'It was just kind of like, ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom!'

Kansas senior Chase Diggins had no idea what he had just started when he launched a 3-run home run in the top of the third inning to send the Jayhawks on their way to a 29-1, 7-inning win over Minnesota at U.S. Bank Stadium back on March 12.

For Diggins, that home run — his second of the season at the time — was merely the product of a good swing, a sound approach and his latest memorable at-bat.

As it turned out, that at-bat, and what followed, would go down in NCAA history.

After Diggins’ 3-run homer, the next four Jayhawks who came to the plate launched solo home runs of their own — Max Soliz Jr. with a shot to left, Brady Counsell with a similar blast to left, Brady Ballinger on a blast down the line in right that stayed just inside the foul pole and team-home-run-leader Jackson Hauge with a bomb 20 rows into the seats to left to finish it off.

That stretch, as unbelievable as it became with each homer, tied an NCAA record for consecutive home runs, matching a feat that had been done just three times prior, the most recent of which came by South Carolina in 2006.

Eastern Illinois also did it in 1998 and Centernary six years before that one.

The monster day at the plate was nothing new for the 2025 Jayhawks, who have been pounding the ball out of the park all season long.

In fact, KU, which was ranked No. 23 in the latest Baseball America poll, entered the weekend in fifth place nationally with 52 home runs in 26 games, and the Jayhawks pushed those numbers to 61 homers in 29 games by leaving the yard nine times in a 3-game sweep of Oklahoma State over the weekend.

KU, which is in the top five with the likes of powerhouse programs Georgia (78), Tennessee (68) and Arkansas (65), is now just seven home runs shy of tying its total of 68 from all of last season, and we just reached April.

Third-year KU coach Dan Fitzgerald is always the first to deflect whatever credits comes KU’s way to his players, the coaching staff, the school’s administration or whoever else he can find before taking the credit himself.

That’s what made it so noteworthy when Fitzgerald recently explained to R1S1 Sports why he thought the team was able to tie the NCAA record for consecutive homers.

“The truth of the story is that I put the home run sign on five times in a row and they all listened,” Fitzgerald joked before R1S1 Sports sat down with the five record-setting Jayhawks in the dugout after a recent practice at Hoglund Ballpark.

While each one was happy to look back on the feat and his role in it, this story would not be complete without noting that centerfielder Tommy Barth’s name came up a fair amount, too.

Barth, you see, was the Jayhawk who followed Hauge in the plate. And instead of launching a home run of his own to give Kansas the outright record, he grounded out to shortstop for the first out of the inning.

“That’s the real story,” Hauge joked.

It’s actually not. But baseball players will be baseball players, so it was only fitting for there to be little bit of ribbing during our recent sit-down with the five Jayhawks, who, in many ways, were still in awe of what they had done.

“Sometimes I like to ask people what’s the craziest thing you’ve seen on a baseball field,” Hauge recalled. “For me, it was always I watched a dog run out on the field and poop in centerfield. But now it’s probably this.”

Probably is a bit of an understatement.

The three things that stood out most about their recent run at history to all five Jayhawks were how fast it all happened, how motivated they were to win after losing to Minnesota one night earlier and how matter-of-fact it seemed in the moment.

“We lost the night before, so that didn’t sit too well,” said Counsell, who played at Minnesota for three seasons before coming to KU this year. “And trying to put it on ’em as much as possible was kind of the goal after losing one. I think we scored so many runs that we kind of forgot about it a little bit. We were up by so much that we were trying to score as many runs as possible and that kind of became the focus.”

The pitching change after Soliz’s home run — No. 2 of 5 — helped with that.

By the time Counsell went up to the plate, he said he had all but forgotten that the two guys in front of him had homered.

As if that wasn’t enough, it’s worth noting that the homers hit by Counsell, Ballinger and Hauge to complete the feat came on just eight pitches and in about 5 minutes.

“Maybe less than that,” Hauge noted.

While Ballinger was thrilled to be a part of the memorable inning, he said it never would’ve happened if he were on the other side of the field.

“I thought it was a really cool thing to be a part of, and it’s obviously historic, and I was just excited that we were able to do it,” he said. “But, if it’s me, I’m hitting the next guy up. I’m not letting someone get the record.”

Because home runs 3 through 5 all came so quickly, it was a little chaotic in the moment.

Soliz remembers yelling, “Goodness!” after seeing Hauge make contact with No. 5. And Diggins said there wasn’t much talk in the dugout about the streak or even each individual homer.

“It was a very small dugout, and when you’re walking through there you don’t know who’s who, people are smacking you on the head and them someone hits another home run,” Diggins said. “It was just kind of like, ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom.’”

Even KU media relations man, Brandon Perel, who handles a variety of roles during each KU game, home and away, said the chaos of that historic third inning was palpable.

“Having to clip those and tweet them out, I was on like the third home run when Hauge pumped his out to left and I was thinking, ‘Man, I’ve gotta catch up,’” Perel recalled.

