Emotional Michigan Punches Ticket

MINNEAPOLIS — Never has a baseball tournament so closely followed the plot of a slasher movie. Like a set of college students going on spring break and being mowed down by an axe murderer, the last five teams standing in Minneapolis started falling in turn, one by one, as each team was betrayed by its infield defense.

The monster that popped up around second base on Friday night killed off the big, strong one (Michigan State), the fun one (Indiana), and then the group leader (Illinois), and in the bottom of the fourth, on a rainy, chilly morning, it finally got[…]