Brady Counsell of Kansas grew up watching his dad do plenty of incredible things on big league fields.
Craig Counsell was never a part of something like his son was Wednesday.
The younger Counsell hit the third of five consecutive home runs for Kansas, which propelled the Jayhawks to a 29-1 win over Minnesota in a game shortened to seven innings. The run of homers in Minneapolis matched an NCAA record set three times previously, most recently in 2006, when South Carolina accomplished the feat against Georgia.
No big league team has ever hit five straight home runs.
“I’ve never been a part of anything like that,” Brady Counsell said. “I think kind of in the moment I didn’t really realize that we had three, and after [Brady] Ballinger went deep that was four. We were kind of like, ‘Oh my gosh. What is happening?'”
Then Jackson Hauge went deep to make it five.
“And it was, ‘Wow! That’s crazy!'” Counsell said.
Counsell’s father, who is now the manager of the Chicago Cubs, hit 42 homers in 16 seasons and 4,741 big league at-bats.
The spree for Kansas started with Chase Diggins’ three-run shot with no outs in the third inning. Max Soliz Jr. went deep next, and Counsell, Ballinger and Hauge followed. The Jayhawks scored eight more times in the fifth inning to win in a rout, setting a school record for runs against a Division I opponent on the road.
Kansas also set a record for margin of victory against a Division I opponent.
“I’ve never seen that,” said the Jayhawks’ Dan Fitzgerald, who has been coaching college baseball for nearly 25 years. “We hit three in a row earlier in the year, and of course been a part of some of those, but never five in a row. It was super cool, and I love how engaged our guys were today. I thought our approach at the plate was awesome.”
The first college team to hit five consecutive homers was Centenary, which did it against Stephen F. Austin in the first inning of a game in 1992. Eastern Illinois matched the feat in the fifth inning against Morehead State in 1998.
“I actually didn’t know we had four when I went up to the plate because they made a pitching change,” said Hauge, who actually had two homers in the game. “It was Diggins, Soliz and then a pitching change. I was just going up there thinking, ‘This would be awesome to go back-to-back-to-back. When I got back in the dugout they yelled, ‘Five!’ So it was pretty cool.”
The record for consecutive homers in a big league game is four, which has happened 11 times.
Kansas is 15-2 heading into its Big 12 opener Friday against Baylor.
“The five home runs in a row? That was fun to be on the right side of it,” Fitzgerald said.
