February 17, 2017
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THE WIZARDRY OF OS
Assistant Basketball Coach and Head Swimming Coach at Central High
I am going to get to my LSU baseball preview shortly, but first I need to spend a moment on the UConn women’s basketball team.
I can’t decide what is more impressive.
• 100 wins in a row.
• 140-1 over the last 4 years.
• 622-40 (94%) with 10 National Championships over the past 18 years.
These are mind blowing numbers. The Huskies accomplishments do bring into question whether their dominance is “good” for women’s college basketball.
UConn is doing their job. Good for them. The rest of women’s college basketball needs to get better, but it is really tough. UConn gets the best players and those players stay for four years. That being said, the game grows when everyone gets better. So UConn needs to keep setting the bar high and hopefully the rest of the women’s game will get better trying to catch the Huskies.
Time for LSU baseball. Just in the nick of time, too.
Tiger fans have watched other college baseball teams have great seasons for the same reason that LSU is expected to have a great year. High quality players turned down the money and came back to LSU.
The most significant return is Jared Poche. LSU has not had the ability to fight out of a loser’s bracket or win a best two out of three series when dropping one of the first two games recently. There is a direct relationship between that issue and the Tigers inability to find a true third starter. This should be the year thanks to Poche and Lange returning to pitch Friday and Saturday.
A reliable third and fourth starter is just one reason to think this year’s LSU baseball team will go farther than recent years. Most college baseball games are decided after the starting pitchers are relieved. Consequently, anytime a team returns an experienced closer like LSU has in Hunter Newman, there is reason to be excited.
The LSU bullpen will be full of experienced arms like Austin Bain, Doug Norman, Russell Reynolds, and Caleb Gilbert. Reliable pitchers like those four should provide plenty of time for some newer pitchers with a little more “stuff” to adjust to college baseball.
LSU’s defense should once again be one of the best in college baseball. Conventional wisdom says that you have to be good up the middle to be a great defensive team. LSU returns their starting catcher, shortstop, 2nd baseman, and Duplantis will be very good moving from left to center.
Offensively, the Tigers will have speed at the top of the lineup, especially once Deichmann returns to health. As always, Mainieri will tinker with the lineup all year long. The best news, though, is that players like Chris Reid and Jordan Romero provide experience and depth even though they may not start. That is great news because that means they can be counted on as pinch hitters or to step in should a young talent struggle. Since LSU will be starting the year with true freshmen at third and first base, it is highly likely they will struggle at some point during the season.
Coach Mainieri said it best in the paper when he said the key to having a good offense in this era of college baseball is to avoid having “automatic outs” that kill rallies. Baseball teams have to string hits or productive at bats together to score runs these days. The potential is there for this lineup to take advantage of opportunities when a pitcher makes mistakes at any point in the order. Even better, LSU has speed and the ability to force pitchers and defenses to make mistakes.
Let’s be honest. The football season was disappointing and the basketball season has been a disaster. Time for baseball to save the sports year for Tiger fans.
HEY REF
I hope my fellow officials will not be upset with me for changing my mind and publishing a different “Best of Hey Ref” since I find it has a much more important message. Please forgive me for making a deviation from the plans I’d originally set out from last week’s column. The reason is a simple one, to be honest! There are more important issues that we as a society must face. No matter the address on our front door this issue transcends color, sex, faith or age. This maybe the last column I write since those in power may find it upsetting for me to “TELL IT LIKE IT IS”! The NAACP hasn’t come up with an answer or really addressed what needs to be done to stop the continued slaughter. But we must make this issue number one because I can’t think of anything else that needs the national spotlight shined upon this most horrible of crimes.
Baton Rouge is making it to the top all right. But it’s not the top of anything good. Just a couple days ago three, count ‘em three black men were killed on the streets of this city, the capital city of Louisiana. There seems to be no end in sight and all our so called leaders (both black and white) can do is shrug their collective shoulders, throw their hands up and walk away without taking on this issue. The only answers they seem to come up with are more police patrols and longer jail times for those that kill. The NAACP and BLACK LIVES MATTER love to organize protests and boycotts of businesses and police departments yet don’t offer anything serious to combat the continued slaughter of black men from sea to shiny sea!
I’m also constantly watching our national news with stories on how racist this country has become toward blacks in general yet we don’t want to take a serious look at all the black on black killings. One of my favorite TV shows is called “The First 48” which takes you along as detectives investigate murders. New Orleans is one of the cities in this series along with other big cities such as Dallas, TX, Memphis, TN, and Detroit, MI. Every one of these big cities has large black populations and the vast majority of the murders are young black men killing other young black men.
