Omaha, Neb. – In a hair dryer of a Sunday afternoon in the city that every June becomes de facto of Baton Rouge North, Los Tigres de LSU not only won a National World Series Championship Men's Men's College. Nor was his eighth in general simply.
The title they really won was the best university baseball program.
“I don't think there is anyone here who is arguing with you about that,” said designated batter Ethan Frey, from Rosepine, Louisiana, pointing to the 24,734 fans decidedly Cajún while singing and “Callin 'Baton Rouge” of Garth Brooks. “What I know is that when we are going to work every day, we do it trying to make the tigers that preceded us feel proud. I wish we have done it. They built it. We built that.”
The building where they do that work, Alex Box Stadium, is covered with trophies and artifacts that are evidence of their best argument. Throughout the building where they did their job on Sunday, Charles Schwab Field, it is easier to find photos and LSU logos that commemorate so many tigers in Omaha than find a hot dog.
“This city feels at home with us,” said the former LSU coach Skip Bertman, sitting in a wheelchair in the countryside, Confeti spread on his shoulders as he shake hands with the players when they left the stage where they had just received their trophies. He is the man who took out the baseball of the swamp of irrelevance in the 1980s. “When we come here, we bring many people from home, but there are also so many people who live here who use our colors because they grew up seeing us play for so many summers. That is special.”
LSU does not have the record of most national championship rings. Which belongs to the USC. But none of the dozen championships of the Trojans has arrived during this century. His last victory was in 1998, and that was the first in 20 years. No one will replicate what the teams of the chief coach Rod Dedeaux did, winning seven of his titles during a period of 11 years from 1968 to 1978. But Bertman's teams won five in 10 years, between 1991 and 2000. Now the current chief coach Jay Johnson, who has said the best part of the work is his friendship with Bertman, has won two in three seasons.
LSU has not won most MCWs games. That brand is owned by Texas, with 88 to 47 of LSU, which occupies the fifth place of all time. But the horns hooked the last of their six national titles two decades ago, and its last appearance in the final was in 2009. The Texas program today is very good. Lsu is great.
The tigers have any of Omaha's longevity records, such as that total of all time or the number of appearances made (20, occupied the fifth place). While the tickets ended on Sunday, the purple and golden crowd that got into the shadow of Charles Schwab's field lobby was under a series of massive wall plates that commemorated the teams that have participated and won each MCWs played in Omaha, starting in 1950, which align the entire cavernous hall. The listings, five years at the same time, begin in the first baseline and continue to third place. Not to the midpoint of seeing the first LSU logo. And that is what makes the unparalleled streak of the successful tigers in university baseball, so, well, without equal.
USC made his first appearance in 1948, and Texas made his debut a year later, the participants in the last two series played before the event moved to Omaha. They have compiled their prodigious numbers in the span of more than 75 summers. LSU did not crash the party until 1986. He won his first title five years later.
So, everything that the tigers have achieved has taken place for a long but relatively compressed period of time. And that makes your curriculum even more impressive.
Those 20 Visits of Omaha, those eight national titles, which 8-1 record in the MCWs finals, those 47 MCWs win, have happened within 40 years, which have also been the most tumultuous, changing shifts, impossible to predict when it comes to doing business in any collegiate sport, but especially university.
And we have not yet mentioned the conference regular season titles and tournament, 12 of each, won in the Royale baseball battle that is the SEC, a Frankenstein created in a laboratory that LSU helped build. Ah, and we told you that the Tigers have been taken to Omaha by four different coaches, three of whom won national titles.
“I think that adaptability is underestimated as a key to long -term success, and frankly, when it has been successful, it is much more difficult to convince yourself to make changes as you progress,” said Ben McDonald, the first truly transcendent superstar of the program. The law brought the Tigers to two of their first appearances in Omaha, and in the middle of the second visit was first recruited in general by the Baltimore Orioles. The next superstar was 2023 McWs Hero Herler Paul Skenes. “You are thinking, 'Why would we change what we are doing? What we have been doing is work!' But Jay is the perfect example of a guy who understands how the game works now.
There have been challenges. When Bertman retired and became full -time athletic director in 2001, he chose the Hume Laval assistant as his successor. Laval took the team to Omaha twice, but never won a title and could not make the NCAA tournament field in its last season. Bertman still says that saying his friend was the most difficult time for his career. Paul Mainieri caused the program to regulate Omaha again and won the 2009 National Championship, but his era ended with an educated but difficult game. Johnson, who has been a chief coach of the University of Division I since 2014, has skillfully sailed the construction spaghetti battery of the list that is the transfer/null age portal.
After winning the 2023 MCWs, LSU lost 13 players against professional baseball, a sec record. Last year there were eight recruited LSU pitchers. The team began this season with a new list, and took Gell for a while, going 19-11 in the conference game. Now it is largely forgotten, but the Tigers passed the first round of this NCAA tournament in a wrestling fight with 4 -seed regional little rock.
But when clicking, click. And LSU won the national title by going 2-0 against a coastal team of Carolina who had won 26 consecutive. The same team that suddenly reduced the four LSU races led only two in the final tables of Sunday's contest, even after the chanticleers had lost their chief coach for an expulsion from the first entry.
“They had to make us sweat a little, right?” Bertman, 87, said with a smile. “But in the end, they joined the legacy. And surely it seems that Jay has them in a position to continue adding it for a while.”
Everything they do now is only more glazed in the king's cake. University baseball Kings. A crown that now feels indisputable.
