Waddell, Kirby were surprised by Hall of Fame inductions
The message came a few weeks ago. Brian O’Connor, the veteran head baseball coach at Virginia, was hoping that former UVa left-hander Brandon Waddell could join the current Cavaliers on an upcoming team Zoom call.
“I had no idea what was going on,” Waddell recalled. “I thought it was going to be maybe, ‘Hey, can you share some things that you learned? Or some things that you experienced while you were here?’ Just talk to the guys.
“Then once we got going I kind of had a feeling, and seeing everyone else on there,” he added, “I kind of had a feeling of what was actually happening.”
Waddell, who pitched for the Hoos from 2013-2015, was one of six former players on the call. So were three of his former teammates: pitchers Nathan Kirby and Josh Sborz, who also played from 2013-2015, and first baseman/outfielder Mike Papi, who played from 2012-2014. Steve Bryant, an outfielder on the 1968-1970 UVa teams, and Branden Kline, who pitched at UVa from 2010-2012, rounded out the group.
The six were informed that they’d been elected to the Virginia Baseball Hall of Fame.
“I was speechless,” Kirby explained. “I had no idea what that meeting was going to be about. Then (O’Connor) told us, and to see Kline up on the screen, he was one of the first guys that I met up at the school. It was wild to have it come full circle.”
The program first established its Hall of Fame in 2017, with the inaugural class inducted in January of the following year. One of the stipulations for eligibility is that a player must be at least five years removed from his last game in a Virginia uniform. That meant, for the first time, members of the 2015 College World Series championship team were on the ballot in 2020.
Kirby, Waddell, and Sborz—the Most Outstanding Player of that 2015 College World Series—were the first three from that team to get voted in.
“It’s bigger than just us,” Waddell said. “It’s more about the program as a whole, and everyone that paved the way. We don’t have that opportunity if everyone that came before us doesn’t do what they did and build the program up to what it was and what it is, and just the expectations that are there at Virginia, and being part of Virginia baseball.”
As a true freshman in 2013, Waddell was the opening day starter. His final college start came against Vanderbilt, in the deciding third game of the 2015 CWS Finals. Those two outings bookended a career that saw Waddell become the program’s all-time leader in career starts (53) and career NCAA Tournament starts (11), plus postseason wins (six), strikeouts (45), and innings pitched.
The Hoos went 5-0 in his five CWS starts in 2014 and 2015.
“I think if you took where I started, you wouldn’t necessarily fill in the pages the way they were filled out," Waddell said. "And I think it’s really cool. Every story is individual, every person goes through their own ups and downs, and every journey is different.”
Kirby’s Cavalier career, meanwhile, had its own ups and downs. After withdrawing his name from the 2012 MLB Draft coming out of Midlothian High School, the lefty pitched mostly in relief as a freshman that following spring. He emerged as UVa’s top starter as a sophomore in 2015, earning multiple first-team All-America honors and ACC Co-Pitcher of the Year, and striking out 18 in a no-hitter at Pitt in early April.
But the following spring, a lat strain suffered in a mid-April start against Miami sidelined Kirby for the stretch run of UVa’s regular season. With the Wahoos scuffling for much of April and Kirby ruled out for up to two months, the junior feared he wouldn’t get another chance to pitch in a Virginia uniform.
“Absolutely not,” Kirby admitted, when asked If thought he would pitch for the Hoos again. “When it ended, I was a bullpen coach. I remember, I was with (assistant coach Kevin) Arico out in the pen, talking to him, and when we kept winning and winning and winning, I was a spectator.”
Kirby was ultimately able to make two appearances during the 2015 visit to Omaha, including the final two innings of Game 3 of the CWS Finals in relief of Waddell, recording a game-ending strikeout to clinch the Cavaliers’ first-ever championship.
It went down as his only college save.
“It never felt like a storybook ending,” Kirby said. “It felt like an achievement that we all did together.”
The 2021 Hall of Fame class was publicly announced and inducted last Friday, as part of UVa’s virtual Step Up to the Plate fundraiser. The plan is to invite the six back for an in-person induction at next year’s Step Up to the Plate, where they’ll be joined by members of the 2022 class.
“I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet, and it’s not something that will sink in until I’m back there having to talk about it, and seeing Oak and some of the guys,” said Kirby, who is still a member of the Milwaukee Brewers organization after being selected at No. 40 overall in the 2015 MLB Draft. “It’s awesome to be part of something that’s bigger than yourself, and to feel like a puzzle piece, it’s wild.”
“When they first started it, and you had that first class being inducted, I thought it would be really cool to be a part of that, and be mentioned along with all those guys, and just be seen as someone who had an influence in the program,” said Waddell, who is preparing for his first spring training with the Minnesota Twins after making his major league debut with Pittsburgh last summer.
“It’s a real special honor,” he added. “I think it’s something that everyone would love to be a part of.”
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