Once in the early 80’s I was working in Washington, D. C. On the local news one night came the story of two black teenagers that were shot while waiting for the school bus. A sixteen year old was killed but his friend survived. A quick investigation turned up the reason the double shooting; the two students were harassed by two other 16 year olds that wanted what they were wearing.
The student that died was wearing an Oakland Raider jacket and his friend had a pair of “Air” Jordan’s on. Even though they didn’t put up a struggle both were shot. The police did arrest the youths involved in the murder; both were black; one was 16 while the other was 17 years old. The whole thing is just one huge sad affair but one that’s not unique to just our nation’s capital or any of its big cities. We see more and more that the size of the city doesn’t matter; kids are killing each other for nothing more than a pair of shoes or a shirt with an NFL team’s logo.
So thirty some odd years later the killing goes on and no one seems to have an answer. I then started thinking what could we try to make a dent in this horrible daily occurrence? I needed a big time black athlete with a high profile to bring my ideas to. That would make people listen so I started my search for someone that had to be listened to. I made the decision to talk with a very famous ex NFL player that lived just south of Zachary. My luck has never been good but luck would have it his younger brother had just started officiating high school football in the Baton Rouge Association so I did feel lucky at this point. He gave me a couple numbers to try and I started to call almost immediately hoping to make contact and have him agree to a meeting.
After a couple days of calling I was able to talk to “BIG” brother. He agreed to see me at his office which was quite a drive across the other side of the muddy Mississippi to the high school where he was the head coach. I made the almost hour ride on a sunny afternoon and was really looking forward to sitting down with him. He seemed happy to see me, we shook hands and he led me to his office. I sat down with this former Super Bowl MVP quarterback and presented my ideas. I had high hopes and was anxious to hear what he thought. His answer though floored me.
After my fifteen minutes of talking at him (because he never looked at me) he asked me “Do you see these sweats”? Yes I answered and he concluded our meeting by telling me that he gets $10,000.00 a year just to be seen wearing them. And by the way he told me it “wasn’t his job” to get kids out of ‘da hood since he had gotten himself out. “It’s their job, if I can do it so can they”.
I did leave with my “tail tucked between my legs” and started the drive back to BR. As I drove back I was so disgusted by his lack of concern or empathy for these poor black kids that will never play beyond the high school level. Many will drop out and never get a HS diploma and will no doubt turn to drugs and robbing their way through life.
Here’s another instance that has my blood pressure soaring. I believe it was last summer or later that I watched an episode of a ten to twelve year old basketball team going through preseason workouts while being coached by a black woman. Out of the blue the coach tells her team something to the effect that if they don’t succeed in sports then there’s nothing left for a black man to do in America to support himself. I’m still waiting for the NAACP to jump all over this coach but alas they’ve been silent.
Last week as I’m looking at the 24 or so players signed by LSU 23 out of those players are BLACK! So how can this be going on when you have an organization like the NAACP? They supposedly stand for getting a fair representation for BLACK people yet will go and do the exact same thing WHITE SUPREMACIST are guilty of.
How can this be going on? It’s 2017 in America? Simply put all that matters is wining. I’ve heard conversations where a segment of our society will just blast away at blacks and call them every name in the book. Yet, these very same people will spend thousands of dollars and even more hours watching a predominantly black football team from a “WHITE” University!
For two weeks before the last Super Bowl many people were claiming fans were racist for not liking Cam Newton. But I don’t see it since the NFL must have close to 90% black players. I don’t like Cam because he’s arrogant and immature. Things won’t get better until the way he thinks changes.
The powers that be within the NAACP are very happy and want to keep things the way they are since it makes them relevant. But they should be doing more of what their organization boasts “Advancement for Colored People”. The way things are those black athletes are nothing more than modern day entertainers. We’ve all seen actors, dancers and singers fade away when they can’t sell tickets.
I’m sorry if by me addressing that 900 pound gorilla has upset some but I call ‘em like I see ‘em. But the very sad thing is nobody really cares about these kids. In today’s billion dollar sporting industries they throw away yesterday’s stars instead getting them prepared for the real world. Not the Politically Correct World where no matter the color of your skin you’re only there to make money “for ‘da man”. The vast number of athletes are sought after to do one thing; make a team a winner. If you’re not there to do that then you’re just a political pony!
Till next week…
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