By Dan Steinberg February 22 at 3:11 PM

 

The Louisiana State baseball team’s third-inning tradition is the sort of thing you’ve likely seen dozens of times in recent years. After the bottom of the second inning at Tigers home games, a military member is introduced to the crowd, and as 11,000 spectators stand and cheer, the game briefly recedes into the background. There are similar displays at professional sports games all over the country. The ovations are both genuine and inevitable.

Last weekend, the Tigers changed up the routine. The nation’s second-ranked team was hosting a season-opening military appreciation weekend, with a medley of tributes peppered throughout games against Army and Air Force. And the Southeastern Conference team’s coach, Paul Mainieri, envisioned a pair of midgame moments that would go beyond the typical ovation. He asked his players to go across the diamond, in the middle of their games against the academies. And he asked them to say thanks.

“I wanted them to look each of those members in the eye, shake their hands firmly and tell them ‘thank you: thank you for their service, thank you for their commitment, thank you for their sacrifice, thank you for allowing us to have the life that we have,’ ” Mainieri said. “I wanted those cadets to know, from our players, how much we appreciate the sacrifice they’re making right now, and hope that it would inspire them and motivate them as they go forward and continue to make those sacrifices. And I think that was accomplished.”

It’s not the kind of thing that happens in the middle of a competition. Neither was the scene Saturday afternoon: the crowd chanting “U-S-A,” Army’s first-year coach getting choked up, and the game taking a pause as players from the two teams shook hands.

“Pretty surreal,” said Army catcher and captain Baggio Saldivar. “Each and every one of them was just saying ‘Thank you, thank you for what you’re doing, we appreciate what you’re doing for our country.’ We’re out there trying to beat them in a competition, but at the same time, there’s something bigger than what’s being done on the field.”

“I got chills,” said Jim Foster, Army’s coach. “I was thinking of where I’m [coaching] now, and just what these guys have chosen to do. As their coach, you’re trying to get them to play good baseball, do the sort of things to win a game. But when the crowd got involved, it let us take a step back and get outside yourself for a moment, and just think how appreciative you are.”

 The roots for those handshake lines, as it turns out, go back a few decades. Mainieri, the LSU coach, had an uncle who flew as a bombardier in World War II. He had an Army father, a sister who was an Air Force nurse, and a brother-in-law who piloted F-15s. He chose baseball instead of the military, playing in the minors for the White Sox organization, and then, in his early 30s, he became the first civilian baseball coach at Air Force. He spent six years there; his former players now include a two-star general, more than a dozen colonels, and Air Force’s current coach, Mike Kazlausky, who is “like a son of mine,” Mainieri said.

LSU and Air Force thus scheduled a weekend series in February to kick off this season. Then Mainieri noticed that Army would be in Louisiana on the same dates for a series with Tulane. So he reached out to the other programs about swapping opponents for one day, spicing up everyone’s schedule. That meant that both Army and Air Force would be on LSU’s campus the same weekend; Mainieri also offered up LSU’s iconic Alex Box Stadium for the teams to play each other.

“And I just kind of thought to myself, why don’t we take advantage of having two of the three service academies on campus, and let’s just make it a real festive military appreciation weekend,” he said. 

So LSU scheduled the sort of things you’d imagine: an appearance by the Air Force Wings of Blue Parachute Team, military members performing the national anthems, the recognition of a World War II veteran in his 90s, camouflage ball caps, and so on. In preparation for the weekend, LSU’s coach also showed his players a 13-minute video about Army Major Stephen Reich, the academy’s all-time leader in wins, and “maybe the greatest pitcher that I’ve ever coached against,” Mainieri said.

Reich, who was killed in Afghanistan, remains a revered figure in Army’s baseball program, and his father came to LSU for the weekend, receiving a two-minute ovation of his own. Still, why did an SEC power devote a team meeting to a former Army pitcher?

“So they understood that these players that they’re playing against right now are 18-to-22 year old college students, but shortly after they graduate they’re going to go out there in harm’s way to protect our way of life,” Mainieri said. “When Army is playing Navy or Air Force is playing one of the other service academies, there’s a lot of mutual respect there. But I wanted them to know that the civilians out there that they’re doing this for — they don’t even know us, and yet they’re putting their lives in harm’s way — that we appreciate everything that they do. I wanted them to know that.”

So there was some heavy backdrop to those midgame handshakes, which wound up attracting national attention. LSU’s coaches stayed back during those pauses; they wanted the moment to be about the kids, not the grown-ups. The fans — more than 11,000 for both games — “just stood and roared,” Mainieri said. “They were going nuts,” Foster, the Army coach, agreed. And Army’s kids, some of whom were playing in front of the biggest crowd in their baseball careers, were given an experience they hadn’t expected.

“It was a pretty touching moment,” Army infielder Kris Lindner said. “I had no clue anything like that was going to happen. It was just such a class act by them, just really respectful, and showed how much their team and their fans and everyone associated with their program really cares.”