Travis Chestnut shares his perspective on former leadership at A&M

In his second season in Aggieland, Travis Chestnut played a key role in what Texas A&M was able to accomplish in 2024. The utility player joined TexAgs Radio to speak about what went on behind the scenes but made sure to also highlight the incredible year it was.

Key notes from Travis Chestnut interview

• Thank you, it was super sick. I was super stoked to just go out there and play. Going to Omaha is something you set when you’re like 12 years old, at least if you’re a baseball fan and a baseball player. I was like, “I want to play in the SEC because I want to be in Omaha, and I want to give myself the best shot to play in Omaha.”

• On the first day of that practice, you were looking around, thinking, “This is insane. This is nothing like Olsen.” You see Olsen and how loud it gets with, and it’s like, “Dude, this could fit four Olsens. There’s like 30,000 people that could fit here.” It was awesome.

• It didn’t really hit me until, I honestly want to say Game 2 or 3 that we played. I think when Florida was a really close game, and I was like, “Dude, I’m here.” I think I was struggling a little bit, and I was like, “Why am I worried about anything else? Why does it matter what I hit last at-bat or what I did last game?” I’m here, and I made it to literally The Greatest Show on Dirt. It was super surreal.

• Jace LaViolette’s grab at the wall... At first, I thought it was going to be an easy pop-fly, and I was just looking and tracking right behind him. It just got up a little bit more last second. I thought it was going to be an easy-fly ball, which says a lot because I also thought someone who hit a ball 500 feet stayed in the park. You can say I haven’t been in the outfield much. I knew it was he or Caden Sorrell who was the best at that for some reason. Jace is like 6-foot-9.

• We obviously know that what we did this year was the greatest team A&M has ever had, and we obviously know that it’s not easy to do what we did.

• I was joking with Hayden Schott. We were in Omaha, I was like, “I know we said, ‘Let’s go to Omaha at the beginning of the season,’” and that was our goal, but you kind of set that goal for every team. 

• Nothing that happened really took away from our team and what we did. Obviously, it’s insane and there are definitely ways that you could’ve been more sane, I guess, in my opinion. This is a great group of guys, and last year’s team was awesome. This year’s team was just like 20 times better and just 20 times different in just the aspect of team chemistry, having each other’s back, wanting each other to win. That’s all you can really ask for.

• I’m not going to say I expected it because I didn’t. When we were on the plane, we were all talking like, “Oh, Schlossnagle might go to Texas,” and like I even told the guys like, “No way. There’s no way he goes to Texas. He just went on the interview, and said this was his last job and got mad at one of the reporters. There’s no way he goes.”

• Then, I was actually home playing on my PlayStation, just chilling out after this crazy week that we had in Omaha. I just wanted to chill, and my mom calls me. She said, “Is that true?” I was like, “Is what true?” She’s like, “Coach Schlossnagle is going to Texas.” I was like, “Hold on.” I pulled up Twitter. I was looking around, and I was like, “Yeah, I guess if these guys are posting this. It must be true.” I can’t say I expected it because I didn’t expect it, but if you really look at what happened throughout the season, it just makes sense.

• I wouldn’t necessarily say there was signs towards him leaving... Just signs to the type of person that he was. I’m going to say this: Great human being. I feel like he genuinely cares for everybody. There would be times when I went to his office, and we could have a heart-to-heart and talk, and it would be a great conversation, and things could go well.

• I just think it was more of like all the stuff he did in the past kind of led to how much… He just couldn’t control his emotions. When things were going wrong, things were going wrong. I think he’s told several reporters that he’s a sore loser. He’s terrible at losing. I think it goes along with a terrible at losing and terrible at “bad baseball.” That’s kind of when the worst… That’s when he came out to me the worst was whenever we were doing bad. I was doing bad or we lost a game.

