"What this means for this team is that in the year 2002, they were the very best at what they did, and that was play college baseball. They have earned the championship, and they should celebrate that," he said.

Characteristically, Garrido deflected any personal praise toward his team, and as he sat at the podium with four of his players in the post game press conference, it was obvious that he had become a beloved mentor to them. Together, they had made baseball fun again. Garrido's remarkable career, which leaves him only 47 victories behind Cliff Gustafson as the winningest coach in the history of the college game, had also reached another milestone. With the championship, he has now won national championships in four different decades. The first three, in 1979, 1984 and 1995, all came at Cal State Fullerton.

Now, with four titles, he had moved into third place in all-time championships, behind Southern Cal's Rod Dedeaux and LSU's Skip Berkman, both of whom are retired.

But he would be the first to tell you that this championship wasn't about him it was about the team he helped create.

Every now and then in sport, there comes a rare group of kids who band together in a remarkable way. So it has been with the Texas Longhorns of 2002. Most of them were too young to be anointed as super stars. The best the pro scouts thought of the team was a fourth round pick by the New York Yankees of Alan Bomer.

What it was, in the end, was a team, which had good pitching, although each pitcher on the team could look back to an outing where things didn't go his way. It had good hitting, although each of the hitters had a window of time where the bats went cold. It had good fielding, yet in the showcase of the CWS, it made four errors in one game and started the championship game with an error that led to a run. All of those things were good.

So what was "great" about it?

Its heart. And it was from that space that a national championship was won. Whatever the task that it came to, the team rose to meet the challenge. Injuries, losses that put the team's back to the wall, all of those things weren't enough to stop them. And in the final game it was their heart that came shining through. It was a team that absolutely willed itself to win.

A team that in recent years had seen heart break after heart break they were beaten in the final inning in painful loss after painful loss earned to face adversity with determined confidence. Whatever happened Saturday, you somehow knew that, by golly, the Longhorns were not going to allow themselves to be beaten.

That is why Chris Carmichael hit his home run, and Omar Quintanilla had four hits. That is why Justin Simmons somehow battled his way out of a bases loaded situation with nobody out in the first inning, allowing only one run. And that's why Tim Moss slashed a single up the middle to start the bottom of the first and start a rally, and why Brandon Fahey answered his opening error with two hits and three RBI, and Ryan Hubele called a brilliant game behind the plate and drove in two runs.

You can name them all: Majewski, Ontiveros, Reininger, Napoleon each got a hit or scored a run in the championship game. And Garrido honored his team by getting every position player on the suit-up squad (except backup catcher Curtis Thigpen) into a game in the tournament.

And then there is Huston Street.

At 18 years old, he has done what no other player in the history of the game accomplished. He pitched in, and saved, four games in the College World Series. For his efforts, he was named the Outstanding Player of the tournament. Late Saturday night, as he dined with his brothers and his mom and dad, he tried to absorb what had happened to him. In the corner of Mr. C's famous restaurant, the national championship trophy sat on a table.

When it was presented on the field, the Horns had held it high, and at one point, there was a gleam of light as the sun hit the gold on the trophy. That was a good thing.

The young men on the field had earned their moment in the sun. They had brought back to Texas a title that had eluded the teams of 1984, 1985 and 1989, all of which got to that final game and lost. The TV guys told the kids that the moment the final out was made, every player on the field, in some sort of mystic unison, hurled their gloves in the air simultaneously.

And then they rode off into the sunset, this band of brothers who had played a game together for fun, with a lot of love for the game, and for each other. They had given us thrills and chills, and affirmed the principles of hard work, never giving up, and picking each other up. It was easy to love them, easy to be proud of them, easy to feel good about life because of them.

On the way back to the hotel, after a long series of interviews, Huston Street talked just loud enough over the pop music blaring on the car radio to thank his fellow riders Quintanilla and Carmichael for getting the four runs in the bottom of the eighth.

"I didn't have my best stuff today," said the Tourney's MVP. "So it helped a lot to have that lead going into the ninth."

Augie Garrido tells the story of a guy he knows who is part of a very small, close circle of friends called the "Ride Back Gang." The name comes from an image of the old West, when a group of cowboys are trying to out run a pursuing band of Indians.

"If one of them gets shot," says Augie, "the others are commited to ride back and save him."

So perhaps that is how we will remember the 2002 Longhorns. You could call them The Ride Back Gang.

And, you can also call them National Champions.