Jacob Young has a flair for the dramatic this season. Last Sunday, the third-year sophomore outfielder laced a walk-off single against Samford.
What he did this Sunday in the Gators’ 8-0 defeat of Florida A&M had nothing to do with the scoreboard. He entered the day with a 29-game hitting streak that dated back to the 2019 Lubbock Regional. That streak tied the mark established by Tim Olson in 2000 for the longest in school history.
Every time Young stepped to the plate against the Rattlers (0-11), you could feel a nervous tension grow over the crowd. Just about everybody had their cameras ready to capture the magical moment and their voices ready to explode with excitement. Young reached on an error in the first inning, was hit by a pitch in the second, popped out in the third and grounded out in the fifth. With the score out of hand early in the game and it becoming increasingly clear that Young would get just one more shot at breaking Olson’s record, the anticipation grew.
“You kind of hear some rumbles late in the game, especially in the eighth, and you start kind of thinking about it, and you hear some things in the stands,” Young said. “You hear some things in the dugout. Probably was a lot of nervous energy, but I knew I just wanted to put the ball in play and figure out a way to try to extend it.”
Young led off the bottom of the eighth inning against Rattlers pitcher Landon Neville. The first pitch ran inside and nearly hit him. That would’ve been a tough way to end the streak. He then fouled off the next pitch before taking the next two for balls. With the count at 3-1, Young was urged by his teammates to swing no matter what on the next pitch. A walk would be a huge letdown at this point.
“We yelled ‘Hit and run!’ from the dugout just so he knew that he had to swing,” pitcher Hunter Barco said.
And swing he did. He made weak contact with the pitch and hit a slow roller toward shortstop JD Tease. Young exploded out of the right-handed batter’s box in a desperate attempt to beat out the throw for an infield single.
As it turned out, there never was a throw. Tease charged the ball but couldn’t corral it. It squirted away from him, and Young reached first base safely.
Then came even more tension. Would it be scored as an infield single or a fielding error that would snap his streak?
“I know it was maybe a questionable call whether a hit or an error, but I firmly believe he would beat it out if it was fielded cleanly,” UF (9-3) coach Kevin O’Sullivan said. “I don’t think anything was given to him in that at bat. I had a really good angle at it, and I don’t think there was any question it was a hit.”
Inside the press box, UF’s sports information director, who doubles as the official scorer, watched the replay and determined that Tease was playing far enough back that Young probably would’ve beaten the throw anyway. He announced it as a hit on the internal public address system before saying “Not on my watch, damnit.”
Meanwhile, the Gators’ dugout and the crowd nervously stared at the scoreboard for what felt like forever, waiting to see if the “10” in the hits column would become an “11.” It did, and the stadium erupted into pandemonium. The crowd gave Young a long standing ovation, and Young stepped off the base to acknowledge the crowd and tip his helmet to them.
“I don’t think I ever looked at a scoreboard that long, waiting for it to come down,” Young said. “But, I knew if I put the ball in play and gave myself a chance, I could still figure out a way to kind of get to first base. When I hit it, I knew I had a chance, of course, so I just ran as hard as I could, and I kind of hoped the ball wasn’t going to beat me there.”
Young said the moment was special to him, and it’s an honor to have his name atop the record books for the unforeseeable future.
“I grew up a Gator fan,” he said. “I was born in Jacksonville and always followed the Gators. I’ve been a huge fan of them. I’ve watched, I feel like, every sports game they’ve had growing up. So, knowing that my name’s in one of the books is a really great feeling. I actually got a message from Tim Olson yesterday. That meant a lot. Just hearing from him and talking to him a little bit, it was a cool feeling.”
O’Sullivan said breaking the record couldn’t have happened to a better teammate or person. He won’t be surprised if Young keeps his hitting streak going for a while longer.
“It’s a really hard thing to do,” he said. “To have that level of focus and determination day in and day out just speaks volumes about what he’s all about. I think there’s only six other guys in SEC history that have had longer hitting streaks.
“It’s a heck of an accomplishment.”
In case you’re wondering, the SEC record for longest hitting streak stands at 36 games and was set by Alabama’s Andy Phillips in 1999. The NCAA record is 58 games and was set by Robin Ventura in 1987. The SEC mark seems like a possibility, while the national record may never be approached.
Young doesn’t care about any of that, though. He just wants to enjoy his history-making performance and keep helping his team win games. If more records come, so be it.
“I think I said this last year, you know it’s going to end, so you might as well enjoy it as it goes, and so I’m just kind of enjoying every moment of it,” Young said.
The score of Sunday’s game couldn’t have been more irrelevant. The day belonged to Young. Neither he nor anybody who witnessed it will ever forget it.