Beavers offer kids a reason to believe.

Byline: Ron Bellamy / The Register-Guard

Simply put, it ought to be a movie, a baseball version of "Hoosiers," with echoes of "Miracle" and "Remember the Titans" and "Rudy," the amazing but true story of the Oregon State baseball team that won the College World Series.

It has all the elements: adversity, drama, suspense, courage.

The Beavers won a national championship in a sport in which a team from the rainy Northwest will always be a long shot.

They won with kids from Oregon, traditionally overlooked by recruiters from the bigger-name, warm-weather schools.

They won six straight elimination games, including a comeback from a five-run deficit to North Carolina to force the decisive final game.

All this under the leadership of a coach, Pat Casey, who never seemed to lose his composure, or change expressions, or say the wrong thing.

We can debate which Hollywood star would play Casey, if they made the movie, but if you were holding auditions for the role of a veteran, unflappable baseball manager, you'd cast Pat Casey.

And the bottom line is that the OSU story didn't end with that wonderful celebration in Omaha earlier this summer.

Because Casey and his team gave Oregon State priceless national exposure, and the right kind of national exposure.

They gave OSU an identity, and opened a new vein of pride. Of course, the Beavers had to step up with a long-term contract for Casey, after Notre Dame came calling; what else do you do when someone has accomplished the very most that you could have expected?

The question you might ask is whether by the end of that 10-year contract, baseball will be to Oregon State what track and field has been to the University of Oregon, a sport synonymous with the school itself.

In extending Casey's contract, in promising to continue to invest in baseball, Oregon State gave itself a chance to make that happen.

Nothing like a national championship, with every game in the CWS televised to the nation, to build momentum. Nothing like a team that, every night, personified true grit.

"The thing that never changed for us is that I don't think our club was ever beaten because our opponent was tougher than us, either physically or mentally," Casey said Tuesday evening, in Eugene to speak to the eight baseball teams that, beginning today, will compete in the Oregon AAA American Legion state baseball tournament at Swede Johnson Stadium.

"Now we might get beat because the team we played was better, or we didn't play extremely well, but never did I feel we lost a game the entire season because our opponent had a greater will than we did to win the game. And so when it came to the end, it was only natural, when we got pinned to the wall, that we reacted the way that we reacted."

The OSU championship, a moment that brought a state together, was by and for those players, and for Oregon State.

But it was also, Casey thought in Omaha, for high school baseball and youth baseball in Oregon and throughout the Northwest.

Indeed, so many members of the OSU team played Legion baseball, including pitchers Dallas Buck, Kevin Gunderson and Jonah Nickerson who, pitching for West Linn, once fanned 16 Bi-Mart Challengers in a 1-0 victory that took 1 hour and 7 minutes.

In winning a national title, the Beavers have given every Oregon kid and Northwest kid who plays baseball another reason to find a batting cage in January, and play catch in the rain, and shiver between innings in a cold dugout.

And their victory was shared by coaches who lug bags of Diamond Dry and carry rakes to get infields ready in March and April, and by parents who wrap themselves in blankets to watch their kids play.

Tuesday night, Casey told the Legion players that they're "the toughest players there are in the country," because they're baseball players from Oregon. By the end of the day Sunday, the players on one of those eight teams will know what it takes to win a championship.