Championship runs are often boiled down to a single moment. One great play that stands out.
It’s shown over and over again on the stadium big board and finds its way into every preseason hype video until the end of time.
It comes naturally. You recognize it right away and say, “That was special.”
For LSU on its way to winning the 2023 College World Series, there wasn’t just one moment. You can’t define this team by one play or one player.
On the surface, it looks simple. The program with the most national titles in the last 30 years added another trophy to the case with a team led by the top two MLB draft prospects. Nothing about that is a Cinderella story. It’s LSU doing what LSU expects to do.
But it wasn’t that simple.
You can ask five LSU fans what their favorite moment from this College World Series was and you could get five different answers.
Maybe it’s Tre Morgan charging a bunt down the first-place line to throw a Wake Forest runner out at home and preserve a 0-0 tie in an elimination game. Or it’s [autotag]Tommy White[/autotag] hitting a walk-off home run later that night.
It’s [autotag]Josh Pearson[/autotag] making a leaping grab in left, taking a walk-off hit away from the best player in the country not on LSU.
Josh Pearson with the game saving grab! pic.twitter.com/0M22KJwnEG
— Stephen Schoch (@bigdonkey47) June 25, 2023
It’s [autotag]Ty Floyd[/autotag] punching out 17 batters for the best start of his career or [autotag]Cade Beloso[/autotag], the homegrown fourth-year senior, hitting the winning homer in extra innings.
Some might point to [autotag]Riley Cooper[/autotag], who became a dominant force out of the bullpen, flipping the script on what we thought about that unit all year.
It’s [autotag]Jordan Thompson[/autotag], who played the worst game of his life on Sunday only to be the spark on Monday.
It’s LSU facing rivals Oregon State, Tennessee and Florida over the last month and sending them all home, avenging losses of previous teams.
Nowhere in that did I mention [autotag]Paul Skenes[/autotag] or [autotag]Dylan Crews[/autotag], two of the greatest players in LSU history who spearheaded the title run.
That’s why this one is so special. We watch sports for those individual moments. The ones that get the crowd stomping and make viewers at home leap off the couch.
Baseball, in particular, is built around this. It doesn’t have the unflinching momentum of a football game or the quick back and forth of a basketball game. Because of that, the biggest moments on a baseball field fall with even more thunder. Tension builds and builds until something special happens.
An LSU had a whole lot of special happenings in Omaha.
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