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Jace LaViolette (17) talks with head coach Michael Earley in the dugout after the 3-2 victory over the Auburn Tigers in Game 8 of the SEC Tournament at Hoover Met Stadium in Hoover, Alabama on Thursday, May 22, 2025 (Photo by Eddie Kelly/ ProLook Photos)
The bright, sterile light of the operating room had barely faded from his retinas. Roughly 24 hours earlier, Jace LaViolette sat in a hospital, a fresh fracture in his left hand requiring repair, stitches and bandages now anchoring his swollen finger.
But as he paced the dugout on Friday night, that same hand clenched a bat.
In what’s almost sure to be Texas A&M’s final game of its season, with the Aggies’ postseason hopes hanging by a thread, LaViolette refused to sit. Instead, he stepped into the box and drove in two of his team’s three runs against LSU. Because he had to.
But not because of a postseason push or a pro scout’s report.
Because of his coach, Michael Earley.
“I’d die for him,” Texas A&M’s star player said, tears filling his eyes. “And it’s not only me. There’s multiple people on this team that would kill to play one more damn game for him.”
It was a testament to unwavering loyalty in a season where disappointment shadowed promise. Texas A&M, once the unanimous preseason No. 1, fell short of those expectations. Even still, its brightest star played through pain for a coach whose tenure is in question after one bruising year.
To understand the gravity of that statement, you have to understand what Earley meant to this program, and to LaViolette. From the outside, Earley’s first season at the helm may be remembered for unmet expectations, an SEC record well below .500, and a tumble down the rankings. But inside the clubhouse, he was a builder, a mentor, a lifeline.
It’s why Texas A&M players vouched so heavily for him to get the job last offseason.
“There’s nobody else we’d rather play for than coach right here,” LaViolette said, voice tight with emotion. “It’s hard, man. You work so hard and prepare for a season like we did, and sometimes baseball is a funny game. But I’m so glad I got to play for coach Mike Earley. I couldn’t have asked to play for anybody else.”
Any painkillers hadn’t dulled that conviction. Neither had the disappointment. This was love on display—a three-year arc of mentorship and belief culminating in a night where victory wasn’t the only point.
“I love Texas A&M,” Earley said. “I love being part of the university, the culture, the community. Everything. I’ve learned more than I could have possibly imagined. Managing a lot of people and personalities and just creating such a broad scope of relationships is really tough.”
The Aggies’ season will not be remembered for Omaha or rings. Instead, it may be remembered for moments like this—when fractured bones meant nothing compared to a fractured dream. When love for a coach outweighed logic. When, in the most literal sense, a player showed he would bleed for the man who believed in him first.
“This year is not how we drew it up,” Earley admitted. “But they never stopped playing.”
And they never stopped believing. Earley leaned on the leadership of LaViolette and other veterans like Wyatt Henseler, Hayden Schott and Ryan Prager, players who rallied the group despite the wreckage around them.
“Our care and our belief and those guys’ belief in each other, I’m really proud of them for that,” Earley said.
There’s little doubt that Earley’s future at Texas A&M is uncertain. The sport is unkind to those who fall short of sky-high expectations, especially in the SEC. That didn’t stop players like LaViolette—banged up, stitched together, emotionally raw—from speaking with such clarity about what he meant behind the scenes.
“The past three years have undoubtedly been the best three years of my life,” LaViolette said. “I can’t speak enough about this university, what it’s done for me, not only as a baseball player but as a person.”
And as he spoke those words, there was finality in them. A chapter closed. Not in triumph, but in truth. Baseball is a cruel sport. But sometimes, even in the wreckage, something pure emerges.
Friday night, LaViolette walked out of surgery and into a batter’s box to prove what loyalty really looks like.
“I said it over the summer that there’s no better coach in the nation, and I still believe it,” LaViolette said. “And I hope to damn hell there’s a lot of other people that want to come to school and want to play for this guy. He will change your life, and I think that’s all there is to say.”
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