Yes, if you’re curious, despite this week’s 80-degree temps, the Christmas lights are on in Natchitoches.
The official lighting ceremony is Saturday night, complete with a drone and fireworks spectacular over Cane RIver Lake downtown.
The multi-colored bulbs have actually been on for a week now. It is a bit of a trial run to assure all of the more than 300,000 flashers are working when the 99th Annual Festival of Lights launches.
But nothing will shine more brightly tonight along Front Street than the Perfect Pilots, the 2025 NAIA national champion baseball team from LSU Shreveport.
The one-and-only undefeated college baseball team.
59-0.
Perfection never achieved before, at any level of college baseball. Very unlikely to ever be done again.
The Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame is hosting an evening honoring the Pilots, including the unveiling of a year-long exhibit of items helping illustrate one of the most remarkable stories not only in our state’s sports history, but our country’s.
These festivities are free, and don’t require a jacket or tie. Those were needed Oct. 20 when coach Brad Neffendorf and his guys stood alongside President Trump and their big brothers, the NCAA College World Series champion LSU Tigers, in front of an audience of Louisiana government and education VIPs at the White House.
This will be relaxed, just like the 2025 Pilots were throughout their run, or so they said at the time.
Was that true?
What was their special sauce?
Were there secret rituals, or just subtle routines, that contributed to continuing perfection?
Those questions and more will be addressed, and answered, by the Pilots in a panel discussion moderated by your pal and mine, Roy Lang III, the esteemed Shreveport sports journalist (and unabashed Cubs fan). The conversation will start about 6:30 or so in the Hall of Fame museum at 800 Front Street (across the street from the traffic circle).
There have been plenty of celebrations and ceremonies commemorating the Pilots and their super season. But there’s not been a public forum led by an insightful moderator, with opportunity for audience members to offer their inquiries to Neffendorf and players.
This is a one-off event. Like the perfect season, this is not going to happen again. It does tonight, in Natty, where state sports greatness is commemorated.
It’s a case study in extraordinary performance. What the LSUS baseball team conjured up is rich in values that are transferable to any other sport, or any other endeavor.
Not many of us can hit a 95 mph fastball, a curveball that looks like it fell off a table, or snag a line drive.
That’s just part of what made the Pilots the best to ever do it. Not the most talented, or MLB scouts would have been camping out off south Youree Drive.
How they came into the season with a mission, to reach the NAIA World Series and win it, is something not uncommon. How they accomplished that, never losing a game, is something that Lang will delve into tonight.
Much of the answer has nothing to do with bats, gloves or skill sets. It has to do with an entire team being dialed in to an exceptional level, from Game 1 in January to the national championship game in late May, 59 times, and all the days and nights in that incredible run.
No team will replicate it. But we all can learn from it. That’s the chance you and yours have tonight, free of charge, at the Hall of Fame museum in Natchitoches.
Contact Doug at sbjdoug@gmail.com