Omaha Hall skips over Bertman

Published 9:37 am Friday, July 1, 2016

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It hasn’t gotten a lot of headlines, but former LSU star Todd Walker will be inducted into the Omaha College Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">No problem with that.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Walker’s credentials are certainly in order, as the first player to twice (1993-94) make the College World Series all-tournament team. He was also named to the all-time CWS team as the second baseman when the event celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1996.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Frankly, I had never heard of this particular hall of fame.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But I’m sure even Walker, an analyst on the SEC Network, would tell you he’d be far more proud of his induction if the Omaha College Baseball Hall of Fame had a little more prestige.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And how much credibility does the Omaha College Baseball Hall of Fame have if former LSU coach Skip Bertman isn’t in it?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Yeah, shocked me too.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This is not to be confused with the College Baseball Hall of Fame, which for some reason calls Lubbock, Texas, its home.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Bertman is safely in that older, more established hall, and the vote didn’t take long.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This one, according to its mission statement, “honors the game’s legends that have made their mark in Omaha.”</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Gee, sound like anybody you know?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Five national championships, all in a 10-year span, must not count for much.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Made their mark in Omaha.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Bertman hasn’t coached a game in Omaha since winning the 2000 national championship with a walk-off against Stanford.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But he is still revered as royalty in Omaha. Probably has trouble paying for a steak.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">I’ve seen it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Bertman still goes to Omaha most years, even when his former team is not there, and he has trouble walking from his car to the stadium with all the well-wishers and autograph hounds — mostly Omaha natives — trailing him like a rock star.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">For making your mark in Omaha. Bertman all but made Omaha.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He’s the reason LSU can count on a home crowd whenever the Tigers visit.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">For now, we can give this Omaha College Baseball Hall of Fame a bit of a pass. Surely, Bertman’s time won’t be long in coming.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Walker’s class, which also includes players Barry Bonds (Arizona State) and Keith Moreland (Texas) will be the fourth to be enshrined.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Just looking over the previous classes, it appears they take no more than one coach per year.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It’s still an oversight that Bertman isn’t in.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This year it’s former Miami coach Ron Fraser, who, to a degree, was Bertman’s pre-LSU mentor.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Fraser, like Bertman, was all about promoting the game as much as winning the big ones. But Fraser won only two national championships.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Texas coach Cliff Gustafson also won just a pair and yet is already in. Not that he doesn’t deserve it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">I’ll give you Rod Dedeaux, who won 11 national championships at Southern Cal, and went in with the first class.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Side note: One year in Omaha, after finishing up our newspaper chores from an early afternoon LSU game, a sports writer friend and I ducked into a little, cubbyhole nook of a bar right off the hotel lobby.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">There was only one other patron therein, an elderly gentleman at the end of the short bar watching the night game on television, with his back half turned to us.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">We were diligently solving college baseball’s problems and paid him little heed, only half acknowledging him even when he might occasionally comment on one of our own astute observations.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“This is a heckuva game going on right here,” he finally said, and for the first time I really got a better glimpse of him.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">“I think that’s Rod Dedeaux,” I told my buddy.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Sure enough, it was.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">We quickly showed a little more respect for our elders. You might even say we were kind of fawning over him.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">What was going to be a quick beer turned into a fascinating hour or so with a wonderful gentleman. It turned out Dedeaux was born in New Orleans before making an early fortune in California and then selling his trucking business to coach the Trojans for (Bertman later told us) $1 per year.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">One of the things Dedeaux mentioned was that he could never have done in the present (late 1990s) what Bertman was in the process of doing with LSU (I think Skip had four of his national titles at the time).</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And Bertman will tell you that no one — including him — could match in today’s present what he did with LSU’s Team of the Decade.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That’s how much bigger and more balanced college baseball has become.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But Bertman is a big reason for that, too.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He showed baseball didn’t have to be an afterthought in college athletic departments, that it could be popular and even profitable with just a little commitment from the school.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">He had as much or probably more influence on that aspect of the game as anybody.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So while the Omaha College Baseball Hall of Fame is a noble pursuit, call me when Bertman is in it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Then it will have some meaning.</span>

<p style="text-align: center;">—

<p class="p1">Follow Scooter Hobbs on Twitter at <span class="s1"><a href="https://twitter.com/ScooterAmPress">twitter.com/ScooterAmPress</a></span>