Halfway between the Bay Area and San Luis Obispo on Highway 101 sits a small city that is isolated from its nearest friends, so isolated that its name means loneliness in Spanish.
You’ve likely heard of Soledad before. Either you make the trek between the two places and stop frequently in the city as I do, or you read the seminal Steinbeck novel Of Mice and Men in high school.
Of Mice and Men is one of my favorite works of fiction (Is that weird? I feel like when you talk about fiction books, you need to say something like The Wheel of Time or Lord of the Rings), and the poem “To a Mouse” that gives the title of the book contains one of my favorite sayings.
“The best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.”
The 2026 season went awry for Cal Poly Baseball almost from the jump.
It started inconspicuously; the team sort of crashed their way to a 4-7 start, including being swept by USC. Granted, of the first three series, two were against NCAA tournament teams, and the third won their conference in the regular season. Cal Poly Baseball somewhat infamously starts slow, but with a team returning a lot of talent from last year, it felt like they should have gotten off to a better start.
The plans really started to fall apart in paradise. Island time sucks for the mainland teams and their fans; games start at 9 p.m. Pacific, which is about when games end at Baggett on a Friday night.
You know what else sucks? Losing your Saturday starter to a broken ankle. Already missing last year’s Sunday starter in Ethan Marmie due to Tommy John surgery, Laif Palmer was injured trying to field a bunt and would be lost for the season.
Josh Volmerding would soon follow with a knee injury after the Bakersfield series, but his story wasn’t over just yet.
Being down two starting pitchers can and has sunk college teams in the past, but not this Mustangs squad. Despite the injuries to the rotation and a constant shuffle of the lineup trying to find a first baseman and designated hitter to be a mainstay, Cal Poly kept winning.
With the downswing of last year’s Big West regular season champions, UC Irvine, the big test of the season would be Santa Barbara at home. Frankly, it was a test that was failed.
Jackson Flora (who will be a top-five pick unless general managers in the MLB wish to lose their jobs) threw a complete game shutout in game one of a three-game sweep by the Gauchos. It was a series where Cal Poly could not figure out the arms of Santa Barbara, scoring just six runs across the three games.
A rain-filled Oregon State series ended in a Beavers sweep, but the amount of delays really made it a wash (get it?). The team ultimately battled against a top-ten team in the nation and had chances to win, even if they couldn’t cash them in.
After Oregon State, it was pretty smooth sailing the rest of the way. Ryan Tayman was rounding into form that would earn him Big West Co-Field Player of the Year Honors. Dylan Kordic found his swing after slumping to begin the season and even losing his starting spot in right field at points, which was incredibly important to the team’s success moving forward. Nick Bonn was collecting saves like it was going out of style.
Even into the Big West tournament, things looked unnervingly smooth. After a nailbiting victory over UC San Diego in the opener, Cal Poly got their lick back from UC Santa Barbara in a 4-2 victory (Thanks in at least a little part to the intriguing decision to start Flora game one of the tournament against a tired Fullerton squad. Although a week later the Gauchos saved Flora for a potential matchup against Texas in the NCAA tournament… only to lose to Tarleton State and instead have Flora demolish poor Holy Cross in an elimination game.)
Getting San Diego in the Championship was the best-case scenario for Cal Poly, but the Tritons wouldn’t go down easily with a 12-2 mercy rule demolition of the Mustangs.
Corden Pettey was not in the starting rotation at the beginning of the year but had to step in due to the injuries suffered by the pitching staff. He later fell out of the rotation either through shaky performance or injury, and he had to show up in the do-or-die game, or the Mustangs would be thinking about the rabbits in a hurry.
Pettey would turn in one of the best starts of his young career, and Kordic would swat a three-run blast that ended up being the difference.
The Regional draw was less than ideal, with No. 1 UCLA looming on the other side of the bracket. Yet with all the trials and tribulations that Cal Poly had to face just to get to that spot, the best laid plans of Larry Lee and his coaching staff went exactly as intended.
Griffin Naess turned in yet another dominant start in postseason play, Carson Turnquist shut down what was maybe the hottest offense in the nation in Saint Mary’s, and Volmerding turned in a grade-A start in the Championship against a Saint Mary’s squad fresh off of eliminating UCLA. Cal Poly scored 25 runs in three games; there was a lot of noise at Jackie Robinson Stadium that weekend, and it was the Mustangs bopping their way through to Morgantown.
Obviously, the Super Regional against West Virginia did not go as planned, but you know what? Cal Poly’s first Super Regional put the entire university on the map, and it validated Project Omaha in its first year of existence as a potential tool to keep the program competitive in the era of NIL. In the book, Lennie and George never got their ranch, but the Mustangs have gotten their metaphorical ranch, and no mouse or man could ever have planned for that.
