Remembering 2004’s National Title
Mike Kinnison, the skipper who finally brought a baseball national title to Delta State.
Nine times, Delta State had played for a Division II baseball national championship and gone home empty. The tenth time, on a Saturday night in late May, the road finally ended somewhere good.
The Statesmen beat Grand Valley State 12-8 on May 29, 2004, at Paterson Field in Montgomery to win the program’s first NCAA Division II baseball title. The NCAA’s own championship summary put it plainly: “Delta State’s Championship is Perfect 10.”
The third trip
It was Delta State’s third appearance in the championship game — following runner-up finishes in 1968, when Chapman beat them 11-0, and 1978. Thirty-six years of knocking, and on the third try the door opened.
Mike Kinnison, a former All-American shortstop for the Statesmen who had walked on as a team manager under Boo Ferriss, was the man who finally got them through it.
The bracket
The path ran through the defending champion and the top-ranked team in the country.
Delta State opened the South Central Regional at home in Cleveland and went 3-0, then arrived in Montgomery and met Central Missouri State — the No. 1 team and the 2003 champion. The Statesmen beat them twice in three games: 6-5 and 10-9, knocking out the team that had won it all the year before. In between, they handled Columbus State 14-5.
Grand Valley State reached the final undefeated through its own bracket. Delta State pounced early and never let the Lakers back in it.
The final
With the Statesmen leading 12-8 in the top of the eighth, Scott Ellison came out of the bullpen and closed the door.
| THE 2004 D2 CWS | Result |
|---|---|
| Winner | Delta State (54-11) |
| Final | Delta State 12, Grand Valley State 8 (46-16) |
| Date | May 29, 2004, 6:35 p.m. CT |
| Site | Paterson Field, Montgomery, Ala. |
| Attendance | 2,428 |
| Duration | 3:07 |
Matt McAlpin (10-1) took the win, throwing 6 1/3 innings, scattering nine hits and allowing six runs, four earned. Scott Ellison earned the save with 1 2/3 innings of relief.
The hardware
Bert Pickard was named Most Valuable Player of the College World Series, and joined teammates Craig Newton (catcher) and Scott Ellison (pitcher) on the All-CWS Tournament Team.
The 54 wins were a school record, and the 19-3 Gulf South Conference mark delivered yet another league title for a program that has since amassed 15 GSC championships and 12 NCAA regional titles.
The house that Boo built
There’s a straight line from the 2004 trophy back to 1960.
Dave “Boo” Ferriss — the former Red Sox pitcher who won 25 games in 1946 — took over a Delta State program that barely existed and built it into a contender across 26 seasons, reaching the College World Series in 1977, 1978 and 1982. Kinnison was in that program as a player. He then coached it to the summit.
Delta State’s home field carries Ferriss’s name. Kinnison, who was named NCAA Division II Region Coach of the Year an extraordinary nine times, now serves as the university’s Director of Athletics.
What followed
The 2004 title wasn’t a one-off. The Statesmen returned to the College World Series in 2005, and reached the championship game again in 2012, falling to West Chester 9-0 in Cary, North Carolina.
By any measure, the 2004 team reset the standard. In the program’s own record book, the 54-11 season sits beside the national championship trophy as the high-water mark — the year the tenth try finally went right.