Working as an assistant coach on Oklahoma coach Patty Gasso’s softball team during the 2000 national championship game, Tim Walton walked down to the far end of the dugout, where the Sooners’ trash-talking groundskeeper was getting a little too mouthy.
“I had to go over and slap him a couple times,” Walton said.
Kenny Gajewski has calmed down a little since then.
On Wednesday afternoon, Gajewski — now in his fourth season and making his first Women’s College World Series appearance as Oklahoma State’s softball coach — sat at a table with perhaps the two people who have meant more than anyone to his coaching career.