MCWS 2023 - Stanford's Quinn Mathews is ready to dial up his arm again for the MCWS - ESPN

OMAHA, Neb. — Years ago, during lunchtime at Don Juan Avila Middle School in Southern California, Paul Coppes and another teacher played basketball with a few of the best athletes in school, including Quinn Mathews. Coppes was an avid runner in his late 30s, fit enough to eventually become an ultramarathoner. One day, when Mathews was in seventh or eighth grade, he challenged Coppes to a one-mile race.

Pride got the best of Coppes, and he accepted. Churning around the track, the special education teacher was consumed with one thought — he could not let a middle schooler beat him. Coppes ran as fast as he could, and narrowly beat the ultracompetitive kid who'd go on to become Stanford's ace pitcher.

Coppes didn't stop to gloat. He made a beeline for the locker room and vomited up his breakfast.

«I don't think Quinn knows that,» Coppes said, «because I would never share that with him.»

He was not the first, nor the last, to be lured in by the audacity of Quinn Mathews.

ON MONDAY, MATHEWS, A 6-foot-5 senior left-hander, will take the mound with the hope of keeping his Stanford Cardinal alive in the Men's College World Series. It will be his first appearance since June 11, when he threw 156 pitches in a complete-game victory over Texas in Game 2 of the Stanford Super Regional.

And what a week it has been. Mathews has been the most talked-about, and debated-over, player in baseball, his last performance called everything from legendary to career malpractice.

There are thousands of opinions on whether all of those pitches will adversely impact Mathews' pursuit of a professional career in baseball. The answer? Nobody knows. Perhaps the bigger question for today, on the cusp of possibly his last college game, is easier: What