At some point during one of LSU’s three games at the Houston Astros’ Minute Maid Park this weekend, TV announcers will marvel all over themselves at how well those dadgum, crazy Tigers fans travel.
They fall for it every time LSU goes to Houston, which seems more and more regularly.
And LSU baseball fans do, in fact, travel pretty well, probably better than any other college baseball team extant.
If LSU’s first appearance in this Shriner’s Hospital for Children Classic two years ago was any preview, the Tigers will have more fans than any of the other five teams in residence for the weekend — TCU, Texas Tech, Baylor, Ole Miss and Texas A&M.
Throw out the Aggies, and the other four combined will likely have trouble matching the LSU throngs.
That year the main lower seating level of the major league ballpark was almost full of LSU fans for all three Tigers games.
Expect the same this year.
But let’s be honest: it won’t be like they had to make the journey across the Sabine by covered wagon.
Most, in fact, will make the trek all the way from Katy or The Woodlands, maybe as far away as Conroe, Pearland or Humble.
The Houston area has more LSU alumni than any place on the planet not named Baton Rouge or New Orleans. Some say Baton Rouge traffic is the perfect career tune-up for a postgraduate life of Houston commutes.
It does appear that LSU is gradually moving the campus — or at least the recognizable sports — to Texas.
This September Ed Orgeron will open the football season against BYU at NRG Stadium. It will be the third time in four seasons that LSU has played in the palatial home of the Houston Texans, and the Tigers won’t have any problem getting a quorum.
The Tigers, conversely, haven’t played in the Louisiana Superdome since January of 2012, perhaps vowing never to return again after that unpleasant situation arose with Alabama in the BCS national championship game.
But Houston has been very, very good for LSU.
Dallas, too, for that matter. The football Tigers have never lost in three trips to the JerryWorld, home of the Dallas Cowboys, including once playing back-to-back games there (the Cotton Bowl to end the 2010 season and the 2011 season opener against Oregon), both with enjoyable results for the effort.
Which really makes this weekend so perfect for LSU baseball ?— not to mention the Tigers get to play in a first-rate major league ballpark — that you wonder why it took the Tigers so long to discover this thing.
LSU looks like such a natural fit in Minute Maid Park that it almost seemed like the event was created for LSU baseball.
Yet they played 14 of them under various names before LSU was lured in two years ago.
“They’ve been asking us for years,” LSU coach Paul Mainieri said at the time. “I always politely told them no.”
But the crowds LSU attracted that time, not to mention the experience the Tigers had, evidently opened Mainieri’s eyes — even though the Minute Maid Park public address announcer never did learn to pronounce his name. Something along the lines of “Mainey-er-eee.”
You can probably figure on LSU showing up for it at least every other season now.
The Tigers themselves — you know, the team — never really liked to venture too far from home in the pre-SEC schedule.
So some years it’s about the only way before conference starts to see LSU baseball against honest competition.
Under Mainieri LSU had some silly tradition, which kind of slipped in unannounced, of always playing an Ivy League school. This year they traded that one in to honor service academies.
Either is brainy, and Army and Air Force were both uplifting two weeks ago, but fortunately our nation’s future business and long-term security does not revolve around how those schools play baseball.
Before the awakening two years ago, Mainieri always thought the rigors of the SEC meant he didn’t need to schedule top-flight national competition before opening league play.
And he’s probably right. It’s not going to hurt postseason seeding.
But a team probably needs a good weekend road trip just to bond properly before they get into the SEC. (LSU opens the league at Florida, the school the Tigers are the preseason co-favorites with to win the SEC).
The uptick in competition surely won’t hurt either.
LSU will play three ranked teams — unanimous No. 1 TCU tonight, along with Baylor on Saturday and Texas Tech on Sunday — in three days.
LSU happened to sweep all three Minute Maid games in that initial 2015 visit.
But keep in mind, it’s baseball. There’s really no risk involved.
You’re going to lose games. It happens. Whether the Tigers go 3-0 or 0-3 they’ll be a better team when they get back home.
What’s not to like?
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