OKLAHOMA CITY -- After she hit a home run and pitched a one-hitter in the opening game of this year's Women's College World Series, Florida's Lauren Haeger said ASA Hall of Fame Stadium felt comfortably familiar in her third trip to college softball's main event.
She is doing her best to make it so that this place won't soon forget her, either.
Her coach called what Haeger did in No. 1 Florida's 4-0 win against No. 5 LSU "a magical night." It was that, but the days and nights it followed suggest it was hardly an illusion. This wasn't sleight of hand, even if Haeger did make the ball disappear once.
She pitched a shutout. She hit the decisive home run. She did what she does.
"I'm just doing what I need to do up there in the circle and at the plate," Haeger said. "I'm not really paying attention to numbers so much right now because I'm just trying to take it game by game."
Against the team that scored nine runs in the first inning against Florida earlier this season, although not against Haeger in that instance, all did not go smoothly early. Like a pool shark pulling the break, she spotted LSU three hits before she recorded an out.
Haeger said she wasn't worried. Neither was the person watching the pitches come in.
"She made some really good pitches and they got some jam shots that just kind of fell in," Florida catcher Aubree Munro said. "Bailey Landry had a great bunt, and you can't do much about a perfectly placed bunt. I wasn't really worried. I just knew we had to have our defense work and we were going to do that."
A force out at the plate kept the game scoreless and a double play started by shortstop Kathlyn Medina ended the inning. Haeger retired the next eight batters she faced. She needed just 79 pitches to finish the complete game, meaning she will be among the most rested people in the stadium when she and Florida return for their next game Sunday.
Haeger also had the first and biggest hand in making sure the next game wouldn't be until Sunday, only the two teams that win their first games afforded the luxury of skipping Saturday in favor of sleeping, relaxing and, apparently in this case, shopping.
The Gators stranded seven runners in the first four innings, at least one in each inning, continuing the offensive ups and downs present throughout the postseason. Walton bristled after the game that some might describe his offense as unaesthetic, but the beauty of it is how many opportunities it affords itself. There will always be someone on base the next time. As there was when Haeger stepped in with Kirsti Merritt on first base in the top of the fifth inning of what remained a scoreless pitching duel.
Scoreless, that is, until Haeger drilled a 1-1 pitch into the first row of bleachers in left.
It was the 70th home run of her career, which added to her 71 pitching wins makes her the only person ever to reach those milestones together. Of course, she was the only player with 60 of each, something her coach said surprised him when he saw it on television.
"I would have assumed that somebody else had done that before; I didn't realize that that had never been done before," Walton said. "I told her in the recruiting process, 'It's hard to be a pitcher and a hitter at this level. You're going to have to dedicate yourself.' We've seen some good ones. Nancy Evans at Arizona comes to my mind. Jennie Finch at Arizona comes to my mind. Ally Carda at UCLA comes to my mind, some good two-way players. It's really difficult. I don't know that [eras can be compared], but I know it's probably going to be very difficult now and it was very difficult in the old days, too."
That it has always been difficult to be great at two different acts in the same sport is a reasonable point. But what's truly remarkable about Haeger isn't some faux-albeit-fun comparison with Babe Ruth. That no one had reached the 60-60 club previously, let alone the 70-70 club, is partly because almost no one, period, hit 60 home runs until the past two decades (the same small caveat applied to Lauren Chamberlain breaking Stacey Nuveman's career home run record).
But forget Ruth. It has never been more difficult to be who Haeger is than in 2015.
Haeger and UCLA's Carda are the only two pitching aces in this season's World Series who double as middle-of-the-order hitters. That is a smaller number than in some recent editions of the World Series, but not by much. In a day and age in which scouting and video work far exceeds anything seen before and specialized coaching helps hone talent at an earlier and earlier age, it is in some ways more difficult to be a great pitcher or a great hitter. In the upper echelon of college softball, a player's flaws will be exposed.
That Haeger keeps hitting home runs and keeps winning games is the special part.
And so for the second season in a row, a Florida player rewrites her legacy in front of our eyes. Munro had a front-row seat, or at least squat, to watch Hannah Rogers roll through Oklahoma City, and the catcher is once again well positioned to watch something special.
"It's different because it's Lauren, and Lauren and Hannah are such different personalities," Munro said. "But at the same time, Lauren has totally stepped up her game. She's ready to go. She's got her game face on for every game."
Exclusively a pitcher like all of Florida's previous aces under Walton, Rogers had one of the all-time poker faces in the circle. It was Munro's job, one done exceedingly well here a season ago, to draw the fire out of Rogers. It is sometimes her job to tamp down the flames with Haeger, her equal in emotion, lest they burn too quickly.
"She's a little goofier off the field, but she's pretty dang goofy on the field, too," Munro said. "She's just really high energy, really funny. She's a very loud personality, loud and excited and ready to go for anything."
But as was the case a season ago with Rogers, what we see from Haeger as May turns to June is not what was earlier in the season. It wasn't a goofy Haeger who sought out Walton; it was a frustrated one who saw the days dwindling in her college career.
That Haeger didn't start and pitched only a handful of innings in relief in the first series between Florida and LSU this season is strategically overrated. That there might have been a small element of surprise presumably didn't hurt, but it's not as if the Tigers were wholly unfamiliar with someone who has long been one of the central figures in the SEC (or lacked scouting video on her). What does stand out is where Haeger was at that moment as a pitcher and where she is now. It's worth pointing out again that through the first month of Florida's season, freshman Aleshia Ocasio and sophomore Delanie Gourley claimed almost all of the starts and innings in the team's most notable games.
Some of that was in preparation for 2016 and beyond, but while Walton is a smart guy, he wasn't playing such a long game that he held Haeger back in the LSU series in case the teams met again. He just didn't feel like she was his best option to win those games.
"At the time, Lauren was throwing the ball good, but she wasn't throwing the ball like she is now," Walton said.
It was around that time, Walton said, that Haeger asked for a meeting and told him she wanted to pitch Friday nights, the first night of most three-game series in the SEC and an assignment with both practical and symbolic significance. He said he told her to show him, show him by winning games and by throwing well in bullpen sessions.
In the first game after the LSU series, Haeger threw a four-hit shutout at Alabama. We all see what followed for the SEC pitcher of the year and USA Softball player of the year.
"I call it like it is," Walton said. "We were going a different direction. She wanted it to the other direction, and she earned it. And I think that's what makes me the most proud is someone who can have a meeting with a coach, call a meeting with a coach, and say, 'This is what I want, and I'm willing to work for it.' And for that, she's been rewarded for it."
Although the math strongly favors those teams that win their first two games in Oklahoma City, Florida is still less than halfway to its objective of another title and becoming the first team other than Arizona or UCLA to repeat. But it's close enough to see now. And for Haeger, who won a state title in high school and a junior world championship with USA Softball and started the clinching game for the Gators a season ago, it would complete a resume as crowded as her box scores.
"She's really had a great career," Walton said. "It has been very well documented, as far as how well she's been kind of raised to be this. She had a great high school career, a great international career, now she's finishing off with a great collegiate career."
She is three wins from finishing that college career with a trophy.
And the way it looks right now, it's going to take one heck of a magic trick to stop her.