As a friend and I approached Alex Box Stadium on the LSU campus, an attractive young woman at the gate greeted us with a smile and “How are y’all doing?” and a few of the others with her smiled and said “hello.”
Nothing like immediately feeling the love from this impressive ballpark that was built in 2009 to take the place of the original Alex Box Stadium that was the home of LSU baseball from 1938-2008.
And this was on a Sunday when the main message of the gospel read at Catholic churches across the globe was Jesus’ commandment to “love one another.” We arrived to that lovin’ feeling under a mostly sunny sky that we didn’t expect an hour or so earlier. That was when we were driving south through stormy rain, hoping the trip would not be in vain because of a rainout.
Nine years since retiring as a sportswriter, I invited my friend to join me on a bachelors’ day out, so to speak, while our wives and two other gals were on a powdery Florida beach not far from the Flora-Bama Lounge.
We trekked to Baton Rouge to check out the red-hot Tigers, who the night before had clinched their third straight Southeastern Conference series, beating top-ranked Texas A&M by two runs for the second straight time. Suddenly, a chance for the Tigers to qualify for the NCAA playoffs, which not long ago seemed virtually doomed, is now a possibility if LSU wins its final two SEC series against Alabama (away) and Ole Miss (home). There is hope that the defending national champions might rise from the ashes, if not quite like a phoenix, at least like a repentant sinner.
The press box in Alex Box isn’t like the one in massive Tiger Stadium across Nicholson Drive. It’s smaller, as you might guess, and there’s no grand buffet of food. There were hot dogs and nachos and popcorn, with water or soft drinks to wash it down. All self-serve. Which is fine, and, by the way, the dogs we had were good.
Incidentally, Alex Box, which is where LSU hosts Northwestern State for a non-conference game tonight, got its name from Simeon Alex Box, a football player and petroleum engineering major at LSU who died as a WWII hero in North Africa. A Quitman, Miss., native, he was laying minefields and preparing road blocks after Field Marshall Rommel’s all-out attack against American forces at Kasserine. On February 19, 1943, he was killed instantly with four other soldiers when a mine accidentally discharged.
Later that year, the LSU Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to name the school’s baseball stadium for Box. It was the first time in the school’s history that a structure was named in honor of someone highly esteemed for military service.
Along the same lines, a highlight of Sunday’s game, which deteriorated with a 9-run fifth inning by the Aggies, was the “Soldier Salute” before the top of the seventh inning. LSU led 3-0 though four innings, including a two-run homer by sophomore catcher Brady Neal, but the wheels came off in the fifth, and A&M went on to save face with a 14-4 thrashing of the Tigers.
Wouldn’t you know, to inject some love for the downcast home crowd came Leonard J. Drude. The public address announcer introduced to the crowd the white-haired 89-year-old retired Navy captain, who played baseball on this campus many moons ago. Standing by the home dugout, he waved and smiled and doffed his cap to the applause and cheers. A 1958 grad who majored in geology, Stroud served on the USS Intrepid during the Vietnam War. In 2019 he was inducted into the Hall of Fame for LSU Distinguished Military Alumni – an honor that also recognized his being instrumental in modernizing training of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet & Allied Forces.
Protests and hate have shrouded several college campuses around the country in recent weeks, but on this campus? Love reared its head from the 5th-inning ashes. A team that, as its coach would say afterwards, “ran out of bullets,” didn’t run out of class.
Every coach and every student on the 40-man LSU baseball roster walked in single file to shake Drude’s hand and thank him for his service to our country. And several thousand fans who remained from the paid attendance of 10,747 thanked him for his service with their cheers.
And more than one attendant, as we walked to the parking lot to leave, thanked us for coming with smiles and urged us to drive carefully.
It seems that message about loving one another, when lived out, has a way of making things right.
