LSU-Baylor postgame column now on home page

Carl, you are taking the rantards waayyyyyyyyyy to seriously on here.........good article but no one with a brain is underestimating NOLA.

Hey Carl, you're up pretty late for an old guy.

The secret: naps.

It's great to read intelligent writing and good wit on the Rant again. It's been lacking. Thanks for all you do, Carl.

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Warren Morris never had to read a message board questioning whether he was a liability while batting as low as the nine-hole in the postseason for LSU.

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WM wouldn't have been there hadn't he had a major injury. Apples and Oranges. Bad comparison and irrelevant.

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Some of the most spirited debates about college baseball are whether teams in the 2000s could stay on the field with teams from 15, 20 and 25 years ago. Texas coach Augie Garrido said yes, that today's teams are better, are filled with players who have been coached better for more of their playing careers, and that's why the champions of today would beat the champions of yesterday.

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So baseball has become sooooo advanced since 2000? This is a joke. Maybe, MAYBE since the mid-90's, but to say the champions in the 90's couldn't beat any champion of this decade is pure hyperbole. Weak. I know how hard LSU baseball worked and how well they were coached in the mid-90's. I saw how hard they worked. No team on LSU's campus worked harder than the baseball team. I saw it w/ my own eyes. Baseball then T&F were the hardest working teams by far in the mid-90's!

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Almost without exception, the players who built LSU to Program of the Decade status in the late 1980s and into the 1990s didn't ask themselves the questions that must creep into players' minds today when they're signing autographs.

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So today's players are mentally weaker than the players of the 80's and 90's yet they can beat any of those teams? OK.

I'll say again:

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the players who built LSU to Program of the Decade status in the late 1980s and into the 1990s didn't ask themselves the questions that must creep into players' minds today when they're signing autographs.

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"MUST"? OK, so today's players are wondering every time they are signing a autograph if this is the guy who criticized me on a message board? I don't buy today's players are that big of mental midgets. Sorry, I don't. I also don't think these guys have a whole lot of time, maybe not desire either, to read the rant.

Good Times, you are right on the money. Carl excellent article as usual. Austin Nola will be a LSU great. The rantards will be telling their grandchildren they saw him play in college! :geauxtigers: :geauxtigers: :geauxtigers: :geauxtigers:

Carl, thanks for the great article. You are, as I have always said, the best sports writer I've read and sorely missed on the Advocate's sports pages. What fools...but that's another story.

I know I will get killed for saying this but here it is: I started checking on this site years before I joined hoping to get an occasional insight on some aspect of the games and frankly, to learn about nuances from people who know alot more about the games than I do. I love it all but am nuts for baseball, thus my devotion particularly to Carl's writing.

This board has deteriorated to the point of being almost unbearable and - here's a shout-out to Chicken - you're losing us, man. Trash talk about Lee last fall, and now Nola, just is not helpful. In Nola's case particularly, it shows how little these 'tards know about baseball generally and about the contributions he (and others) have made particularly. Become a student of the game and show a little humility.

So here's the disclamer: yes, I am somebody's mama (not Nola's and not any current Tiger's mama) and while these boys may not take YOU seriously or this board seriously, they take the game very seriously. They work their tails off from the time they are about 8 or 10 years old just to get the chance to walk onto a baseball field in high school - the quality of play is that good around here. They then work their tails off to stay on the teams they have to try out for every year. Parents make enormous sacrifices to give them the chance and in the case of somebody like Big Baby, somebody else steps in and sees to it that they get to practice and have the equipment they need. Do you not think that every mistake these kids make is burned into their brains? Did you ever just sit quietly by a kid when he comes home after he blows a play - when he can't do anything but grieve? No, you are too busy running to the rant to call him a piece of shite, Big man. What could you say to someone like Hanover who is struggling right now - to make him feel worse? Can you show just a little tiny bit of respect for the game, the commitment, and the struggle? Critique away - by all means, but leave the personal ad hominem attacks off.

There you go boys. Swing away. But I've needed to say that for a long time. Good luck tonight boys, I'll be there for you win or lose, just like always.

Here's a little something, apropos of this thread, from CNN (used totally w/o permission so I'll probably get hauled off to Gitmo):

[Greene tells the story of an elderly lady remembering the patience of a local grocer each morning when sheand a friend came in his store and took forever to decide how to spend 5 cents. Then he comments:]

"Yet back then someone was gracious toward them --someone didn't rush them as they debated how to spend that precious nickel each Michigan morning. And now, in 2009, she sounded still thankful at the memory of it.

There's a lesson in that. In our current era, when offhanded cruelty at times seems to be the coin of the cultural realm, it may be worth giving a little thought to the idea that the small moments of people treating us with decency and empathy can last for a very long time -- that the echoes of kindness can be as loud as the echoes of callousness."

Read the rest of the essay on CNN.com