Alex Lodise Game: Bartram Trail star leads Florida State past rival Gators in Jacksonville

• Florida State’s Alex Lodise hit a walk-off grand slam to beat Florida 8-4 in Tuesday’s college baseball in Jacksonville
• The grand slam completed a cycle for Lodise
• FSU responded after Gators scored twice in the top of the ninth to take the lead

(This story has been updated to add new information.)

JACKSONVILLE | The night to enter Florida State baseball lore as the Alex Lodise Game closed at 9:07 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time under the lights of VyStar Ballpark.

The first pitch of the last at-bat of the last inning flew in Lodise’s direction from Florida pitcher Alex Philpott, a slider. Lodise swung. Lodise hit.

A walk-off grand slam, to complete a cycle, in his hometown, in the bottom of the ninth inning against the Seminoles’ most bitter rival.

In a regular-season ballgame, can it get any bigger?

“It sunk in as soon as I hit it. I knew it was gone, right off the bat,” he said. “As soon as I stepped on first and I looked over [toward the dugout] and everybody was at home plate, that was like ‘Wow.’

“I blacked out rounding first base. I was yelling. I’m going to lose my voice tomorrow, probably.”

Bartram Trail High School graduate Lodise lost his voice but won the college baseball performance of a lifetime, defeating Florida 8-4 in Tuesday night’s Sunshine Showdown at the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp’s home park.

Double. Single. Triple. Grand slam.

A year after former Creekside High School star Daniel Cantu led the Seminoles past the Gators in Jacksonville, it was the turn of an athlete from another school on Longleaf Pine Parkway — Bartram Trail — boosting Florida State past its Sunshine State rival for the second consecutive meeting in Jacksonville.

Alex Lodise: Inside a career night

Not that Lodise, who played high school ball 25 miles south-southeast of the ballpark in St. Johns County at Bartram Trail, is a stranger to highlights.

He was already batting .458 with eight doubles, seven home runs, 26 RBI and a 1.290 OPS even before he stepped into the VyStar Ballpark batter’s box on Tuesday.

“The physical talent, we knew that,” FSU head coach Link Jarrett said. “He’s gotten stronger, and his pitch selection has gotten better.”

And after a double in the first inning, a leadoff single in the third, a two-out triple in the seventh, Lodise was just the man FSU backers wanted to see at the plate amid a burgeoning rally in the ninth. Entering the frame with a 4-3 deficit, Jaxson West drew a walk, Hunter Carns got plunked by a pitch, Carter McCulley drew another walk and Gage Harrelson legged out a tying infield hit.

Bases full of Seminoles, Lodise deposited that slider from Philpott (0-2) into the newly-constructed Right Field Hall, a building so new that workers atop ladders were still applying finishing touches to the facility as the teams conducted afternoon batting practice.

The result: The first walk-off homer for FSU since Jaime Ferrer closed a 6-5, 17-inning marathon against N.C. State on March 20, 2022.

The first cycle for FSU since Mike Salvatore on March 16, 2019, also against N.C. State.

The first cycle in Lodise’s career at any level, ever. His closest approaches before, he said, were denied by the elusive missing triple.

As for the last walk-off grand slam to complete a cycle?

“At some point, that may have happened somewhere,” Jarrett said, “but man, I definitely haven’t been a part of it.

“I haven’t heard of it, and I know I ain’t seen it.”

GATORS’ RALLY THWARTED

Held to one hit through eight innings, the Gators

‘It means the most’

Amid the postgame chants of “Alex Lodise!” from the Seminole faithful, making up a solid percentage of the sold-out crowd of 7,341 fans, a certain Florida State shortstop still had unfinished business before the weekend trip to Notre Dame for a Friday-Sunday series against Jarrett’s former school,

With Bartram Trail a short drive away from the Jumbo Shrimp’s renovated home, the hometown backers were many. Friends and family, Lodise said, numbered at least 30 in a group that his father had assembled for the game, and there might have been even more in the house.

So leaning against the south edge of the Florida State dugout, he swapped his bat for a pen. There was a glove to sign. A Seminoles cap, a garnet one, then one in turquoise, then garnet again.

Fans, after all, wanted to remember the Alex Lodise Game.

As for the star of the show? No chance he’s forgetting it. A walk-off hometown grand slam to complete the cycle and chop the rivals. Just try finding another time when that happened.

“It means the most,” Lodise said. “I’ve got so many people I grew up with over there in those stands. So for me to do that with all of them here, it just adds another level onto it.”

This is a developing story.

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