Mark Marquess among old-school coaches under the microscope

— -- BERKELEY, Calif. -- There's nothing quite like sipping from the fountain of youth. And there's nothing like seeing a living resurrection before your very eyes. And there's nothing like witnessing a classic showdown between classic rivals.

On Tuesday I got to do all three.

It started in the afternoon in Palo Alto as the Stanford Cardinal baseball team was loading the bus for a trip across the San Francisco Bay to face archrival Cal. The team, 14-8 after a season full of knockdown drag-outs against the likes of Cal State Fullerton, Texas, Vanderbilt and USC, was dressed in its customary road-red pullover jerseys with the script "Stanford" scrawled across the front.

Those uniforms, like the coach, haven't changed since, well, ever.

Mark Marquess -- nicknamed "Nine" for his uniform number -- is as much a part of the Stanford campus as palm trees, Memorial Church and undergrads already making money off of internet ventures.

"People ask me all the time, when will you get rid of the old-school uniforms?" Marquess likes to joke, usually (as he was on Tuesday afternoon) gripping his leather briefcase packed with charts to meticulously tape onto the walls of the dugout before each game. "I always say we'll get rid of the old-school uniforms when we get rid of the old-school coach."

Of late, the living legend has been under fire, albeit as respectful as such fire can be. It's a refrain heard across the landscape of college baseball, from Austin, Texas, to Tallahassee, Florida, to The Farm at Stanford. No reasonable person will ever dare question the baseball acumen of Marquess, the Longhorns' Augie Garrido or the Seminoles' Mike Martin, three of the four winningest coaches in the history of Division I baseball.

But there are questions about their abilities to once again do what used to feel like a foregone conclusion -- return to Omaha for the College World Series and become legitimate contenders once they get there.

"Nine" turned 69 two weeks ago. He first arrived on campus at Stanford in 1965. He played football and baseball, roomed with Mitt Romney and went on to play four years of minor league ball. His final pro season he was a player-coach, unheard of for a 20-something barely of out of school. By the end of that season, he was back at school, taking an assistant-coaching job at his alma mater in 1972.

He's been there ever since. This is his 40th season as head coach -- a constantly pacing, BP-throwing, handshaking head coach, who's won 1,569 games and two College World Series titles in 15 trips to Omaha.

The last of those CWS appearances came back in 2008, though his teams came close via super regional appearances in 2011, '12 and '14. Last year the Cardinal didn't make the NCAA tournament. Garrido's Longhorns were in Omaha in 2014, but the last of Texas' six CWS titles came more than a decade ago. Martin and FSU were in the Series in 2012 but haven't made it to the finals since 1999.

Even Rice's Wayne Graham, who turned 80 on Wednesday, rolls his eyes in admission when asked about the griping that his Owls made the last of their seven CWS appearances in 2008.

"The more years that go by and you haven't been, you start feeling that pressure building up," another living legend, Miami coach Jim Morris explained last summer. He's led the Hurricanes to Omaha 11 times, including his first six seasons in Coral Gables. When The U made the eight-team field a year ago, it was the Hurricanes' first trip to Omaha in seven years. "When you make it back, all that pressure is relieved. But that only lasts a little while."

Whispers abound that if this year's Stanford squad were to make it to the banks of the Missouri River in June, Marquess might hang up his already-retired jersey for good. But for anyone who felt the strength of his pregame handshake and witnessed the speed of his trademark dugout pacing Tuesday, not to mention the rubber-armed batting practice pitches in between, those whispers are sure to fall on deaf ears.

If his team continues to show the kind of grit it did at Cal that night, rallying from two runs down in the top of ninth to win 8-6 over the 13th-ranked Bears, then the idea of sneaking back to Omaha's TD Ameritrade Park might not seem so far-fetched.

Even if those whisperers don't want to admit it.

"Yeah, sometimes he does drive me crazy," one Stanford fan said late Tuesday night, clapping his hands as he watched Nine fist-bump the team as it lined up to turn off the field and start packing up the dugout. "But damn if I don't love him, too."

