East Carolina’s baseball team will have to wait another year for a chance to chase the program’s first trip to the College World Series.

The Pirates saw their season come to an end over the weekend in Louisville instead of Omaha.

But Tony Brown will no doubt be in his usual spot at Clark-LeClair Stadium for the start of the 2020 season with hopes that ECU will finally break through in June.

Brown, who has been going to Pirate baseball games for 40-plus years, can normally be found situated beyond the outfield wall among the masses of purple and gold.

Known by seemingly everyone in attendance as The Mayor, Brown is king of “The Jungle.”

A 72-year-old Greenville native, Brown, along with his longtime friend Charlie Martin, helped create The Jungle tradition and what kind of environment they wanted at baseball games along the outfield fence.

“We’re just baseball fans, East Carolina baseball fans,” Brown said.

“It’s a fun game if you take it for what it is. All I’ve got to say is come out to The Jungle if you want to have a good baseball experience.”

Brown has been roaming East Carolina’s left-field parking lot since the late 1970s, when shade from towering pine trees at the old Harrington Field provided relief from the scorching sun.

“It all started in the old stadium when you couldn’t sit on the aluminum seats without a seat cushion because it was so hot,” Brown recalled.

“It was just to get cool. It all started to get out of the heat.”

He remembers the start of the lighthearted heckling of opposing players, too.

The Pirates were hosting North Carolina in the late 1970s, and one of the men in the outfield jeered a Tar Heel outfielder into a series of mistakes.

“Hey, does Dean Smith let you wear baby blue underwear when you play East Carolina University?”

“He just kept right on doing stuff like that in a nasally voice, not saying anything bad, and the center fielder came out the next inning … and I said, ‘Man, this is working,’ " Brown said with a laugh.

A big part of Brown’s game day experience is patrolling The Jungle to make sure there is no bad behavior.

“If anybody started cussing or talking about somebody’s momma, I jumped them immediately,” Brown said.

After all, The Jungle has become a family affair.

“There are kids out here that have been coming since they were born and they now have children,” said Brown, who has two daughters and three grandchildren.

“They love it because we don’t have to sit there (in the stands) and just focus on the baseball game. It’s a lot more of a family atmosphere.”

Brown, who rarely misses a game, has seen that growth since the early days of The Jungle.

“We went from 50 (tickets) to 100 to 1,000,” Brown said. “Now, they sell 3,000 tickets out here.”

And there’s plenty of food and drinks to go around, especially near the big white tent. Brown said at the start of the season he has a few friends chip in $100 to provide meals for every game and the restaurants in town also help out.

“The Jungle has grown to where Tony and I first thought that it should be,” Martin said with a toothy grin.

“It’s taken us a lot of years to get there, but it’s turned into exactly what we pictured it to be. It’s exactly where we wanted to be.”

Brown said several visiting fan bases have grown to love their trips to Greenville and representatives of The Jungle often leave invitations for visiting fans at their hotels to join ECU fans for the games.

Quinnipiac’s baseball team made quite an impression on the group in the Greenville Regional last week. Bobcats relief pitcher Colin Donnelly fired his shots at The Jungle before the team made the trip from Connecticut to Greenville.

Donnelly tweeted, “I AM THE JUNGLE,” and tagged multiple ECU fan accounts.

What followed was some friendly back-and-forth banter before the Bobcats made their exit from the regional with high-fives along the outfield wall.

“They can open that can or worms if they want,” Brown said of opposing teams. “But we’re going to let them hear about it. It’s all fun.”

The energy in The Jungle grows with each passing inning. As the Pirates sail closer to a potential victory, the pounds on the outfield wall get louder, and so do the megaphones.

“The Safety Dance” unites the fans and players in the fifth inning and the “Purple-Gold” chant booms throughout the stadium during a game's most intense moments.

But after bouncing back to win a thrilling regional with four wins in two days at Clark-LeClair Stadium, the Pirates ran into a buzzsaw in the Louisville Cardinals, losing two games by a combined score of 26-1.

This was ECU’s 30th season in the NCAA Tournament. The Pirates have the most NCAA appearances without ever making the eight-team College World Series.

Louisville coach Dan McDonnell, who is preparing for his fifth trip to Omaha, believes it’s only a matter of time for the Pirates.

“If (ECU) keeps that coach and keeps that staff, that group is going to bust through to Omaha,” McDonnell said Saturday.

“And when they do, look out, because it will be more than once.”

When that happens, Brown plans on making the trip.

“If I can get there, I’ll be there,” he said. “But I’m not counting the chickens until the dadgum things start hatching.”

Martin is hopeful, too. He just hopes it doesn’t take too long for the Pirates to break through.

“I don’t know how many years I’ve got left on my yardstick,” he said with a laugh.

Either way, one thing’s certain: the Pirates will have a jungle of support in Greenville.

Staff writer Rodd Baxley can be reached at rbaxley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3519.