TWO-OUT RALLY

1776.

The red italic letters written casually along the book's navy spine stand out, mainly because they're written on one of the few books that stand upright in the off-white bookcase against the back wall of the office. It's also isolated because it appears to be the only book not about baseball, the other texts strewn slovenly on the shelves-evidence of recent perusals-and enclosed by green or white book jackets depicting idyllic diamonds or simple bats and balls.

When it comes to Duke Baseball, though, "1776"-David McCullough's 2005 account of the Revolutionary War and the founding of the United States-is less anomalous than it seems in that off-white bookcase. That's because words and phrases like "foundation," "process" and "tabula rasa" have applied almost as much to what fourth-year manager Sean McNally is trying to do for the Blue Devils as they did during that especially warm 18th-century summer in Philadelphia-admittedly his favorite historical era.

"It's just fascinating to me how you could be doing work that would have so much impact and is so fundamentally powerful years later," McNally says across his desk, his voice hinting at reverence.

It's a fitting connection, because what Sean McNally is trying to do in this ground-floor office of Jack Coombs Field is nothing short of writing history.

McNally, the son of high school history teachers and a former star third baseman for Duke in the early 1990s, took over at his alma mater in July 2005-the program so in decline that Edward Gibbon or Jared Diamond would have written about it if it had mattered in the first place. It was two months after Bill Hillier had resigned following six disastrous and under .500 seasons as head coach and three months after The Chronicle ran a front-page story alleging a past culture of steroid abuse.

Two score and three months later, McNally is sitting behind his desk listing an appearance in an NCAA regional, which Duke hasn't done since 1961, as a realistic goal for the 2009 Blue Devils. He says it with a reserved confidence in his deep voice, not too dissimilar from that of a high school history teacher. McNally is the kind of man who greets you with a hard handshake and remembers your name and hometown, even if you haven't covered his team in three years. He is a tall man, 6-foot-4, and his height is emphasized by that ground-floor office, the ceiling of which turns about halfway in toward the floor on an obtuse angle so that, when McNally sits behind his desk, his head isn't much further from the ceiling than it was when he was standing at the door.

No, McNally isn't the Founding Father of the Duke baseball program; he can thank guys like Coombs, Dick Groat and Dave Sime for the groundwork of a baseball tradition in the 1950s and early 1960s. But McNally is the progenitor of this baseball program-the one that has jumped from 15 wins his first year to 29 his second and 37 last season, the one that has erased the smudge of the steroid allegations with high academic requirements and community service awards, the one that has the Blue Devils seriously thinking of playing on the game's highest stage for the first time in 48 years.

It also dawned with a front-page headline reading "STEROID CHARGES ROCK DUKE BASEBALL."

With several ex-players as on-the-record sources, The Chronicle reported that then-manager Bill Hillier had encouraged his players-implicitly-to use performance-enhancing drugs during the 2002 season, and that Hillier helped foster an abusive culture and clubhouse that led to the transfers of several players.

The allegations have been steadfastly denied by Hillier, several Blue Devils who played under him-including current volunteer assistant coach Jonathan Anderson-and the Athletic Department as a whole.

"There was no truth to it," Anderson says.

"We knew that Hillier wasn't encouraging anybody to take steroids," Kennedy says. "For God's sake, if he was, they sure weren't working."

Hillier had been told prior to the season that his team needed to show significant progress on the field, and a 14-39 record was as responsible for the coach's end-of-season resignation as the allegations.

Kennedy headed the Athletic Department's search committee and recognized the need for a fresh start.

"What I was thinking at the time was that the program needed to start over in everything. They were underachieving any which way you can think of underachieving: the classroom, the locker room was a pigsty, the dugout," Kennedy says. "What we told all the candidates at the time was we needed somebody who was going to change the culture of the baseball program and reassert a sense of discipline, pride and respect."

