But does the slipper fit?

I had the unique advantage of watching the first game of the all-Bulldogs College World Series finals between Georgia and Fresno State while writing this column, but regardless of the outcome of game one, Fresno's unimaginable run to the CWS finals could end up being the biggest college Cinderella story of all time.
        My apologies to the 1983 North Carolina State and the 1985 Villanova basketball teams, but even though the Fresno State Bulldogs lost to Georgia 7-6 in Monday’s thrilling CWS game one, they are already the lowest seeded competitor to reach the championship round of any national NCAA tournament.
    What Fresno is doing at the very instant I write these words is as if a 13-seed somehow marched all the way through the NCAA basketball tournament and found itself in the title game.
    The sports world stoped turning for most people in March 2006, when an 11th-seeded George Mason basketball team cleaned the clocks of three basketball powerhouses on its way to the Final Four. That team lost in the national semifinals, and a nation of college hoops fans applauded the Patriots' effort.
    During this year's CWS, Fresno State, which wouldn't have even been in the NCAA tournament had the team not turned its 33-27 season around to win the Western Athletic Conference tournament, has bested three of the country's top six-ranked teams (Arizona State, Rice, North Carolina) on the way to a berth in the final.
    How have the Fresno State Bulldogs done it? Basically, they fixed the leaky pipes.
    Though Fresno State's overall team ERA for 2008 is a less-than-stellar 4.65, the Bulldogs' CWS team ERA has shriveled to a stingy 3.08, the best of any team in the field. But you can't win unless you put up more runs than the other team, so it makes sense that the other half of their winning equation would be timely hitting.
    As I sit and watch their number-nine batter belt a solo shot the other way to tie the game at one in this first game of the CWS championship series, only one thing comes to mind. There's nothing more timely than right now.