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PORT ST. LUCIE — Travis Jankowski was watching with the rest of the country Saturday night as Saint Peter’s punched its ticket to the Sweet 16 when the flashbacks started hitting him.
“Jeez, man, that’s just like us,” Jankowski told his wife.
Perhaps better than anyone else in the Mets clubhouse this spring, Jankowski can understand some of what the Peacocks are going through as March’s Cinderella.
Ten years ago, Jankowski was on the Stony Brook baseball team that stunned the country with upset after upset to reach the first College World Series in school history.
“We weren’t supposed to win, kind of a no-name team, nobody knew where Stony Brook was. I don’t know where St. Peter’s is,” Jankowski, who recently signed a minor league deal with an invite to big league camp, said Sunday. “It’s one of those things that it’s cool to put a school on a map by doing something through athletics and being the underdogs.”
Jankowski was the best hitter on the 2012 Stony Brook team that took the America East’s automatic bid and ran with it to become the tournament’s unexpected darling, fueled by their “Shock the World” motto.
In its regional, unseeded Stony Brook beat host Miami, Missouri State (led by ex-Yankee Luke Voit) and UCF (twice) to advance to a Super Regional hosted by LSU (the overall-No. 7 seed). The Wolverines dropped the first game of the series but then won the next two to beat LSU and advance to the College World Series.
Stony Brook’s wild run finally came to an end in Omaha, but not before it had captured the attention of those well beyond Long Island and created a bond between teammates that still exists today.
“Me personally, I think I let the College World Series — I wanted to win so bad I couldn’t enjoy it,” Jankowski said. “So you got to enjoy it, man. They’re going to keep having fun, the nation’s going to have their back.”
Now, Jankowski is trying to win a job with the Mets as an extra outfielder — a role that could take on added importance if Starling Marte (oblique) ends up not being ready in time for Opening Day. The 30-year-old Jankowski can play all three outfield spots and offers a combination of speed and defense, flashing the latter on Sunday with a diving catch in the right-center field gap against the Cardinals.
After spending last year with the Phillies, his seventh season as a big leaguer, Jankowski saw the Mets as the “best fit” for him this year.
“I’m at a point where I want to win in my career,” Jankowski said. “For me too … there has to be an opening for, bare minimum, a fourth outfield spot. I think there is a path here for that.”
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