Kennedy admits now that McNally's on-campus interview was initially just a courtesy to the former Blue Devil. But McNally used his experience as a Duke student and as the team's academic adviser in 2003-2004 to craft a comprehensive plan to improve the team in the classroom. His time in the professional ranks-nine years as a player and three more as a coach with the Cleveland Indians organization-made up for his lack of college coaching experience.

"When his interview with the search committee was over and he left the room, one member of the search committee said, 'How can you not hire him?'" Kennedy remembers. "We knew how disciplined he was, how conscientious and hard-working, and those were all the things we wanted to see in the program."

Like most good narratives in history, McNally and the Blue Devils struggled working from the ground up. The manager's return to Duke started with the Lockean principle of tabula rasa-the blank slate. He took the suggestions of Kennedy and the search committee to make a clean break from the Hillier era literally, first by requiring every player-even the returning ones-to try out for the team.

McNally's motto of "Earn your shirt" wasn't very popular among returning players, 11 of whom were cut or quit the roster. Duke entered the 2006 season with just 24 players, the fewest in the ACC.

"I didn't know what I was going to expect," says Anderson, who was a junior outfielder and pitcher in McNally's first season. "When he came in, he set some rules and expectations he expected to be followed from day one. I know a lot of guys were taken aback by it because they hadn't been in such a structured environment."

Criticisms of the new manager's hardball tactics were perpetuated by sluggish play on the field; the Blue Devils struggled during the easier non-conference portion of the schedule, getting blown out by two touchdowns by the likes of Elon, East Carolina and UNC-Wilmington. McNally wouldn't talk to the media after the games, his frustration with his team's play reaching a boiling point fewer than 15 games into his tenure.

"No question, that was tough," McNally says now, still with an air of frustration. "We really weren't competitive.... You really have to stay focused and believe in your plan and believe in what you're doing."

The team grew a bit more competitive as the season progressed, but that was rarely borne out on the scoreboard. When the dugouts were cleared on a late May afternoon after a walk-off victory over UNC-Asheville, the Blue Devils had a 15-40 record, including a 6-24 mark in the ACC. It was percentage points better than the year before.

McNally remained confident in his system, emphasizing not only the on-field results but the off-the-field scores in the classroom and community.

"In everything you do, you want to strive for excellence. It's not going to be easy; you have to make sacrifices. There's going to be bumps in the road, and you have to go through that," McNally explains, taking a broader, more philosophical approach to the issue. It's the kind of thing McNally does a lot, expanding his system beyond the foul lines, always ready to teach life lessons. Even when he's not around.

"He's probably the only college coach in America that assigns us reading off the field," says senior first baseman Nate Freiman. "We had winter break reading that was assigned with book discussion groups following that."

With the help of Kennedy, an adjunct assistant professor in English, McNally crafted a reading list of five books to choose from to keep his players' minds engaged over the break. When the team came back, they had an informal team meeting to discuss what they found interesting, focusing most on Atul Gawande's "Better," a collection of essays about medicine.

"It was neat to see the guys find their voice and get a little nervous in front of their teammates in a different context than baseball," McNally says. "That's what Duke's about."

At the end of the 2006 season, however, the only context most people cared about was the baseball one-the 15-40 context.

But failure can help breed character, can help make you better; just ask Washington about Fort Necessity.

It's the reason we study

history; it isn't about facts and dates and arcane references to long-forgotten battles fought during the French and Indian War at forts named after common nouns.

No, we study history to study ourselves. It's a form of self-revelation, of discovering how we got to where we are.

That's why Sean McNally is so ambivalent about this season. He knows, at the end of it, he's losing a historical bridge: his five seniors.

"Each day that goes by I'm a little bit saddened by the idea that those guys are going to be moving on," he says. "They've got the best perspective of anybody in our program about how far we've come, how much we've earned everything we got, and we're going to lose something when we lose that link."

