Side note: tiger_fan sets the record for the most times replying to his own thread (18, if you're scoring at home) before someone else posts.
Thank you so much i say as i take a dramatic bow. So hard to find people into LSU baseball. from my real life experience, I'd say it's less than .001% of LSU fans I've known that give a crap about baseball....much more care about basketball in my experience...but NCAA baseball is still in it's infancy...hell Hawthorne was just saying over the weekend that he started announcing LSU baseball the year Skip started at LSU, and he only did ten games on the radio that year...and even this year we LSU baseball fans were complaining how radio (much less TV) ignored LSU baseball until SEC play began (which even was seldom televised), because the interest in NCAA baseball just isn't there....yet
Is this a symtom of the rule changes on college bats? Home runs in the tourney to date: TAMU's Melton has two. Every other team playing? Zero.
No offense ended, t_f. Just a little good natured ribbing. I agree with you though that baseball is still very much a regional game. However, I think it will grow substantially with the new contract signed with ESPN to cover the Thursday and Saturday games. Yes, and I HATE it. Now, I know there had to be changes from the Gorilla Ball days of the 90's, mostly because the athletes continue to get bigger and stronger and it would have eventually led to someone getting seriously hurt or worse, but there was NOTHING wrong with the bats prior to the last change (in 2010, I think). I believe those bats added the proper balance to the game. Now, everything favors the pitcher and small ball. That's ok, if you like that brand of baseball, but I'd prefer to see a little more power.
It's a bigger field than than any other in the SEC, if I'm not mistaken. I think Hawthorne said it was 410 feet? That's a big as Yankee Stadium.
Small ball is one of the reasons I love the collegiate game. In my opinion, a lot of specific calls from the dugout separate the wheat from the chaff in coaching. But when equipment changes the game? Pardon the pun, but now we're in a completely different ball park. I don't know how it compares to the parks around the SEC. I know it's 400 to center, 325 down the lines in Tuscaloosa. Things that jump out to me are numbers like 25 fewer long balls on the season with two more teams. If I recall what I saw it seems like there was around 0.10 difference in ERA when comparing the two seasons.
From a thread on a Florida board... Mizzou is 340 down the lines, 400 to center. TAMU is 330 down the lines, 400 to center. Both are symmetrical.
