A life lesson for young Tigers in Oregon

Published 8:32 pm Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Scooter Hobbs

CORVALLIS, Ore. — Paul Mainieri almost sounded like an irritated parent who, in the end, wanted to use the experience to make sure he got a life’s lesson across to his LSU baseball team.

You see?

This is what happens when you don’t take care of your business and try to cram for finals at the last minute.

Let this be a lesson for you.

One day you’re relaxing and basking in 95-degree heat, merrily sweating like Rocky Balboa. The next thing you know you’ve been excommunicated from home, torn away from adoring fans and banished to some far-off land where the temperatures never creep above the mid-70s and humidity is illegal.

The dreaded lap of luxury. Evergreens taller than skyscrapers. Craft beer and designer coffee on every street corner.

  True story — up in Portland they won’t even let you pump your own gas, by order of some fool law.

Yes, send the Tigers to beautiful postcard country, away from home and hearth and The Box.

For LSU, I’m telling you, it was flat-out torture in the NCAA’s Corvallis Regional.

OK, if it wasn’t exactly detention boot camp for delinquents, it was at least a shock-course reminder for the young Tigers of how the other half, the less fortunate, live.

Mainieri hopes they learned a valuable lesson. There’s no guarantees in this life, it turns out.

It’s not written in stone that the Tigers get to host a regional every year, no questions asked.

But, rest assured, after taking a sample of it and giving their best shot, they don’t want to be doing that again.

It was like dad sending in a cop buddy for a faux arrest of junior to scare him straight and sober.

The Tigers consider themselves college baseball royalty.

They shouldn’t be slumming around, depending on charity, in somebody else’s NCAA regional.

LSU is used to strutting through a regional like it owns it, which they usually do (the stadium at least).

At Oregon State they had to answer to somebody else’s schedule, some other school calling the shots and directions.

Miss out on that No. 1 regional seed and a lot of amenities go away, like possibly using lesser arms early.

Get away from The Box and it seems like all your best shots die at the warning track or are yanked juuuuuust foul.

The breaks seem stacked against you instead of stashed in your pocket.

It’s a different world, one to be avoided at all costs.

And the people — oh, the people, no matter the smile in the parking lot, once inside the stadium they don’t like you much.

It’s your own small pocket of fans, mostly family and close friends, trying to keep a stiff upper lip.

These people in orange, friendly enough in the parking lot, booed the Tigers’ arrival, cheered their every pratfall, delighted in drowning out “L” with “O” in the familar “L-S-U” chant and begged their own team to keep piling it on no matter the score.

Five runs wasn’t enough, nor 10 or a dozen. More, more, more.

Suddenly, you’re not the center of attention, your the object of derision.

These people didn’t care what great kids the Jordan Twins are or what an inspiring story Austin Bain has been this season.

They came to mock them.

Can you imagine that?

So, yeah, it was sort of like Alex Box Stadium except tinged in orange and about a third the size.

LSU had to recognize what was going on over the weekend.

How many times have the Tigers hosted something similar where three teams are novelty acts for their big show.

It was just strange seeing LSU reduced to some other team’s straight man.

“Maybe this will inspire our kids to play better in the regular season next year,” Mainieri said. “Where maybe we can host again. It’s difficult at places like this against a team that plays so well at home.”

You can lose a regional at home. LSU does it occasionally.

But LSU wasn’t going to win this regional against that Oregon State team with their current team.

Yes, that cute little run through the SEC tournament kind of got everybody perked up again, but this wasn’t a team to send on the regional road and it didn’t earn a regional at home.

In the end the Tigers had the same problems that plagued them most of the year — youth, injuries, uncertain pitching.

Actually, the whole “thin pitching” narrative almost seemed to be a smoke screen — in Oregon they didn’t hit much either, and took to kicking the ball around at key times.

Still, they probably got about as much out of this team as they could.

“This was a transition year for us,” Mainieri said. “We lost an awful lot of great players from our team last year and suffered so many injuries.

“Even though it’s not the standard we’re used to at LSU, to win 39 games and make a run in the SEC tournament and make it to the championship of the regional says something.”

Here’s what it says, in his own words:

“There’s a lot of areas we’ve got to upgrade in. I don’t have my head in the sand, believe me. This was an up and down year for us and we need to make a lot of improvement in a lot of areas. And we will.”

“They obviously have a much better team than we did this year. They beat us fair and square. We were short-handed without Labas and Hilliard. We were just short on arms. It would have been nice to see Ma’Khail to see how he could have competed out there for us especially since he had been pitching so well. It just wasn’t meant to be.”

LSU pitcher Zack Hess throws to an Oregon State batter during an NCAA college baseball tournament regional game in Corvallis, Ore.

Associated Press