• The only reason why I don’t think he had one foot out the door was because he, personally, has never won in Omaha. I think the issue with that was, and this could be totally wrong... This is just my take on it. I think he wanted to win in Omaha for the sake of his career.

• All year long, he preaches, “Team first, team last. If you don’t get your pitch, you don’t get this at-bat, pass it to your buddy behind you.” I think that not that we lost, but he had nothing to do with it. I mean, we are the players, but I think that he wanted to win for himself and for his career, which might not be true. I’m sure that he has a take on that. I’m sure that he’s going to say he wanted to win for the team, which he might have.

• But obviously, when you have that idea in your head that you’re leaving, there’s no way you’re truly bought in 100 percent to something whenever you have an idea of you leaving. I think the same way for the job. If I’m doing construction, or if I’m working at Walmart and H-E-B goes to hire me, now I’m worried about H-E-B and like, “What do I care about Walmart for?” It’s kind of the same thing, I feel like. We all still wanted to win, and everyone there was still trying to win. I don’t think he really ever made a decision on doing something because he was trying to lose the game.

• I never caught the change. Well, I say that. I guess there are people who say that ever since the Georgia series, he agreed to it. It started going around. Up to the Georgia series, I was playing really good baseball. I think Georgia is the last homer I hit. After that is kind of when I started getting, not belittled, but strictly coached, is what I would call it.

• I thought it was pushing me. Me and my family talked about it, and we were like, “Maybe he thinks that’s how you learn. That’s your driving force.” I don’t know if anything changed, but I know from Georgia on is when I started to kind of hit a little slump, and the team did too.

• We played LSU, and then obviously, we were like, “Okay, we’re going to go down there, and we’re going to win,” We didn’t hit good. Then, we played Ole Miss, and we didn’t play good, which that could be baseball. I’m not going to sit here and say that’s his reason, but there’s a little bit of evidence behind it. I never saw anything personally that changed, and I think he wanted to win because he’s a winning coach, and his ultimate goal was winning.

• I grew up in Austin. I’m from Pflugerville, about 10 minutes from Austin, and I’ll be honest, I grew up a Longhorn fan. All my family is Longhorns. Coming to A&M wasn’t weird because I was never a diehard Longhorn fan. I went to Texas games here and there, but coming to A&M instilled in me that you’re an Aggie. You want to be an Aggie because of how people treat you here.

• I do think if he would have gone to any place, it would have been the same thing because of the way it was handled. I think Texas was 100 times worse. As the baseball team, you’re not really that mad he went to Texas because the rivalry is there, but it’s more of like, “We’re going to beat them because they’re another team, we don’t like them, and they’re trying to beat us.” To go there was kind of just… It blew my mind. I thought there was no way. I’ll tell you that.

• Most of my family is Aggies now. Most of them say they wear an A&M shirt for A&M games. It’s actually funny because my uncle, this past weekend in Omaha, they stayed at an RV park and they brought an RV down there because I guess they liked it more. We were playing cornhole, and the boards were Texas Longhorn cornhole boards. I was like, “Dude, really? We couldn’t have like painted these over or you couldn’t have covered it up for like two days?”

• I bunted with two strikes, and everyone in the country, even Parker McCollum, loved it. If you make Parker McCollum love it, I mean you are doing something cool.

• The problem is I searched for a “Good job,” and I searched for a father figure. I wanted to be great. I wanted to do everything to just better the program and just to be the best person of myself. I always search for a “Good job.”

• The player of the game would get the lineup card. I would tell Michael Earley, like, “Dude, I want that card. I want to win it one time”. I won it one time last year when I hit the home run against Missouri, but I wanted that card this year. I swear, every time I had a good game, Braden Montgomery hit four home runs or something crazy. I went like 4-for-4 against Georgia.

• The time I should have won it was against Georgia I had two home runs. I was one of the first home runs and the last home run, and I was like, “I wanted that card so bad.”  We went straight to the locker room after the game because we had the doubleheader, and I was like, “I wanted that card. Like can’t we just huddle up and get that card?” I don’t know if it was in spite of me, but I played for his approval, and I played to just get a “Good job” every time.

