ATHENS, Ga. — University of Georgia baseball coach Wes Johnson knows it wouldn't be fair to use Charlie Condon's success as a sales pitch for the program's future walk-on players.
After all, no one expected a recruit who didn't receive a scholarship coming out of high school to lead the nation in hitting and home runs.
Condon is different, though, and Johnson said it's about more than the power the 6-foot-6, 216-pound redshirt sophom*ore from Marietta generates with his big swing.
"I think we never confuse Charlie's mental approach to just anybody with some talent who you're trying to get to walk on, right?" Johnson said. "It's like, 'Well, Charlie is special,' right? We know the physical talent. But to bring up Charlie to another potential walk-on is almost unfair in my opinion. You better have a special mind to to do what Charlie did from walking on."
Condon's breakout has earned the Bulldogs the overall No. 7 seed in the 64-team NCAA tournament and the privilege of hosting a four-team regional this week. Georgia (39-15) is seeded No. 1 within its Athens Regional and will face regional No. 4 seed Army (31-21) at 1 p.m. Friday, with second-seeded Georgia Tech (31-23) and third-seeded UNC Wilmington (39-19) meeting at 7 that night to begin the double-elimination event that will ultimately send one team on to next week's super regionals in the hunt for a College World Series berth.
The 35 home runs by Condon this year are the high mark for any player in a single college season since Rice's Lance Berkman hit 41 in 1997, and they are a record since the BBCOR (bat-ball coefficient restitution) standard for composite bats was established by the NCAA in 2011. Oklahoma State's Pete Incaviglia set the all-time single-season mark with 48 homers in 1985.
Condon's .443 batting average and 1.043 slugging percentage also lead the nation. He ranks among the top candidates both to win the Golden Spikes Award as the nation's top player and to be the top pick in Major League Baseball's amateur draft on July 14. He hopes to end his college career by leading the Bulldogs to their first CWS since 2008 and their first national championship since 1990.
AP photo by Brynn Anderson / Georgia redshirt sophom*ore Charlie Condon speaks to members of the media before the Bulldogs practiced Wednesday in Athens in preparation for this week's NCAA Division I baseball tournament.
Condon said the team's success, and his journey as a former walk-on, are lessons in "learning to control what I can control."
"Just in life and then also in the game of baseball, there's so many things that are out of my control," he said.
His recruiting story is one example.
Just three years ago, Condon was overlooked by most major college baseball programs as a skinny senior at Walker School. Besides walking on to play baseball for the Bulldogs, his other options included playing both that sport and football for an NCAA Division III school in Tennessee, either Rhodes College in Memphis or the University of the South in Sewanee.
After deciding to join the Bulldogs, redshirting in 2022 gave Condon a chance to mature, and he was named national freshman of the year in 2023 after hitting .386 with 25 homers, setting the stage for even more success this season.
Johnson, in his first season at Georgia, was the pitching coach last year for LSU, which had right-hander Paul Skenes — now a starter for the Pittsburgh Pirates — emerge as the top pick in the 2023 MLB amateur draft after helping the Tigers win the CWS. Before last year, Johnson spent four seasons as the pitching coach for the Minnesota Twins, giving him plenty of perspective about what it takes to succeed.
"The great ones have this ability to expand their mind to uncomfortable levels and accept challenges," Johnson said. "And he's got that. You know, Paul Skenes had it, and I go to the guys I had in professional baseball, Carlos Correa, Sonny Gray, Luis Arráez, all those guys, they have this ability to take on more of a challenge."
Tre Phelps, a freshman infielder for the Bulldogs, said the national attention hasn't changed Condon's team-first approach.
"Charlie only can have so much success," Phelps said. "And putting the team success first is only going to make his success shoot to levels he didn't even know he could go to. And I'm glad to see him handle it in a way as it's all of us. ... That's just what makes him a better person and player."
Condon's 24-game hitting streak ended at last week's Southeastern Conference tournament in Hoover, Alabama, where the sixth-seeded Bulldogs lost in the single-elimination first round to 11th-seeded LSU — which wound up reaching the SEC title game before falling to regular-season champion Tennessee, which is now the NCAA field's No. 1 seed. The end of the streak, though, came after his regular-season success led to him being named SEC player of the year.
While he can play in the outfield or at first base, it is Condon's swing that makes him an intriguing prospect for the next level. Condon's 61 homers in only two seasons broke Georgia's career record previously held by Gordon Beckham, the No. 8 overall pick by the Chicago White Sox in the 2008 MLB draft.
Other top names in this year's draft pool and candidates for the Golden Spikes Award include Oregon State second baseman Travis Bazzana, Florida pitcher/slugger Jac Caglianone and Wake Forest junior pitcher Chase Burns, a right-hander who played two seasons at Tennessee before transferring.
"It's fun to see, obviously," Condon said of being included in the discussion for high-level honors. "But you know, at the end of the day if I'm taking care of business on the field and this team is taking care of business, good things are going to happen to a lot of people in this lineup ... All that comes from just playing good baseball the rest of this year."
