Texas and Texas A&M meet in the Men's College World Series with the season on the line

OMAHA, Neb. -- It started with a field microphone and an uncharacteristically feisty baseball coach. Texas had just won its regional in Austin in 1989 and had made it to another Men's College World Series, but legendary coach Cliff Gustafson had another team in a different regional in his head.

One hundred miles away, in College Station, No. 1 Texas A&M had just been upset by LSU. Feeling giddy about both developments, Gustafson grabbed the mic and let loose.

«Where are the Aggies now?»

The crowd at Disch-Falk Field erupted.

«If you knew Cliff Gustafson, it was so absolutely out of character,» longtime Texas sports information director/historian Bill Little said. «I was like, 'I can't believe you just said that.'

»The animosity — you can call it whatever you want to call it — was building. I call it spirit, because that's what it is."

Texas had gotten the better of A&M for years but that spring an Aggie named Big John Byington hit a couple of walk-off homers to give them the series win over Texas, and eventually the Southwest Conference championship. And so began the modern-day Texas-Texas A&M baseball rivalry, which ran strong until 2012, when the Aggies joined the SEC.

But some say it never ended.

On Sunday, the two old rivals will meet for the first time at the Men's College World Series (2 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN app). The loser will go home and, almost as important, will have to live with the fact that it got beaten by the other. Baseball is the only major sport in which the two teams play each other every year, though that will change in 2025 when Texas joins the SEC.

The Longhorns, for their part, downplayed the significance of the rivalry. They said it's just another game. Pitcher Tristan Stevens added that it's not