• The thing I wanted the most was after I scored or after I just did some crazy stuff out on the bases, I wanted to go in there and give him a big high-five, and it wasn’t always the big high-five. It was always just like, “Good job.” I never checked out, but that’s where I was like, “Dude, you’re supposed to…” I look to my baseball coaches, all of them, and every coach I had was like a father-figure. You could never get it from him, and that kind of sucked.

• Early in the season, even last year, there would be these interviews. My parents would send me them. It was “Good stuff, good stuff.” The reporter would say, “Hey, talk to us about Travis Chestnut.” His response was always, “Uh yeah, he just can’t steal first base. He can’t hit.” I always wanted to just prove him wrong and do that.”
   
• I went to have a meeting with him, and I brought a bunch of points to him. I told him, “I don't appreciate you going on interviews and telling people that I can’t hit. That’s not fair to me.” 
   
• All the at-bats from the fall and stats that I have do not say I can’t hit. I was one of the best hitters in the fall, I would so. He said, “I’m sorry. I don't mean to do that.” It was fine. He didn't really do it. Instead of him going on interviews and saying that he would tell me instead. He would ask me, “Buddy, what are you doing?” I would be like, “Playing?” He would say, “You just got to get on first base. Why can’t you get on first base? Just hit. You don't know what you are doing 'cause you just can’t hit.” That’s what lowered my confidence. I struggled. I struggled with confidence which I think you could see in my at-bats. I struggled at the plate in general.

• I was never an emotional strikeout guy. Some guys throw their helmets and get all upset, but it was never that. I would take about 10 seconds, take a couple of breaths, and then I was fine. I would get to the dugout, and no one said anything like no one ever does, so I went out to defense.

• On defense, it was a really quick inning, but then two innings had passed. I’m getting ready for my next at-bat when coach Schlossnagle comes up to me and goes, “Are you alright? You look like a little leaguer who got called up to the big leagues. You just can’t hit.”

• I just walked away. I was excited for my next at-bat because every time you get to the plate, you think that this is the at-bat that you're going to get a hit. Especially when you're struggling. But he tells you that, and you lose that confidence in yourself. When you play baseball with no confidence, you’re not playing.

• It was hard to go up there once he said that to me. He has said a lot of things to me throughout the season, but like we’re in Omaha. We earned our right to play in Omaha. Our team played so hard to get here, and now you're going to tell me I'm a little leaguer playing on a big league field?

• To be able to carry your confidence just shows what kind of team this was. To be able to push through a lot of these things and just, “In one ear and out the other.” I think that was the most important thing we had on this team.

• I love those guys. Ali Camarillo, Hayden Schott and Ted Burton were always like we're not out here playing to mess up, or strike out or make an error. We’re trying. We’re not out here to do bad, and that was something that the players truly got.

• I think everyone on this team wants to be an Aggie for the rest of their lives. Leaving here is, everyone knows that’s not smart. With the alumni we have and the fanbase, everyone wants to be an Aggie.

• I think it's a hard decision for a lot of guys. You can stick around and hope for the best and let’s be honest, some of these guys are still going to get drafted in the first round, regardless of how they do next year and the years after that.

• I believe that everything happens for a reason. I truly think those guys can stay. Jace LaViolette is six or seven home runs from being a Texas A&M legend. He knows that. In 10 years, Jace might have a statue sitting outside of Olsen. That’s why I think it's a hard decision.

• Some of these guys have been here for two years or have just started, and they're on their way to an Aggie Ring, the best ring of all time, and a Texas A&M degree that can get you anywhere. Everyone knows it.

• At the end of the day, these guys are going to listen to their hearts. I don't think these guys should go to Texas, and I don't think anyone will. I think everyone’s understood that we didn't play this hard to just give back to something that was never there.