While watching the 2022 College Station Super Regional, Chris Dominguez sent ESPN color analyst and Louisville native Chris Burke a text.
Dominguez, who was an assistant coach for dominguez/1193" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">Bellarmine’s baseball team at the time, was watching Louisville play Texas A&M and waiting for Dalton Rushing to make history. Rushing was two home runs away from tying Dominguez and Randy Delph for Louisville’s single-season home run record.
“If there was ever a time to break it, it would be now,” Dominguez texted Burke. “It would have been great for him to break it, but he didn’t.”
Dominguez also took to Twitter, now known as X, to give Rushing permission to become the new record holder.
But Rushing’s home run total stayed at 23 after the Aggies swept the Cardinals in the supers. Dominguez knew the feeling: He was denied a second trip to the College World Series and a chance at taking sole possession of the home run record when Cal State Fullerton swept Louisville in the 2009 Fullerton Super Regional. Dominguez hit two homers in what ended up being his final college game.
Four years after Rushing’s attempt, Dominguez relinquished his share of the title as Tague Davis became Louisville’s new single-season home run leader with 34. Davis tied the record in the first game of the Cards’ ACC series against Clemson on April 24, then took sole possession of the record with his 26th homer of the season two days later as Louisville swept the Tigers. The news became a short segment on NBC Sports Philadelphia, where Davis’ father, former MLB catcher Ben Davis, is an in-studio analyst.
“He gets it from his mom,” Ben Davis said, tearing up. “I’m proud of him.” Tague Davis’ mother, Megan, was a two-sport athlete in soccer and lacrosse at Rutgers.
The younger Davis also set the Louisville single-season RBI record with 98, dethroning Rob Newman and Richie Hawks, who tallied 88 RBIs in 1992 and 1991, respectively. Dominguez is also 10th on the school’s single-season home run list after tallying 21 homers in 2008. He also placed seventh and 10th on the single-season RBI list with 82 in 2009 and 75 the year before.
“I know it’s a cliche: Records are meant to be broken. And so, I don’t think there’s a better person who could have broken the record,” Dominguez said of Davis. “… Eventually someone was going to break it.”
Dominguez, who’s now an assistant coach for Miami, congratulated Davis in person and told him he’s proud of him when Louisville played the Hurricanes in May. While UofL won just one of the three games in that series, Davis totaled four hits, three of which were home runs, alongside five runs scored and seven RBIs.
Although Louisville missed the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years and exited the ACC Tournament in the first round, Davis was named the ACC Player of the Year and a Golden Spikes Award semifinalist.
Dominguez’s record-setting season came during his final year at Louisville; Davis is expected to have at least one more year with the Cardinals to continue building his college baseball legacy.
“He has a great mind for being a good teammate, working hard,” Dominguez said. “He’s humble enough that … those things are extremely important. And so it makes him really, really good.”
Here’s a look at Louisville’s single-season home run and RBI leaders:
T-2. Chris Dominguez (2009); Randy Delph (1974), 25
T-5. Dalton Rushing (2022); Dan Kopriva (1992); Rob Newman (1992), 23
T-8. Matt Berger (1995); Jim LaFountain (1976), 22
T-10. Phil Wunderlich (2010); Chris Dominguez (2008); Dan Kopriva (1991), 21
T-2. Rob Newman (1992); Richie Hawks (1991), 88
Reach Louisville football, women’s basketball and baseball beat writer Alexis Cubit at acubit@gannett.com and follow her on X at @Alexis_Cubit.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Tague Davis Louisville baseball home run record praised by former star
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