or to coach mainieri. i sure hope the team never develops that attitude. and the fans can also take everyone seriously if we like. personally, i expect every game, especially in post season, to be hard fought.
in football it might be differrent. in baseball, when you are playing, which i'll assume you haven't played any real ball, since you can insult me by assuming i don't attend many sporting events because my opinion is different than yours, the players don't hear the crowd because of concentration. the guys on the bench will hear the crowd, but the batter won't.
I live in Houston, and yesterday they were playing the video of the selection show, as each Houston area team looked on. Texas Southern was jumping around and yelling, after they saw LSU as there opponent. They interview 2 players for Texas Southern, and they were all starting their comments with.. "LSU is going to over look us", and "Although we are hot right now, no one's giving us a chance."...and there were excited about taking a bus ride to BR...although everyone here thought they'd play in the Rice regional. So we need to take care of business and get out early. I like our chances better with UNO, after they've played a good team in USM. Hopefully USM can work them hard on pitch counts and take them into extra innings would be nice.
uno scares me. they are gonna be out for blood after that exta-innings game. and from everything i hear down that way, they feel they were robbed of that game with some late inning calls. plus, dont forget, uno is #5 in the nation in run per game, averaging 9.51 runs per game. our pitching has to be on against bats like that. i dont think is post season any team can be taken lightly. but some are more worrisome than others, imo.
So is it just simply batting last that has given the 12 SEC teams a huge advantage? Every SEC team has a better home record than road record. Every SEC team has a winning home record. Only 4 had winning road records. What in your 20-25 years of MLB experience does that say about the home field advantage. Now, don't get me wrong. I am not one who thinks that my showing up at the game has a direct influence on what happens on the field, but the fans as a whole absolutely do. Look at the split standings in every sport and you will see that teams play better at home than on the road in EVERY sport. This is not a battle of opinions, it's a matter of facts and you stated something that simply isn't correct. Collective W/L of home and away in the SEC: Home: 277-117-1 (70% win percentage) Road: 106-136-1 (44% win percentage) my Cajun math says that's a 26% difference. SEC teams have 19 more road losses than home losses in 152 fewer road games... P.S. if players don't hear the noise, then why do they ask fans to make more of it in the course of games in all sports?
