Air Force’s Nic Ready wins college baseball home run derby

The College World Series wrapped up on Thursday night with Oregon State topping Arkansas, 5-0, in a deciding Game 3 in Omaha, Nebraska. Oregon State is now college baseball’s reigning national champion.

But that’s not the entire story from Omaha. On Sunday after the CWS final game Thursday, six of the nation’s best collegiate hard hitters assembled at TD Ameritrade Park for college baseball’s version of a home run derby.

The rules are simple. Six hitters are given four minutes each in round one to hit as many homers as they can; the final ball counts for two home runs, as it does throughout the competition. The top four dinger hitters from that round then advance to round two, where they’re then given another four minutes to hit as many taters as they can. Each hitter gets one 30 second break per plate appearance.

The two batters that accumulate the most homers out of the first two rounds then face off against each other with a clean sheet for the college baseball home run derby title. Metal bats, big park, large boys, televised batting practice. This is great.

After a close second round slug-fest, Air Force’s Nic Ready and Clemson’s Logan Davidson edged out Ole Miss big bat Thomas Dillard to earn spots in the finals. Davidson, a switch-hitter, notched just two home runs from the right side of the plate and so decided to switch over to the left side and parked 40 taters across the first two rounds. That’s five home runs per minute.

In the final round, Ready dropped in 21 dingers to open the decisive proceedings. Davidson got off to a slow start — still hitting lefty — and also parked 21 homers, but Ready’s total from the first two rounds beat out Davidson, and the airman won on aggregate. Had Davidson hit his final money ball, the trophy would’ve been traveling to South Carolina’s upstate.

College baseball starts back up early next spring. We’ll see you all then.