It’s likely that no one in the Minnesota dugout knew that a record was on the line when Hauge stepped into the batter’s box after watching four home runs before him. So, for everyone involved, it was flush the past and on to the next batter.

Hauge said his favorite part of the whole sequence was watching the Minnesota pitcher throw his hands above his head while watching the ball fly out of the yard after Hauge made contact.

“There’s a billion videos of it,” Hauge joked while insisting that he never thought about extending the streak to five homers in a row when he stepped into the batter’s box.

“Baseball’s got a funny way of humbling everybody that plays it,” he said. “So, the moment you think, ‘Oh, that guy hit a home run, I’m gonna go up there and hit it 5,000 feet,’ that’s when you strike out. And I think all of us did a good job of treating it like it was just another at-bat.”

There was, however, some belief among them that success breeds success and each guy — really, throughout the entire game — went to the plate feeling extremely confident because of how well everyone was hitting that day.

“There’ve been many times this season when we’ve gone back-to-back or back-to-back-to-back and we kind thrive off of each other’s success in a sense,” Diggins said. “The next person doesn’t get a sense of more pressure, it kind of relaxes them and then they’re able to do their thing.”

“Even after the five had been hit, I not once thought about what a feat that was. Hearing afterwards what kind of an accomplishment that really was was really cool. It’s pretty special. I’ve also kind of thought about it like years out into the future when we all catch up eventually, I feel like that’s gonna be one of those conversations like, ‘Remember that time when we did that?’”

Added KU hitting coach Tyler Hancock: “It was an incredible thing to watch. And I definitely think there’s something to seeing your teammates have success in front of you.”

Soliz agreed.

“It’s definitely nice to see your teammate smash the ball off the pitcher right before you come up,” he said. “But I think you still just try to stick to the game plan and the approach. That’s why he hit his home run, so you just stick to that and we just so happened to hit five in a row. We’re all pretty big and strong and hit the ball hard and our motto is hit it in the air. If you do that, you’re gonna hit a lot of home runs.”

Hancock, who several of the KU hitters credited for part of the feat, said plenty of people played a role in it.

“It’s really good recruiting to start,” he said. “(Recruiting coordinator) Jon (Coyne) did a great job of getting physical guys. And then the other big part of it is they work. They all work at a really high level.”

As for the reaction and feedback the Jayhawks received from friends, family and people throughout the baseball world, well, that hasn’t exactly stopped.

Even just the other day, when Hauge picked up a prescription at the pharmacy on campus, the pharmacist recognized the name and simply said, “Back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back!”

It made SportsCenter. The official MLB twitter account sent out the video and countless other social media posts featured the amazing feat.

“A bunch of my friends from back home, they weren’t watching the game or anything, but they saw it on ESPN or SportsCenter or MLB, and it’s just cool for them to be able to see that and have me be a part of it,” Ballinger said.

It wasn’t just social media where the accomplishment reached Major League Baseball circles. At Spring Training, in Arizona, where Counsell’s father, Craig, was managing the Chicago Cubs in preparation for the start of the 2025 MLB season, word quickly spread about what had happened in Minnesota.

“He said it was kind of all over the clubhouse and a lot of guys were talking a lot about it, which is something he doesn’t say a lot,” KU’s Counsell said. “It blew up pretty good and it was on SportsCenter and stuff and he said a lot of guys came up to him and were talking about it. He thought it was really cool, and, obviously, it’s a one-of-a-kind thing. In all his years of coaching and playing, he’s never seen it.”

Asked if he knew if his father had ever been a part of back-to-back homers or even three straight during his 16-year Major League Baseball career, the KU outfielder smiled and said, “He hasn’t hit a lot of homers, so I would assume not.”

In more than 1,600 career games and nearly 5,000 lifetime at-bats, Craig Counsell hit 42 home runs, with his career-high of 9 in 150 games coming during the 2005 season with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Although it’s been just three weeks since the big day in Minneapolis, the Jayhawks said it feels like it’s been a year.

A big part of the reason for that is the way they’ve approached things since.

This group is in the middle of a special season, one we haven’t seen at KU in quite some time. And their focus, each and every day, is on what’s ahead and not what’s already in the past.

“That’s the thing with baseball, you have to move on,” Diggins said. “You can’t think about the things that have happened in the past, you’ve got to kind of move on and focus on what’s coming. I think it’s important to move on and maybe we hit six next time.”

Is that possible?

“It’s one of those things that you can’t really plan out,” Soliz said matter-of-factly. “It’s crazy that we’re a part of hitting five in a row.”

If it does happen — a long shot at best — it might not involve these same five guys. In fact, the Jayhawks who made history said they don’t anticipate hitting next to each other in the batting order like that again the rest of the season.

But this team, which sits at 23-6 overall and 6-3 in Big 12 play heading into April, has a roster that features 10 players with 3 or more homers on the season and 12 who have left the yard at least once.

“It’s cool that it was us five,” Hauge said of the special home run club. “But it doesn’t really change the fact that we’re still 40 guys and we all play for each other. You never know how it might go, though; rules and records are meant to be broken.”

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