UNC Baseball

[uncjhodges]

I hadn’t been able to quite put my finger on my I had been enjoying baseball so much these past 3-4 years. But I think this is why. Getting to go out and support guys you’ve watched grow up for 3-4 years is different. Can’t wait for this season.

i moved back to chapel hill last year from Seattle and i’ve only enjoyed going to baseball and the olympic sports. I know it’s nostalgic but feels like actually college sports

 

[akillesheel]

I hadn’t been able to quite put my finger on my I had been enjoying baseball so much these past 3-4 years. But I think this is why. Getting to go out and support guys you’ve watched grow up for 3-4 years is different. Can’t wait for this season.

i mean those guys exist on the team but at the same time, at least 7, maybe 8 of the guys in the starting lineup are going to be transfers for the vast majority of whom 2026 will be their one year in Chapel Hill. maybe there are more guys like Gallaher, DeCaro, etc than in football/basketball... but i'm not sure it's that many. it's admirable how much retention Forbes gets year after year, but he's been building through the portal and through rental players more than your comment would imply. most of the players he retains don't see a lot of the field.

maybe i'm the friend that's too woke but i really do think there's a flavor of college sports fan that finds it easier to see black athletes as mercenaries than white ones. maybe that's not what's happening here. but at the very least i think it is worth pointing out so people can interrogate their own conceptions.

 

[Paine]

i mean those guys exist on the team but at the same time, at least 7, maybe 8 of the guys in the starting lineup are going to be transfers for the vast majority of whom 2026 will be their one year in Chapel Hill. maybe there are more guys like Gallaher, DeCaro, etc than in football/basketball... but i'm not sure it's that many. it's admirable how much retention Forbes gets year after year, but he's been building through the portal and through rental players more than your comment would imply. most of the players he retains don't see a lot of the field.

maybe i'm the friend that's too woke but i really do think there's a flavor of college sports fan that finds it easier to see black athletes as mercenaries than white ones. maybe that's not what's happening here. but at the very least i think it is worth pointing out so people can interrogate their own conceptions.

I actually tend to agree with your second paragraph more than I probably made clear. The language people use in college sports has been racialized for a long time. Stuff like gym rat or coach’s son has always carried some baggage, so I don’t doubt at all that there can be a racialized component for some people, whether they realize it or not.

At the same time, I think there is also a more straightforward explanation that matters a lot here. I genuinely feel the same way about guys like Seth Trimble, Armando Bacot, and RJ Davis in basketball. When players stick around, grow up in the program, and you feel like you have watched them develop, people naturally talk about them differently. As you acknowledge, that kind of continuity has just been much more common in baseball for a while now.

I am not sure whether that is mostly Forbes, the sport itself, the structure, or some combination of all of it. And I agree that Forbes has leaned into the portal more the last couple seasons out of necessity. But even looking at something like the 2024 roster, it was still full of guys who had been around for years and felt like program players in a way that has become harder to sustain in football and basketball.

So I don’t think you’re wrong to point out how this language can land or what assumptions it can reflect. I just think in this case the retention and continuity piece explains most of the difference, with race maybe shaping how people interpret and react to it rather than being the main driver.