Hokie ClubBLACKSBURG – At 71 years old, Virginia Tech head coach Chuck Hartman announced his retirement on May 4, 2006, a couple weeks short of the final weekend of the season.
Tech had just come away with a pair of midweek wins over Virginia schools – VCU (10-4) and Liberty (8-3) – before heading into its off week because of final exams.
And when the Hokies came back, they had just two ACC weekends remaining – a home series against No. 16 NC State and a trip up to Charlottesville to take on the sixth-ranked Cavaliers.
"We all knew it was coming soon, or we had a good idea that, at some point, he was going to retire," Sean O'Brien, a redshirt sophomore on the 2006 team, said recently in a phone interview. "We were competitors, and we just wanted to play hard for him, like we always did, the rest of the year because we knew it was going to be his last year and how important it was for him.
Chuck Hartman hitting fungos during Tech's Friday night batting practice
"My years at Tech, we got caught in the transition between the BIG EAST and the ACC. We went from the BIG EAST, which is an OK conference to the best conference in the country. It's just night and day, what you are seeing every day on the weekend. The pitching in the ACC has been compared to what you'd face in Double-A. We definitely did what we could, and we tried to compete as hard as we could for all the coaches – Coach (Jay) Phillips and Coach (Jon) Hartness as well."
After the announcement, the Hokies unfortunately won just one of their remaining seven games, but it was a memorable one, as Tech defeated the Wolfpack in a back-and-forth contest on a Saturday night game at English Field – the last ACC home game in which Hartman coached. LINK TO BOX SCORE
"I remember that NC State team and how good it was," O'Brien said. "They had Matt Mangini, who ended up playing in the bigs [Major League Baseball], and I played with him that summer in the Cape Cod League. And then Roman Corona, I played with him in the Cape as well that year. Also, Ryan Pond, who was from Virginia Beach. I hosted him on a recruiting visit here, but he ended up at NC State. I remember the team very well."
After dropping the Friday night game by a score of 21-3, Tech trailed 2-0 heading into the bottom of the second inning. O'Brien singled home the first Hokies' run, and Tech responded each time the Wolfpack scored and took a 5-4 lead in the fourth on a Bryan Thomas RBI single that plated Warren Schaeffer.
Thomas again gave the home squad a one-run lead in the bottom of the eighth, this time with an RBI triple that brought in Nate Parks. But NC State would not go quietly in the ninth, knotting the game at 6.
With two outs in the bottom of the ninth, O'Brien stepped to the plate to face Wolfpack's Sam Walls, a 10th-round MLB draft choice of the Philadelphia Phillies less than a month later.
"I remember their closer Sam Walls – he threw 95-plus. He just threw gas," O'Brien said. "I remember at least fouling one off, but he blew me away with another fastball. He just threw me all fastballs. I don't remember seeing any other off-speed pitches from him. With a 3-2 count, I'm gearing up for fastball because that's all I've seen, and you've gotta when a guy is throwing that fast. And all of a sudden, he just, I'm not sure what he did, but he slowed down his arm and he just fired up this changeup that was belt high, and my eyes got so big.
"And I just teed off on it. And it went over the right center field fence, and I remember Jay Phillips – he was coaching first base – and he just put his arms up and kind of says, 'Hey, go ahead!' That was pretty cool. Coming around third and coming home, I had to throw my helmet off so guys wouldn't destroy my head. It was pretty cool. And to think, that was Coach Hartman's last win. It actually makes it even more special."
It marked O'Brien's second walk-off home run of the 2006 season, as he also hit a solo home run April 12 against Appalachian State in a 5-4 victory. Only two other Hokies have hit a pair of walk-off home runs in their careers since – Mark Zagunis (2013) and Brendon Hayden (2014-2015).
In the final weekend, the Hokies battled Virginia, but could not post another win for their head coach. At the time of his retirement, Hartman's 1,444 career wins were fourth all-time at the Division-I level, while his 47 years as a head coach, 28 as the Hokies' skipper, were the most among any coach. He still ranks ninth all time in wins, but the legendary Augie Garrido passed Hartman in most years as a head coach at the D-I level in his 48th and final season back in 2016.
"That UVA series, we had to stay at Graves Mountain Farms and Lodges in Harrisonburg, about an hour or more from their campus, because it was UVA's graduation," O'Brien said. "So it was kind of a different weekend because we didn't stay in a typical hotel. So we got to hang out more and we did some fires later at night and grilled out for dinner instead of picking something up on the way back to the hotel. It was a little different weekend.
"It was a quiet bus ride back to Blacksburg. Seniors were leaving. Coach Hartman was retiring. We don't know what's going to happen. It wasn't a happy moment, and school is already over, too. With baseball, by the time the season is done, you go back, you clean out your locker, and you go home. It's over because there's no more classes, and you won't see your boys for a couple of months. It's not like football, you still have another whole semester with the guys."
O'Brien, who currently lives in Blacksburg and works for Atlantic Constructions, a company headquartered in Richmond, finished up his career at Tech under new head coach Pete Hughes. His career numbers include a .335 batting average, a .453 on-base percentage and a .485 slugging percentage thanks to 47 doubles, five triples and 20 home runs. He had 262 career hits in 212 games played, scored 162 runs, knocked in 157 and stole 15 bases.
Of note, in his final three years playing solely in the ACC, some of those numbers put him in the Top 10 all-time (since 2005). His .325 batting average is the fourth-best among those with at least 600 at-bats, while his .448 on-base percentage is the best ever (again for Hokies that played from 2005 to the present). His 47 doubles are tied for fifth, his 123 walks are second, and no Hokie has had more chances (1,407) or putouts (1,277) in the field since Tech has been in the ACC.
Despite all that, though, on the 14-year anniversary of Hartman's final ACC home game, there aren't many things that O'Brien has done at the plate that will top what happened on that Saturday night in 2006.