No Slump: White shines on mound for Tar Heels

CHAPEL HILL -- Gray clouds lingered over North Carolina's baseball park at 3 p.m. yesterday, but the clouds hanging over pitcher Alex White finally lifted.

His curious late-season slump, his bothersome injuries and his possibly unsettled draft status evaporated in three hours of masterful NCAA work. The right-hander fought through the shaky early innings, restricted East Carolina to a single run, struck out a career-high 12 batters and spurred the Tar Heels' 10-1 victory.

With the opener in the best-of-3 series almost locked up, Coach Mike Fox hurried to the mound with one out and one on in the ninth inning. Fox ordered relief help so that White, who had thrown 128 pitches, could make a ceremonial exit in the final home start of his career.

Fox left the field first, alone. White waited until he could hand the ball to teammate Nate Striz and then jogged off as the record Boshamer Stadium crowd of 4,316 cheered. Some even screamed.

Most stood, including hundreds of East Carolina fans. They were polite and fully aware that White was born in Greenville and once led Greenville's D.H. Conley High to a state championship.

White described the moment as exciting and emotional.

"That's where I'm from, and then a lot of people were in the stands cheering for ECU that I know," he said. "They still have respect for the game, and they know what's going on. I'm just glad they were here and they were that type of person that could do that and cheer for a guy from their hometown."

Unless North Carolina reaches the College World Series for the fourth straight season, junior White may never throw another college pitch. He's eligible for the pro baseball draft scheduled for Tuesday, with many scouts and amateur guessers projecting him between fifth and 25th overall.

In some assessments, White slipped a few spots during the past month. He entered the season as a favorite for national awards and a top-three step on the draft ladder, based on his knockout 2008 season (13-3, 2.83 earned run average, 112 strikeouts against 42 walks).

Battling injuries

He has pitched well most of this season, sometimes with meager run support, but had a 7-4 record with a 4.42 ERA when ECU rolled into town. Although White made the All-ACC team, he hadn't won a game since April 24 and had lost three consecutive starts. He had allowed eight earned runs in 22/3 horrible ACC Tournament innings against Virginia.

Coastal Carolina touched him up for five earned runs in 41/3 innings during the NCAA regional last weekend, prompting Fox to announce that White was struggling with a strained hamstring and a blister on the index finger of his pitching hand. Scouts like his size (6-3, 200), his calm resolve and his fastball's speed, which often rises from 88 mph to 95 mph as games progress. But six weeks without winning is still six weeks.

If the peripheral issues squeezed White, the pressure didn't show. He seemed mainly concerned about treating ECU as another talented team rather than a hometown rival he needed to beat for personal pride, his approach in a ragged NCAA performance two years ago.

"I worked hard this week just to get healthy and try to pitch better," he said.

Carolina coaches, estimating the hamstring's fitness at 90 percent, worried about White fielding bunts or covering first base. Pitching coach Scott Forbes dismissed the blister as merely worrisome. That raised another question: How does anyone rehab a blister?

"Our trainer, Terri Jo Rucinski, she's unbelievable," Forbes said. "They file it and Super Glue it, they file it and Super Glue it. She had some other stuff she ordered from somewhere -- I think it was the Dodgers or somebody that used it -- and put that on. He got through it. We just decided before the game that it's a blister. He said: ‘You know what, if it's bleeding, it's a blister. I'm just going to pitch. It's not like it's my elbow or my shoulder. It's a blister. It's getting over that hurdle and saying, if anything happens, coach, I'm not coming out today.'"

They filed away Super Glue and dead skin, over and over. Forbes reported that White dipped the finger in pickle juice, an old-timey pitcher's remedy, and fiddled with brown rice. He grew enough new skin.

Teammates suspected that workhorse White would deliver a ferocious effort. Coaches assumed high levels of concentration and grit.

"I don't think he just wants to be good," Forbes said. "I think he wants to be the best. He wants to be out there in a tougher situation.... He may fail, but I'll tell you one thing, that kid does not fear it. He does not fear failure. He wants to be the guy. Like Michael Jordan used to say: ‘I miss a lot of shots because I want to be the guy taking them.' That's how Alex is. He wants the ball in his hands."

ECU put White in tight spots right away. Brandon Henderson hit a second-inning homer for a 1-0 lead. White, often relying on a nasty slider, wiggled off the hook with a grounder in the second, a strikeout in the third and a double play in the sixth (which protected a 2-1 lead). He spread nine hits out judiciously and walked only three.

Carolina's seven-run sixth inning created a deficit ECU couldn't overcome against a pitcher Coach Billy Godwin called one of America's best. "When he goes out there and he's commanding his fastball and he's down in the zone and throwing it on the black, he's going to beat anybody," Godwin said. "Once he settled in, he may have beaten the Yankees today."

In White's small world, he did even better. He beat the Pirates.

In his larger world, he pushed the Tar Heels within one step of another College World Series. He found the magic in that 20-year-old arm, and when he walked outside the winner's locker room, he found the sun shining again.

■ Lenox Rawlings can be reached at lrawlings@wsjournal.com.