Gage Wood reveals what he did with no-hitter game ball

Gage Wood‘s 19 strikeout no-hitter at the 2025 College World Series is a performance that will be remembered by Arkansas baseball fans for years to come. The 3-0 victory over Murray State keeps the Razorbacks’ national title hopes alive in Omaha.

One of those fans on-hand to watch his performance was his father. 24 hours after celebrating Father’s Day with him between CWS games, he gave him one more gift in the form of the baseball that was used to strike the final batter to end his career-defining performance.

“I said, ‘Happy late Father’s Day,'” he told the media after the game. His father probably didn’t mind the timing.

The ESPN broadcast panned Wood’s parents multiple times during the later innings of their son’s no-hit performance, after a big strikeout, or in particular one instance in the eighth inning when Wood’s perfect game was broken up by a hit by pitch. His father appeared to be nervously looking on each time the camera panned to him.

In the end, his son finished his record-breaking performance with 19 strikeouts against 28 total batters. He threw 119 pitches as head coach Dave Van Horn said that there was no-doubt that Wood would be coming out of the game due to pitch count. Wood’s intensity down the stretch saw him throw well past 95 mph on his fastball into the ninth inning.

“So close to the perfect game,” Van Horn said said the game. “I’ll be the first to say, there was nothing being talked about or said in our dugout. We were just going to let him roll.”

If it had not been for the breaking ball that hit Murray State batter Dom Decker on a 2-2 count, Monday’s performance could have been argued as one of the greatest in the game’s history at any level.

Wood missed roughly two months of the early season with a shoulder injury and had yet to throw more than 89 pitches in a single game coming into the matchup. It was just his 10th appearance on the mound all season for the Razorbacks, the most recent coming in the Super Regional against Tennessee where he failed to record a strikeout against the Vols.

Arkansas advances through to take on the winner of Monday’s nightcap between LSU and UCLA. That matchup will be another elimination game held on Tuesday night at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.