Scooter Hobbs column: Another LSU invasion of Omaha ends with CWS title

American Press

7 hours ago

OMAHA, Neb. — Maybe Charles Schwab Field really is Alex Box North.
Omaha — Geauxmaha, they call in late June — has long been LSU's own personal summer resort.
So the Tigers were making themselves right at home Sunday afternoon, not only with the familiar national championship dogpile, but — and this seemed like an added touch in their adopted city — a victory lap around the stadium rim, a rite more familiar to Baton Rouge for the send-offs than the coronations in Omaha.
Maybe when it's your eighth championship party, you have to spice things up a little.
So the Tigers were circling the stadium's outfield rim, donning their t-shirts and leaping high to slap skin with adoring fans, taking it all in from the hordes who fled Louisiana — and those rugged evacuees, sun-burned as they were, deserved some team love after enduring the Louisiana-style heat til the joyous end.
It didn't seem to matter.
All was well.
Purple and gold has taken over this city before, but never in my mind with the numbers and saturation of this year. You wondered if anybody was left back home on the bayou.
'Calling Baton Rouge,' was blaring in the background.
And this year the Omaha invasion upped the ante when they pulled up 30-foot long, 17-foot high float. Went by the name Mardi Gras Mike. He couldn't get in the game, but the float was all over Omaha, seemingly wandering around downtown 24 hours a day.
Can't be Louisiana without a parade, right?
The locals, LSU's famed Cornfield Alumni, acted like they'd never seen such a thing.
You'd have thought the circus was rolling through town.
Or Mardi Gras.
Anyway, it fit in well with the beads fans have tossing around here for years and years.
LSU's good ol' days were back.
Shoot, Skip Bertman himself was here to explain it all to a TV reporter.
'The difference at LSU,' he said in that familiar cadence,' is the players think they're going to win because they think they're supposed to win … I think other teams fold a little towards the end of the game. And they can't do what we do in their mind.'
It's hard to prove him wrong. He invented whatever the secret formula is and now Jay Johnson seems to have adapted it for a new era, a different ballpark in Charles Schwab Field.
Coastal Carolina put up a pesky and hardy fight. Arkansas is just as good of a team as the Tigers yet collapsed at the end.
But LSU was the last team celebrating … again.
But by the looks of the postgame festivities, I suppose it never gets old.
'You never assume anything,' Johnson said.
And you get the feeling eight is not enough.
I wouldn't put it past Johnson.
He seems to have figured out Charles Schwab Field, which so often confounded the Tigers in the early years when the event moved there in 2011.
Gorilla Ball doesn't play well there. The small-ball Chanticleers actually scored all three of their runs on home runs, while the Tigers, who dig the long ball as much as anyone, scratched across their five runs.
And Johnson never stops hunting for the right pieces to each year's puzzle — mostly he's partial to future Major League talent, but also the right fit.
His CWS postgame press conference included several shameless recruiting plugs, which was probably overkill.
He can pretty much get who he wants.
Exhibit A was sitting next to him on the podium.
Anthony Eyanson was the title game winning pitcher, a transfer from UC-San Diego. His was the arm Johnson knew he had to have, fretted over it, probably pestered him and was ready to throw a dogpile when he landed him.
Eyanson had a different version. His story is that he couldn't believe his luck when Johnson first called, thought it was a dream, maybe a practical joke.
'I didn't believe it until I talked to him on the phone,' he said of the opportunity. 'Then he would text me every day, started sending me pictures of the pinstripe jerseys.'
Johnson worried about nothing. Eyanson couldn't get to LSU fast enough (after pinching himself).
There are other similar tales and Johnson probably has a bigger advantage in the NIL era with a school with an administration and a fan base that supports baseball.
So don't be surprised if these Louisiana mass exoduses to Geauxmaha become even more regular.
Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics for the Lake Charles American Press. You can contact him at [e-mail]