Gather ’round kiddos, pull up a chair and listen up. There’s a story you need to hear right about now and it’s completely true.

Some of you may be old enough to remember. We’ll take you back to 1997 for the LSU baseball team, which might be a good place for the current team to go hide after falling to Florida —let me double-check my math again — by a 24-4 count ,…..

Anyway, back to ’97.

That season LSU baseball had similar aspirations as this team and at the end of the regular season was heading into Tuscaloosa for a showdown with Alabama.

LSU had a two-game lead heading into the weekend but lost the Friday game 6-4 as the Tide pulled within one game. The next day, Saturday, Alabama took out a whooping stick and beat LSU 28-2. That’s not a misprint — 28-2. It would have been a shut out, probably, but that was the year LSU had decided to hit at least one home run in every single game and the Tigers took care of that in mid game while the Tide was steady rounding the bases.

The Alabama fans, new to baseball prominence, were having a grand old time watching the Tide dismantle Skip Bertman’s defending national champions. There were unconfirmed reports of fans hanging from trees down the rightfield line to celebrate and taunt the Tigers.

Those same fans were back the next day, of course, full of anticipation and vinegar, one win from claiming the SEC regular season title.

On that Sunday LSU won 6-4 and claimed the championship outright.

And one other thing: A little shy of a month later the two teams met yet again, this time in Omaha for the national championship. LSU won 13-6 for back to back national titles.

We bring you this baseball fable to remind you that nothing that happened to LSU or Florida Sunday should have any effect on Monday’s winner-take-all game for this year’s national championship.

Baseball doesn’t play those silly reindeer games.

Fortunately for the Tigers, none of the runs Florida kept piling up can be banked for Monday night. You cross the plate and they’re accounted for, never to be cashed again.

There’s even a contradictory theory that a team that embarrasses itself like LSU did Sunday might have gotten it all out of its system.

On that front, borrowing from the baseball vernacular, the Tigers have much to “flush” from the system.

Omaha has always been so accommodating to LSU, yet Sunday the weatherman wore blue and orange. Could it be those straight-line winds were only cranked up with the Gators batting for a CWS-record six home runs. Everything Florida popped up seemed to clear the fence. Yet all LSU got out of it was some teasing warning track power. Well, until there were =-two outs in the ninth when LSU’s Brayden Jobert connected.

Makes you wonder … just kidding. That’s baseball.

More flushable were LSU’s five errors (that could be pinned on an individual) and another 13 runners left on base, running the two-day total to 30.

That’s a lot of stragglers, particularly when Florida was scoring runs almost by accident.

Try this for offensive efficiency. LSU had 7 hits and stranded 13. Florida had 23 hits and standed 8.

But none of it matters today.

“Everybody in the locker room has already forgotten about it,” said LSU star Dylan Crews, who earlier Sunday won the Golden Spikes award. “We’ll be ready to go tomorrow.”

No reason not to be.

Baseball momentum is a fickle mistress.

It tends to dance with whoever’s is on the mound.

And LSU, for all its Sunday sins, is in pretty good shape there.

The million-dollar question is Paul Skenes and how much (or if) he will pitch for the Tigers.

Actually (it says here), Skenes will pitch, you can book that. Head coach Jay Johnson is being typically coy about it (as he is for March mid-week games), with some blather about how LSU has a “process” for deciding if a pitcher is ready to get on the mound.

It’s top-secret classified.

But I guess it goes something like this:

Coach: Paul, are you alive?

Skenes: Yes.

Coach: Is your arm attached?

Skenes: Yes, I think so.

Coach: Do you want to pitch tonight?

Skenes: I’d love to.

Coach: The process works.

Maybe he doesn’t start. But the college baseball’s best pitcher will be ready to go.

You knew Johnson was officially setting up Monday’s pitching plans when Johnson brought in Bryce Collins for Gavin Guidry.

Then came the steady stream of Blake Money, Christian Little and Sam Dutton, all guys who can now say they pitched in Omaha.

If it had been another white-knuckler game with a heartbreaking loss, the Tigers likely would likely have gone through far more valuable arms.

Instead LSU will have plenty of pitchers Monday night.

If Skenes is held for relief, look for Thather Hurd to start, with Griffin Herring and of course Riley Cooper joining Skenes in the bullpen.

That should be enough to where the Tigers at least won’t have any excuses.

But it might help if their own potent offense could wake up.

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