Don Lund had never before been to a championship.

During the 1945 Major League Baseball season, Lund sat apprehensively in an office in New York City. It would be his first contract negotiation with a professional team, and he struggled over numbers in his head to settle his contract. Across from Lund sat Branch Rickey, former Michigan baseball coach and then-general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Rickey offered the former Michigan star outfielder his first professional contract with the Dodgers' Triple-A team, the Montreal Royals. Joining Lund on the Royals was another man who was gaining the scouts’ and the nation’s attention. It was in the 1947 season that both would be called up to the major leagues, and Lund would watch his teammate — Jackie Robinson — break the color barrier.

That year, the Dodgers earned a spot in the World Series to take on their cross-town rivals, the New York Yankees. But Lund wasn’t there. Since he had spent some time on the Dodgers’ minor league St. Paul team, he hadn’t been optioned to the Major Leagues until after Sept. 1 and had to miss the Dodgers’ shot at the pennant.

Fifteen years later, as the head coach of the Michigan varsity baseball team, Lund saw the chance at a championship that he had missed so many years ago sitting right in front of him.

On June 16, 1962, at Omaha’s Johnny Rosenblatt Stadium, Lund decided to use his best pitcher, Fritz Fisher, against Santa Clara in the final game of the College World Series. It was the first time the Wolverines had been there since legendary coach Ray Fisher’s championship run in 1953.

Fritz Fisher and the rest of the Wolverines had never seen a stadium like "The Blatt." It was a spectacle. But Fisher, the ace of Lund’s rotation, wasn’t shaken by his matchup with the Broncos. And Lund knew that he wasn’t going to let this chance slip away.

“He was our number one, our key guy,” Lund said.

The Michigan ace went nine innings, almost unheard of in today's college game, and kept the Wolverines’ World Series hopes alive. But after regulation, Lund’s team still had work to do.

In the 15th inning, on the coattails of Fisher’s first nine innings, the Wolverines’ left fielder watched a pop fly soar toward him through the Omaha sky. The ball dropped into his glove, to give Michigan its second-ever National Championship. He lost his glove in celebration while Lund’s team, steered by the resiliency of its ace pitcher, won its coach the championship he’d been looking for.

Forty-seven years removed from that game, the Michigan baseball program hasn’t been back to the final round of the College World Series since.

And in his seventh season as Michigan baseball’s head coach, Rich Maloney knows that he needs a workhorse in the mold of Fritz Fisher to get the Wolverines back to Omaha.

A PAIR OF ACES

Last season, the stars seemed to be aligned for the Michigan pitching rotation.

The Wolverines boasted two All-Americans on the mound in then-senior Zach Putnam and then-junior Chris Fetter, both of whom Maloney said could almost guarantee a win in the weekend series’ first two games.

“We always felt like we had two Friday night starters last year,” Maloney said. “We had two fantastic pitchers that you knew on any given day, the other team would have them starting on Friday night."

But Putnam, Maloney's No. 1 in the rotation, was drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the fifth round of last year’s MLB Draft. That left Fetter, a 10-game winner last season, to fill the void of Michigan’s ace.

The position was one Lund was all too familiar with.

Fritz Fisher wasn’t slated to be Lund’s ace pitcher until just before the 1962 season began, when his original game-changer, Mike Joyce, was signed to a professional contract. It left Lund's team in the hands of an unproven leader. But it paid dividends.

And this season, pitching coach Bob Keller has no problem putting the rotation in the hands of his four-year starter.

“Putnam was our ace last year,” Keller said. “And you don’t often get a chance to work with that type of talent. But (Fetter) had to work harder to be where he is today . . .