SEC opponents Tennessee and Texas A&M enter new territory as they prepare to battle for the MCWS title

OMAHA, Nebraska — Before Christian Moore played for Tennessee baseball, there was Tommy Bridges.

Doesn’t that ring a bell? Bridges was a pitcher for the Volunteers in the late 1920s and later had a pretty interesting debut with the Detroit Tigers. The first major league batter he faced was Babe Ruth. He got him to pop up on the first pitch. The third batter he faced was Lou Gehrig. He struck him out. Welcome to the major leagues, boy. He would end up winning 194 games.

Before Caden Sorrell hit a home run for Texas A&M, there was Wally Moon.

Not sure where to put the name? Moon was an All-Southwest Conference outfielder for the Aggies in 1950. He hit a home run in his first major league at-bat for St. Louis and was named the National League’s Rookie of the Year. A couple of other candidates for the award that season were Hank Aaron and Ernie Banks. Moon later played in three World Series-winning games for the Los Angeles Dodgers, where his home runs even earned their own nicknames: Moon Shots.

Phil Garner was an infielder on the Pittsburgh Pirates’ last World Series title 45 years ago and later led the Houston Astros to their first World Series. Do you know where he played college baseball? Tennessee.

Davey Johnson was an infielder for the Baltimore Orioles, who won the 1966 and 1970 World Series, and later led the New York Mets to the 1986 title. Do you know what he was in college? A Texas A&M Aggie.

In other words, Tennessee and Texas A&M have been playing baseball for a long time, and some pretty good people wear the colors, but perhaps neither team has ever experienced a moment like the one that will happen this weekend in Omaha.

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Tennessee will win its first Men’s College World Series. Or Texas A&M.

One of them will be the sixth different SEC team to win a baseball national title in the last seven NCAA tournaments. One of them will be a cult champion for a fan base that has seen plenty of success — and frustration — in many sports in the past.

Tennessee has never made it to the men’s basketball Final Four before. Neither has Texas A&M.

And the Vols have never secured a spot in the College Football Playoffs. Neither have the Aggies.

Tennessee has never had a Heisman winner, not even Peyton Manning. Don’t ask anyone from Knoxville about that vote. Texas A&M has never had a national player of the year in basketball, men’s or women’s.

Tennessee’s women’s basketball team won a remarkable eight national championships and 18 Final Fours in the first 27 NCAA tournaments, but has not done so in any of the 15 tournaments since. Texas A&M’s only women’s Final Four came 13 years ago, when the Aggies won the championship.

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According to the NCAA, Texas A&M has won 14 national championships in some discipline, including women’s tennis last month. Tennessee has won 16, but none since the women’s indoor title in 2009.

Now the two schools are the last to meet SEC standards together in Omaha. They are the ninth and tenth conference baseball programs to get that far in the last 17 years. Their own league is the rite of passage. Together they are 62-3 against the outside world, with all three non-SEC losses coming to Tennessee. Bow down, Oklahoma, Lipscomb and Evansville. You have the only non-conference wins this season against the duo in the Championship Series.

This pairing is the work of two coaches whose mission has always been to build programs talented and resilient enough to get that chance. Jim Schlossnagle first built TCU baseball into a perennial power with the help of an assistant named Tony Vitello. Schlossnagle moved on to Texas A&M and the teeming baseball land of the SEC, hungry to one day be a champion. Vitello eventually took the job at Tennessee with the exact same idea.

Now they face each other. But only one reaches the end of his search.

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Tennessee has been heading toward this moment in recent years with teams that had a lot of players but never made the final moves. “We always say before something happens, something happens,” Vitello said. “To be honest, we’ve been preparing for our successes this year, but also for the failures.”

Texas A&M is the result of a whirlwind attempt to join the SEC’s elite, something a fan base known for its zeal has long demanded.

“You want to reward their commitment. I think we’ve done that,” Schlossnagle said. “So we’re trying to re-establish Texas A&M as the baseball power that it should be. We have a lot of advantages, we need a new stadium, but we also have a lot of advantages and Texas A&M should be good at baseball.”

Neither man or their program has had such an opportunity in decades. Both are breaking new ground, and the unparalleled joy of accomplishing something for the first time is what’s on the agenda over the next few days at Charles Schwab Field.

The old Volunteer who struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in his first inning as a major league pitcher would be so proud. The same goes for the old Aggie who gave Dodger Stadium the moon shot.