By Foster Nicholas | Sports Writer

Baseball is a game of streaks — losing streaks and hitting streaks, slumps on the mound or at the plate, maybe even an unusually high number of consecutive wins. Baylor baseball has learned a thing or two about that when looking back on the 2012 season and a craze that stormed through Waco: “Feed the beaver.”

“Any championship-level team I’ve ever been a part of as a player or a coach has some quirkiness and has some personality,” Baylor assistant coach Zach Dillon said. “They don’t take themselves too seriously, but they know there’s a job to do and a mission at hand.

“They showed up every day and believed they were going to win. And there was really no panic ever in the dugout. That’s how you go on to win the Big 12 and win 24 straight games.”

The 2011-2012 athletic calendar marked the “Year of the Bear” as Baylor racked up 129 wins across the four major sports (football, men’s basketball, women’s basketball and baseball) — the most in NCAA history.

While history kept raining green and gold, the season ended on the diamond with arguably the most exciting Baylor baseball season of all time. The year included a 24-game win streak en route to a Big 12 Championship run — and it was fueled by the sighting of a beaver peeking its head through the right field gate.

“Having the personalities we had on that team, Joey Hainsfurther had kind of taken the beaver in as our pet beaver,” Dillon said. “Then Max Muncy came up to bat in a ballgame, and one of the pitchers from the corner of the dugout yelled, ‘Feed the beaver!’ Muncy hit a home run to right field and that caught fire. The rest is history.”

Dillon was a volunteer assistant coach during the 2012 season and returned to Waco in 2022 alongside head coach Mitch Thompson. Dillon recalled the win streak with fond memories, as not only the team but also the fans rallied around a newfound “beaver fever” that was stirring along the Brazos River.

“All of the sudden, we had a beaver in the dugout, obviously a stuffed animal. We had a beaver mascot. We had T-shirts and signs,” Dillon said. “It’s one of those cool sports stories that only happens when you have a really good team and a bunch of guys that are comfortable in their own skin and are playing for each other.”

Superstitions have always been a part of sports, but no sport has been taken by storm more than baseball. From wearing the same underwear day after day to taking the field and displaying two different socks, if something strikes a chord and stumbles into success, it sticks.

For the Bears in 2012, it was a beaver that brought out the best in a veteran group that had spent the long haul building toward success.

“So many of those guys were third- and fourth-year players,” Thompson said. “It was an old team. Those guys all grew up together. It takes time. It’s not something that just happens by snapping your fingers. It’s three or four years of working together, bleeding together, growing together and loving each other. Then all of a sudden, it all clicks. And when talent is right and the culture is right — bang! It takes off.”

While Thompson wasn’t a part of Baylor’s memorable 2012 run, the current head coach knows what it takes to create a championship-caliber team. While trying to rejuvenate a sleeping giant on the diamond, he’s working to build the Bears back up to where they were.

“It comes with time and repetition,” Thompson said. “It’s a discipline thing. You don’t see guys just stepping into the big leagues and ever being that guy. It’s always the veterans that make you go, ‘Oh man, this guy gives great at bats every time’ or, ‘You can count on him every outing on the mound.’”

The time was paying off for Baylor as the win streak grew larger and larger, bringing program records and a Big 12 tournament trophy to go alongside a beaver that had
magically propelled Baylor into a baseball school.

“As far as a group of guys that have great culture and chemistry — who have the identity and the creativity to create their own rallying cry at the moment when something presents itself — I think it’s unique,” Dillon said. “I think it was just one of those magical moments that we’re all fortunate to be a part of. The beaver just makes it that much more memorable.”

But like all good things, it had come to an end. The Bears’ miracle run was stunted in the same place they spurred up momentum — in Waco while hosting the Super Regional.

“It was the most heartbreaking loss I’ve ever been a part of in game three in the Super Regional versus Arkansas, because I felt like that group more than anybody had earned the right to go play for a national championship,” Dillon said. “At the end of the day, our time was up. I think those guys all look back on it with fond memories, but at the same time, we wish we would have gotten over the hump.”

Baylor baseball is still waiting for its first national championship despite three trips to the College World Series. The team hit a dry spell in the years after the “feed the beaver” saga before making additional NCAA Tournament appearances from 2017 to 2019.

“We always have to learn from our history and understand that Baylor baseball was a national brand, and that’s what we’re working back toward,” Dillon said. “Any time you can revisit — without getting too caught up in it — the great moments in our history, I think it’s powerful.

“Our ultimate goal as the staff right now is to bring those kinds of times, teams and players back to Baylor and hopefully one day get over that hump and be able to bring that big trophy home.”

While it wasn’t a beaver that created miracles at Baylor Ballpark, the mascot will forever embody a rally unlike any other. As the 2024 baseball season looms, the Bears will look past any beaver warming up in the bullpen and determine their success the same way they did almost 12 years ago: through the culture, passion, hard work and togetherness that have been embedded in Thompson’s team.

“‘Feed the beaver’ mania was part of a group of guys really enjoying the moment and really enjoying where they were and what they were doing together,” Dillon said. “That’s something we all want to be a part of, no matter what the rallying cry is. I was just a little volunteer assistant coach, but it’s something I’ll remember forever. And it was a heck of a three-month ride.”