Scooter Hobbs column: All goes right as LSU gets last laugh

Published 4:56 am Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Someday LSU’s baseball team will be able to chuckle about that historic 24-4 loss to Florida on Sunday.

Someday like today.

But before the gold-jerseyed dogpile finally untangles, it’s worth remembering — was it Sunday and then most of Monday’s build-up for the national championship winner-take-all game? — when the bumbling Tigers were the target of all those guffaws and belly laughs.

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And, true, it takes a special kind of slapstick ineptitude to give up 24 runs on college baseball’s biggest stage. Social media on Monday seemed to be piling on.

But who’s laughing now?

LSU, still the darling of Omaha, if not the rest of the college baseball, is bringing home the school’s seventh national championship after beating Florida 18-4, maybe the Mother of All Bounce-back victories.

LSU left Omaha just like in the good old days, with something far better than the silly Rocco’s Jell-O shot record.

The Tigers, so inept while wearing that Sunday dunce cap, made it look way too easy Monday night.

Head coach Jay Johnson arrived at LSU just to do this, and needed only two years to get it done.

“Right people, right place, right time,” Johnson said. “This is the way it was supposed to go.”

It was widely suspected in February that he’d put together the dream team to do it, but rarely during a season of ups and downs did it quite look the part. There were flashes, but the dominance, the wow factor, was mostly missing.

Least of all Sunday while becoming the butt of a lot of social media jokes.

Monday, now that’s what the Tigers were supposed to look like. You might say they dialed it up at just right time.

The turnaround was stunning, but not an untypical day-to-day for baseball. Florida got to keep its CWS record for runs scored, but the Tigers’ 24 hits broke the record the Gators set the day before.

Simply, everything that went wrong for LSU Sunday was torturing the Florida dugout Monday, circling like buzzards. All the good fortune the Gators had while piling on all those runs was in the Tigers’ pocket when it really mattered Monday. This night it was LSU seemingly hitting all the gaps, finding all the infield holes, perfectly positioned for Florida’s line drives. When a slow catcher, Alex Milazzo, scores from first on a single, maybe it’s your night. Or how about five consecutive two-out hits in the fourth that turned nothing into a four-run inning.

Baseball’s overlords even took the time to dial up the perfect feel-good moment, redemptive division.

If there was a poster child for the difference in a 24-4 humbling embarrassment and a chest-beating cake walk, it was LSU shortstop Jordan Thompson. He went into Monday in a 1-for-30 Omaha slump and made two costly errors Sunday when that fiasco was still somewhat doable for the Tigers. Social media on Monday was typically sympathetic, which is to say the young lad was invited to never to return to Baton Rouge, let alone the starting lineup.

Those critics must have all stayed back in Louisiana. When Thompson came to the plate in the key at-bat in LSU’s six-run second inning, he got a standing ovation in advance so loud it surely had to include a lot of the Tigers’ famed cornfield alumni that seems to materialize in June.

He promptly delivered the key RBI single in the tone-setting second inning, and added RBIs in his next two at-bats as the tally mounted.

Not bad as redemption goes. He’ll be welcome at the Baton Rouge celebration.

Meanwhile, with real drama in short supply, the telecast played Where’s Paul Skenes like it was a Where’s Waldo game.

He was all over the ball park, everywhere but Rocco’s Jell-O emporium, as the tease played out — would he pitch or would he not?

Who knows if the implied threat of the nation’s best pitcher affected Florida? But I doubt it.

No doubt he was ready to pitching on three days’ rest. But it was almost more entertaining trying to figure if he’d do an inning as a cameo just to say he pitched in the championship series after all the yeoman’s work he did in the bracket games. With the Major League draft looming, ending up at the bottom of the dogpile was probably a bigger threat to his health than throwing any more pitches.

It didn’t matter.

Johnson, of course, pulled all the right levers. It was that kind of night. LSU fans will be scratching their heads for years over the logic of moving a garden slug runner like Cade Beloso into the leadoff spot for the first time in his career. Not sure it was the key to the victory, but it was interesting.

And maybe, for all the handwringing over who’d be available on the mound — would they dare put Skenes out there — maybe it didn’t matter who Johnson picked.

Freshman Gavin Guidry, from Lake Charles’ Barbe High School, finished up (not a save situation) and Riley Cooper got the cameo call after being arguably the Tigers’ most valuable arm throughout.

But Skenes would have had a hard act to follow after Thatcher Hurd was entrusted with the latest shocker on the mound.

Two batters into Hurd’s start, Florida led 2-0 after yet another Gators home run. It looked as if Florida was picking up where it left off Sunday.

Wrong night. Florida didn’t get another hit until Hurd left after six full inning, allowing just two runs on those two this.

Sometimes it just all lines up.

Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com