The Tigers are coming, the Tigers are coming
Published 6:31 am Wednesday, March 8, 2017
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Sure as I bring this up, World War III will break out at McNeese’s Joe Miller Ballpark.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The beer garden will probably look like the trash-heap aftermath of the Dakota Pipeline protests.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But let’s risk it anyway.</span>
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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Let’s assume form holds.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Let’s assume baseball prevails.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This is, after all, the beauty of game.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The LSU program, which visits Lake Charles about as frequently as Halley’s Comet, is due in at McNeese tonight for nine full innings.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It should be fun. It will no doubt be festive.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The weather, apparently, will even cooperate.</span>
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<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Football-quality tailgating is predicted.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">McNeese coach Justin Hill calls it “just another game.” He knows better than that — the crowd should tip him off — but in reality he’s right.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s baseball. One midseason game is never life or death or even the playoffs.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Even with those two teams.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">One of the really pleasant things about living in Lake Charles is that the local university and the state’s Flagship U. seem to coexist just fine with each other.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Tonight some will pull for McNeese, some will be Geaux Tiger-ing — which doesn’t really translate well in baseball — and some will be in the gray area with decisions to make. Perhaps some will be jumping ship back and forth on the whims of how the game is playing out.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Not that there’s anything wrong with that.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But, for the most part around here, McNeese fans are often secondary LSU fans and Tigers fans always like to see the Cowboys do well when it doesn’t conflict with their first allegiance.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You sure don’t see that kind of bipartisan support involving McNeese fans and, say, Louisiana-Lafayette fans.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Or LSU and ULL, for that matter.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">In fact, LSU and ULL had to quit playing baseball for a few years to let tempers settle down after some hard feelings during a Baton Rouge NCAA baseball regional in 2002.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Well, they didn’t have to quit playing, exactly, even though they did shut it down for a few years.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It was a mutual overreaction by the full-grown adults to some fairly harmless, if childish, chippiness during the regional, and it’s likely even those two schools could have shared a diamond without any real bloodshed intruding.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It was baseball, after all. It’s doubtful any hard feelings would have lingered long enough to matter much.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Whatever happens tonight will soon be forgotten, too.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This should be a fun game in a festive atmosphere.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Hill is right when he says the Cowboys have far more pressing matters ahead this very weekend when they open Southland Conference play at Central Arkansas.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It won’t have much effect on the Tigers, either.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU, of course, has six national championships, hence the reason the program is like the circus coming to town when the Tigers venture out for an in-state game outside of Baton Rouge.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But in three of those national championship seasons, the Tigers lost to McNeese earlier in the year. In fact, before Skip Bertman’s last national championship in 2000, McNeese beat the Tigers twice.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So the Tigers’ six titles include four losses to McNeese.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Baseball happens. Baseball does strange things.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">LSU is coming here for the first time since 2012 and only the second time since 2000. It’s probably just a coincidence that the Tigers are a mere 3-5 in their eight games at McNeese (26-5 in Baton Rouge).</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">In fact, it sounds crazy that the Tigers never played McNeese anywhere until 1983, the year before Skip Bertman invented college baseball at LSU.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Bertman was all about spreading the LSU baseball message, and liked it to be seen around the state. On his last trip here in 2000, Bertman — in uniform just before the game — addressed the McNeese booster club and exhorted them to get behind the program he was about the square off against.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Not so for his successor. For some reason, LSU and McNeese didn’t play anytime, anywhere, during 2002-06 seasons — the ill-fated six-year reign of Smoke Laval.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Current coach Paul Mainieri is somewhere in between.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But LSU surely won’t recognize the former Cowboy Diamond, now Joe Miller Ballpark, named for the benefactor who bank-rolled the myriad of upgrades.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">A lot of potential or just casual McNeese fans will likely get their first look at the improvements, too.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“They’ll get to see a lot of new stuff,” Hill said. “It’s going to be really neat for people to see that, see the changes that have been made.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“It’ll be fun because it’ll be a good crowd and there will be great energy in the air. Probably from a stadium standpoint, (it) will probably be one of the more electric environments our kids have been in to this point in their career.”</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So it’s a win-win for everybody.</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Regardless of the final score.</span>
<span class="R~sep~AZaphdingbatdot7pt">l</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold;" class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">Scooter Hobbs</span> <span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">covers LSU</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">athletics. Email him at</span>
<span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">shobbs@americanpress.com</span>
