 6–1, had missed multiple scoring chances, and had watched Vanderbilt’s starter rack up eight strikeouts over seven innings. It looked like the same story Missouri had lived through all season.

Then the eighth inning flipped everything on its chaotic head.

The eighth inning: The spark that lit a flame

Trailing 6-1, in which this Missouri offense hasn’t been able to string hits together all night? I’ll admit it, I didn’t see anything that I’m about to describe coming. Not at all. This inning showed me why we watch college baseball. It showed me that all it takes sometimes is one spark to light a flame. Five hits and one run turned into an instant classic eighth inning.

The freshman who’d cost his team a run what felt like lifetimes—but in reality was a few hours earlier—this time did the opposite. He started a rally, not ended one, as he opened the bottom half of the eighth with a single to right, his second of the evening.

Mateo Serna followed by driving a double into the left‑field corner, finally giving Missouri a real scoring threat. Donovan Jordan, who had been stranded earlier in the game, delivered the first breakthrough with an RBI single to right. It was a loud hit, and Mizzou was beginning to string together consistent contact, something that had been absent all night.

From there, the inning snowballed more than a children-filled neighborhood on a canceled school day. Kadan Peer jumped on a pitch and sent it into the right‑center gap for an RBI double, cutting the deficit to 6–3 and forcing Vanderbilt to make its first uncomfortable mound visit of the night.

Now I’m not a huge personal fan of bunting in general. Gifting a team an out to move a runner-up in certain situations doesn’t make sense to me. Missouri didn’t do that. They brought flashbacks to something I’d witnessed from them in non-conference play. Bunt, and bunt to get on base. This strategy was executed quintessentially.

Keegan Knutson followed up Peer’s at-bat by dropping down a bunt that turned into an RBI single, scoring Serna from third. That hit to Mizzou was so nice, they had to do it twice as Eric Maisonet followed with another bunt single, this one scoring Jordan. 6-4 Commodores.

Taylor Stadium had turned into something it hadn’t been since the delay that occurred one day earlier — loud and awake. Two batters later, Jase Woita walked to load the bases, and the situation was clear. One out, down 6-5, Durnin to the plate.

Durnin, after forcing quite the pitch-battle, worked a walk to force in the tying run. The rally then came full circle as the Tigers hitters had rotated through the whole of the lineup.

Ward, who had started the entire rally, rolled a grounder to the right side that brought Maisonet home. In less than fifteen minutes, Missouri had erased a five‑run deficit and taken a 7–6 lead and had a double-digit tally in the hit column, marking the fifth time since Mar. 28 that they’d accomplished that feat in SEC play.

Ninth inning fog-gate

Here’s where things got hairy: for me, everyone else in the press box, and everyone on the field. It wasn’t the fact that the ninth inning didn’t offer a clean ending for Friday’s Mizzou closer, Sam Rosand. Vanderbilt put two runners on with two outs, and then came the swing that made a chaotic evening even more unclear. Quite literally.

A deep drive hit by Brayden Holcomb—who had already homered in the game—left his bat at 108 miles per hour and traveled 379 feet according to the SEC Network television broadcast. Yet, nobody could see it. The ball disappeared into the fog that had built up from the seventh inning and into right-center field with no outfielders moving.

Holcomb and the other two runners all did the right thing. They ran around the bases and scored, putting Vandy up 9-7 and giving Mizzou the equivalent of an Uno reverse card in a miraculous comeback. Right? Actually wrong.

The umpires, after gathering for around 10 minutes, determined the hit was a ground-rule double, tying the game at 7, scoring Cade Sears from second base, putting Holcomb at second, and Brodie Johnston on third, who was originally on first.

I can’t help but wonder how they got to that conclusion, especially since the miles per hour and feet traveled shown on the broadcast, as well as the Trackman data, which was tweeted out by 11Point7 College Baseball, all theoretically make sense that the ultimate ball path ended in a home run.

Holcomb himself had his own ruling on how the event truly went down, tweeting post-suspension that he was “100% positive that the ball went over the fence.” But the boring answer to a most interesting conclusion is this. Ultimately, no matter the mental jigsaws this game provided both teams and me, there will be a baseball game resumed at 4:00 p.m CT, not on the same day it began, but the next.