For Tim Corbin, the weddings are the most fulfilling part of the job.
When Vanderbilt University's long-time head baseball coach is at the reception for a former player and sees the room dotted with that player's old teammates, it's a reminder of the ultimate perk of program-building.
"My wife went to [a wedding] last week when I couldn't go, and she sent me a picture with 22 players in it," Corbin says. "I said to myself, 'That's it!' That's what you want. It makes me feel good because that means they're taking their experience forward."
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You can imagine, then, how Corbin feels to be watching this World Series, in which the Vandy experience has been taken forward in a different, but more nationally noticeable, way.
The 33-year-old David Price, who pitched Boston to victory in Game 2, and the 24-year-old Walker Buehler, who will try to pull his club out of a 2-0 hole in Game 3 on Friday night at Dodger Stadium, obviously pitched for the Commodores at distinctly different points. But the school tie alone has formed a bit of a bond between these two postseason pitchers.
"We speak every so often," Price said. "I see his highlights on TV and send him a message about that. I'm happy for him."
Said Buehler: "It's a special deal down there at Vandy. We all kind of intermingle. I've picked [Price's] brain, and he's a great dude."
So how does this happen? How does a school that was a Southeastern Conference doormat when Corbin took over in 2003 go on to produce 25 percent of the 2018 World Series rotations?
"Coach Corbin is the biggest factor for Vanderbilt baseball," Price says. "Kids want to play for him."
One of those kids, of course, was Price, and his decision to commit to Vanderbilt out of Blackman High School in nearby Murfreesboro, Tennessee, was -- and, because of Price's continued commitment to his alma mater, remains -- the single biggest recruiting shape-shifter for the school and served as validation of Corbin's impact. The initial goal was to improve Vanderbilt's local recruitment and build from there. So Price's arrival became a cornerstone.
"We weren't a household name," says Derek Johnson, Price's pitching coach at Vandy, who also transitioned to the professional ranks and is now pitching coach for the National League Central champion Brewers. "We were an academic institution that just so happened to play in the SEC. So we had to fight and scratch and claw to get kids, and we sold it as a great opportunity with a personal touch. We targeted as many state and local kids as we could, and Coach Corbin's emphasis was on pitching and defense."

Prior to Corbin's arrival, Vandy had been absent from the NCAA tournament for 22 seasons and, in that span, had produced only one player who went on to a meaningful MLB career -- Red Sox manager Alex Cora's brother, Joey. When Price decided not to sign with the Dodgers (and how's that for another 2018 World Series coincidence?) after they took him in the 19th round of the 2004 Draft, he honored his commitment to a program pointed firmly upward. The Commodores won the SEC in the '04 season and have been a persistent, consistent tournament presence ever since, winning their first College World Series in '14, when sophomore Buehler pitched the opening game.
Along the way, Vandy has become something of an MLB prospect factory.
To date, 22 players from Corbin's tenure have appeared in the bigs, more than doubling the school's overall MLB output, which had been 17 players from 1903 to 2003. The stash includes first-rounders Price (2007); Ryan Flaherty and Pedro Alvarez (2008); Mike Minor (2009); Sonny Gray (2011); Tyler Beede (2014); Buehler, Dansby Swanson and Carson Fulmer (2015); and Kyle Wright (2017). Fellow first-rounders Jordan Sheffield (Dodgers, 2016) and Jeren Kendall (Dodgers, 2017) are among the Vandy products currently in the MLB pipeline.
"I don't know if I could have told you this would be the case when I first got here," Corbin says. "When you're developing a program, at the root of it, you're trying to develop the player and the kids themselves, whether internally or through baseball. That's what we were led to and drawn to."
Vandy's imprint is all over this postseason, with Price and Buehler in the Series, Johnson's club having reached Game 7 of the NLCS and former Commodore outfielder Tony Kemp playing for the Astros in the ALCS. Carter Hawkins, the assistant GM of the American League Central champion Indians, is a Vandy guy, as well.

The pitching imprint is particularly profound, and that's in part a credit to the forward-thinking work Johnson did in his 11 seasons at Vandy, during which he helped produce six first-round/supplemental first-round selections. As Nick Saban, Rick Pitino and so many others can attest, the jump from college to the pros is no easy thing for a coach to complete successfully, but Johnson has done it -- first as the Cubs' Minor League pitching coordinator (2013-15) and then in the last three years with the Brew Crew.
"It's not a surprise to me at all, because he's a teacher, and that's what he wants to do," Corbin says. "I always thought Derek was kind of a mad scientist when he was here, because he was so enthralled and put so much thought into arm care."
It was Johnson's idea to take an empty batting cage and turn it into a "pitching lab," a dungeon-like area in which pitchers can utilize slow-motion cameras to analyze every element of their mechanics and refine their repertoires. Price has credited the lab with helping him learn about himself as a pitcher.
"I had never seen or even heard of a pitching lab before I got to Vanderbilt," Price says. "The only thing I've seen close to that is [the biomechanics lab] Dr. [James] Andrews has [at the American Sports Medicine Institute]."
The lab and the rest of Vanderbilt's baseball facility are now state-of-the-art, in part because of the $2.5 million donation Price made to the school in 2016. And in the offseason, Price, whose love of his alma mater runs so deep that he once threw a bullpen session in Tampa in a Vandy football uniform, still utilizes that facility. Corbin keeps a locker open for him.
"When [former] Chancellor [Gordon] Gee asked me what I felt were the most important things in this facility, I said a classroom and an alumni locker room," Corbin says. "He didn't understand the notion behind the locker room. I said, 'You've got a daughter, right? Even though she's older, you've never closed down her bedroom, have you?' He said, 'Oh, I get it now.'"
That's how Vanderbilt's baseball program has fostered a family feel, and it's how two pitchers whose paths never intersected in Nashville can feel a kinship even as they stand on opposite sides of this World Series stage.
"Obviously, one of us is going to win a World Series," says Price. "Hopefully it goes to the elder of the Vandy guys."
That result is still not quite certain, but this Fall Classic already feels like a victory for Vandy.