Wharton waited for his turn at Clemson, now it is paying off
By: will-vandervort March 4, 2018

When Drew Wharton saw his teammates charging him following his game-winning hit to lift No. 7 Clemson to an 8-7 victory over No. 23 South Carolina Sunday, only one thing came to his mind – “I don’t want to break my leg right here.”

Instead he broke the Gamecocks’ hearts with his triple off the wall in right field in the bottom of the ninth inning to score Robert Jolly for the game-winning run. Wharton’s walk-off caused a massive celebration as the Tigers beat USC for a fourth straight year.

“I saw (Patrick Cromwell) jump on me and he ripped my jersey off completely,” the senior said with a big grin. “I have no idea where my jersey is at right now. I just know all the buttons are missing from the jersey and I’m going to have to get a new one for next Sunday, but it is an unreal feeling. It really is.”

It has been an unreal senior year so far for the Suwanee, Ga., native. He had eight hits and three home runs in the four games leading up to the South Carolina series, and then Sunday he hit the game-winner to beat his school’s arch rival.

“Ever since I was ten years old, I came to baseball games here,” Wharton said. “My best friend growing up was the biggest Clemson fan and we would always come to baseball games and I always knew about the rivalry and how great it was. It is the greatest rivalry in college baseball, honestly. I don’t know of any other rivalry that is better than this one. It is unreal.”

And now Wharton, who has patiently waited for his turn at Clemson, will always be a part of its history.

“I think it is just one of those things where I have always believed in myself and I knew my time was coming,” he said. “I had a lot of guys before me like Reed Rohlman, Westin Jackson, Rudy Cox, Chase Pinder, a lot of other guys who deserved to play in front of me at that time. But, I kept working and I always believed in my preparation and how I go about things in every single practice and what I am working on with things in the cage and stuff like that.

“I knew my time was coming and it is just a great feeling knowing that my hard work is paying off.”

Now it is paying off for the Tigers, too.