The Walking -- and Hitting, Running, Winning -- Dead: Tuesday night was my first visit to the Cal campus. Not so long ago I was afraid that when I finally did make it to Berkeley, there would be no baseball team to watch. It was a genuine thrill for me to stand in the Jackie Jensen Pressbox, named for Cal's golden boy who led the Bears to the first College World Series title in 1947, over George H.W. Bush's Yale Bulldogs. It was also very cool to see the left-field banners commemorating Cal's most recent All-Americans. But the scoreboard and field house bear the names of the real heroes of Golden Bears hardball -- Stu Gordon and Jeff Kent. Those former Cal big leaguers, particularly Gordon, spearheaded the 2011 fundraising efforts that saved the baseball program just seven months after the university announced that it would be shuttered, along with three other teams, for financial reasons. In April the team learned it had been spared execution. A few weeks later, Cal famously made it to Omaha. There's still plenty of work to do. Evans Diamond is quaint but also antiquated. But coach David Esquer has his program dug out of the hole created by the tales of its impending extinction, knocking on the door of a top-10 ranking and becoming everyone's Pac-12 title favorite.

Seth Beer superhero watch: Just two weeks ago, we told you about Clemson's younger-than-a-freshman phenom Seth Beer. Well, clearly all the attention has started to get to him. His batting average has dipped to an embarrassing .422. On Tuesday he was named the National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association Player of the Month. Over 17 games in March he hit .431 with nine home runs and 21 RBIs and six doubles. As a result, sources tell me that Phil Coulson and the Agents of SHIELD are en route to Clemson to register Beer as an Inhuman.

These guys are pretty good, too ... The NCBWA also announced its Pitcher of the Month, and two dudes were so ridiculous during March that the NCBWA decided to make it plural. South Carolina right-hander Clarke Schmidt and Houston lefty Seth Romero each posted records of 4-0 and each had nearly 40 strikeouts while Schmidt held opponents to a 1.55 ERA and Romero was nearly a full run better with a 0.58. Both defeated ranked teams during the month and both have suffered only one loss on the season.

What's in that Salt Lake water? Don't look now, but BYU and Utah are both playing big-time baseball. The Cougars don't have any headlining wins thus far, but they are 23-4, the best start in school history and knocking on the door of the top 25, debuting at 27th in the all-important RPI rankings. Meanwhile, the archrival Utes are 10-15 but are 7-2 in conference play after -- count 'em -- one, two, three! comeback wins over Arizona to take their first Pac-12 series sweep in school history. Utah is now tied with Cal for tops in a Pac-12 that is a little more wide-open with the season-ending injury to Oregon State ace Drew Rasmussen.

Last weekend we all wish we'd been at ... Texas A&M at Florida. Two of the nation's top three teams got off to a competitive start on Friday night, when the Gators trudged out a 7-4 win. But few expected to see Florida sweep the series, winning 7-2 on Saturday and 10-7 Sunday. The Aggies are still trying to sort out their rotation. They need to do so in a hurry, seeing as there's a trip to Mississippi State coming two weekends from now.

This weekend we all wish we were going to ... UC Santa Barbara at College of Charleston. Yes, I'm serious. I'm a sucker for mid-major programs. Call it the Fresno State Syndrome. The 20-8 Cougars got everyone's attention early in the season battling Nebraska, Florida State and Coastal Carolina. If they want to keep any flicker of a dream alive for a high NCAA tourney seed, they need to take care of business against UCSB, currently ranked 10th in RPI, and in upcoming two-game sets with Coastal Carolina (16th) and Clemson (ninth). Likewise, the Gauchos could use a cross-country boost before going home to roost in the Big West for the remainder of the year.

Uni Watch 2016: Virginia Tech baseball has always been surprisingly generic (no offense, Cadillac Stubbs), but over the past few seasons, they've looked particularly sharp. Last weekend, while unfortunately being swept by Louisville, the Hokies wore these St. Louis Cardinals-inspired unis, designed by graphic artist and lifetime VT fanatic Clark Ruhland.

Earlier this year, Ruhland went even further, imagining what Tech's threads might resemble if they took on every team in Major League Baseball. My personal favorite is the group from the NL East. You can see them all here.