Freiman, Kyle Butler, Tim Sherlock, Matt Williams and Andrew Wolcott are McNally's Fab Five, the quintet that remains from Bill Hillier's last recruiting class and, in essence, Duke Baseball's past. If history charts a program's development, then these five are the Blue Devils' Homer. They were recruited by the old regime, converted to the new, surviving a 15-win season in the process. Now they get to see the other side, like Dante in the Paradiso.

"We've been here throughout this Duke Baseball renaissance or revival," says Freiman, the 6-foot-8 star first baseman who turned down a Major League offer in the off-season to finish his work at Duke-on and off the field. Freiman can be as intimidating in an office as he is at the plate, with a handshake even firmer than McNally's and a voice a shade deeper. "I know the program in the future is going to really go places. It will be nice to know that we were here as part of a couple of those foundation teams that allowed for this program to make progress."

Can you hear it? That "ting" sound, softly but consistently in the distance? Every night, from 5:30 past 7 p.m., a kind of follow-up to the Chapel's bells.

It's late-night batting practice at Jack Coombs Field.

Sure, it's 40 degrees out, and you better catch the ball on the barrel or you'll be sitting the next few pitches out. Stings like hell on the hands.

This time of late afternoon and early evening, Jack Coombs Field can be a pretty scenic place, with the sun setting behind you over Koskinen Stadium and the Sanford Institute peaking over the pine trees in right-center field.

Nice for scenery. For baseball? Not so much.

"It's a high school stadium. Ours is the worst stadium in the league," Kennedy says without reservation, as if it's a tried-and-true fact. "We don't even have dugouts; we've got little sheds on the first- and third-base line."

Compare Jack Coombs Field to Stanford's Sunken Diamond or Rice's Reckling Park or North Carolina's newly renovated Boshamer Stadium, and you start to understand how Duke fell behind and why "historically" is such an important word when examining its baseball tradition. Throw in the academic restrictions, and you start to understand why what Sean McNally has done for Duke is so impressive.

"He's recruited well by figuring out how to sell what we have that's good and figuring out how to deal with what isn't so good," Kennedy says. "In terms of on the field, in terms of academic performance, in terms of everything, it's a better program."

I ask McNally for his best pitch, to sell me on the program as if I were a star high schooler weighing my career options. I tell him it's a bit of a stretch, but that doesn't stop him from personalizing every part of a speech that flows smoothly but sounds unrehearsed. About five minutes and 800 words later, after telling me about the 31 years of professional experience he and pitching coach Sean Snedeker have accumulated, about how Duke isn't a four-year decision but a lifetime one, about getting the chance to see world leaders, Broadway shows and top-ranked basketball teams during the week and playing ACC baseball on the weekend, Sean McNally lies to me for the first time.

"I'm not going to tell you why you should pick Duke," he says, even after outlining all the reasons. "I think all of the things Duke offers speak for themselves."

McNally would know; he's the guy who saw that Japanese prime minister, who saw the Broadway show, who saw Grant Hill and the No. 1 Blue Devils on a Thursday night before playing against top-ranked Florida State on the diamond that weekend. He's the guy who married a fellow Dukie in the Chapel, whose favorite spot on campus was sitting on a bench outside Alpine and who still talks reverently about his alma mater.

"Being so inspired by this place, it just made me want to work harder to make it happen faster rather than look at it and think, 'Wow, this is an unbelievably tough challenge,'" McNally says. "I had such a rewarding experience here myself, and I just want that for our players."

Where do I sign up?

History is written by the winners, though; not by the team that finished ninth in a 12-team conference a year ago, even after it had its best season in more than a decade. The insidious truth lurking beneath the Blue Devils' optimism at the start of 2009 is that they still play in the ACC, that even now their goal isn't a conference title, but just to finish in the top eight to earn a berth to the ACC Tournament at DBAP in May.

But the first step in history-and physics-is reversing inertia. After that, winning begets winning, and well, Duke is coming off 37 victories last season. And the Blue Devils have their eyes on their first 40-win season ever.

Writing history? Forget that. This team wants to make it.