Forgive Ray Wright for being glued to his television set in the basement of his home last week in Advance, N.C.

He couldn't help himself. As a member of the 2000 national championship baseball team from Louisiana State University, he and a few fellow LSU fans in his neighborhood got together to watch the 2009 LSU Tigers march through the latest College World Series and do the same, defeating Texas 2 games to 1 in the final to claim the national title.

Wright, now the 30-year-old strength and conditioning coach for Richard Childress Racing after spending some time playing in baseball's minor leagues following college, recently talked about his LSU past and the interesting path he took to his current job.

Q: Well, your LSU Tigers did it again, didn't they?

Wright: I tell you what, they kind of walked through Omaha a little bit. ... In the last 15 games of the season or so, they were burning down the barn.

Q: Before we get back to LSU baseball, talk a little about your role as strength and conditioning coach at RCR. It's a role that has taken on increased importance in racing organizations in recent years, isn't it?

Wright: I don't think there is any question about that. My job is to increase the athletic ability of pit-crew members. ... Our program is a grueling deal for these guys. They work very hard. I get 'em for an hour. They have one hour for their pit practice and one hour with me in the gym -- and I don't make anything comfortable for them.

It's very warm in our facility. I keep it dimly lit; there are no mirrors; there's not a real comfortable place to sit down. Stressers are put there intentionally to kind of mimic the racing -- especially now in these summer months. These guys are going to be called upon to do maybe eight, 10 stops in sweltering heat with firesuits on -- and their last stop has to be just as good as their first stop. The only way I know how to prepare them for that is what we're doing -- hitting them very hard and making it uncomfortable. Everything you do in the gym is artificial training for what you actually have to do.

Q: How do the guys respond to that?

Wright: For the two years I've been here, the guys have been really wonderful. They take it. They've grown to really enjoy it -- and then they have to go back down to the race shop and build race cars. So there is a lot to be said for their attitude and what they've accomplished so far.

Q: You guys apparently get a whole lot done in one hour ... ?

Wright: And sometimes the workouts don't even last an hour. I figure if I get them in there and get them working at a high-intensity pace, I can get everything in that needs to be done. Because I've also got to scale in their recovery time. During the course of such a long season, recovery is 50 percent of their training.

If they're dragging during the week, that's fine with me. Because they're going to go through the practices and get all that in, and if they're a touch tired, that's fine. But we've got to orchestrate it so that they're at their best on Sundays. That's the trick to it.

Q: Obviously, you played baseball at LSU and also some minor-league ball. How did you end up transitioning into this line of work?

Wright: After the minor-league ball, I went home to where I was born in [Charlotte Hall] Maryland and started working with athletes on strength and conditioning, speed and agility. It was going well. I trained in Maryland for about four years.

Then I met my wife, Melissa, who lived in North Carolina. I moved down [to North Carolina] where the only person I knew was my wife. I got a job at Forsyth Country Day [High School]. I was the strength coach and baseball coach, you know, just to get my feet on the ground. I had no idea where that was going to take me. I figured doors might open up, but I didn't know.

And then I started training Austin and Ty Dillon. I guess they really enjoyed their workouts. They got to talking, and then I met [their father] Mike Dillon [who is RCR's vice president of competition]. That led me to RCR.

Q: So at the time did you know their grandfather, Richard Childress? Or much about racing?

Wright: I knew Richard Childress. His name was on our gymnasium. And I was a race fan -- but I couldn't name the owners of every team. I'd love to turn a race on the last 12 laps or something like that back then. But I probably couldn't even name all the drivers at RCR at the time. I've definitely developed a love and appreciation for it now, that's for sure.

Q: Back to your first love of baseball, talk about helping LSU win the national championship in 2000 when you made a game-saving catch in the title game of the College World Series ...

Wright: That ball I caught was going to be a two-run homer, and we ended up winning the game by one run. That's still a really big deal in Louisiana.

You know, it's funny because when I went to LSU, I came from a junior college where I played second base. I was a Junior College All-American second baseman -- but after I got to LSU, I didn't play one inning of second base. I was kind of shellshocked. Coming from a junior college, where you have maybe 20-25 guys on your team, I walked into the locker room at LSU and there were 63 guys in that locker room.

I remember the equipment manager brought me an outfielder's glove. And I said, 'No, man, you've got me confused with someone else. I'm a second baseman.' And he said, 'Not any more.'

Q: What happened next?

Ray Wright leaps at the wall to take away a home run in the 2000 College World Series.

Wright: I went to the coach and said, 'What's the deal? I'm a second baseman. That's what you recruited me for.' And he said, 'Well, you can back up our preseason All-American freshman second baseman -- or you can try for a starting spot in the outfield.' And there were probably 12 other outfielders. I was like, 'I'll try to start.' And it worked out pretty well.

Q: Walk us through the play you made ...

Wright: It was Edmund Muth who was batting for Stanford. With that home run, he was going to have a record number of home runs for the College World Series. You know how sometimes you have these really vivid mental images of some events in your life? For some reason, man, I still remember seeing that ball off the bat and taking my first drop-step back. It was cool because there was nothing but LSU fans behind me. ... So I did my usual drop-step and went back and put my arm out to find the wall, and just made a jump. I didn't really know how high I jumped or what the crowd behind me was doing. But I made the catch and it turned out to be a really big play.

We ended up scoring a run to win it in the bottom of the ninth. Ryan Theriot scored the winning run for us; he's the shortstop for the Chicago Cubs now. Mike Fontenot is playing second base for the Cubs now, and he was on that team, too. We had a lot of big leaguers off that club.

Q: Was Fontenot the guy who put you out of a job at second base?

Wright: Yeah, actually he was the one who came in and rolled with it. But we were roommates in college and became real good buddies.

Q: Well, that's a pretty good second baseman to end up getting moved to right field for, right?

Wright: No doubt. I had no problems with it, no problems at all. It all worked out pretty well for me, too.

Joe Menzer is the author of "The Great American Gamble: How the 1979 Daytona 500 Gave Birth to a NASCAR Nation." Click here to purchase.