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Eight former LSU baseball players appeared on active rosters on Opening Day of the 2010 Major League Baseball season.These success stories, and those of their recent predecessors, serve as a reminder of how far LSU’s baseball program has come since the turn of the 20th century.Eighth-year veteran Brian Tallet pitches for the Toronto Blue Jays alongside sixth-year All-Star infielder Aaron Hill. All-Star outfielder Brad Hawpe has played for the Colorado Rockies for seven seasons, while pitcher Greg Smith begins his first year with the team. Shortstop Ryan Theriot and second baseman Mike Fontenot have played for the Chicago Cubs for six and five seasons, respectively, to create “The Cajun Connection.” Outfielder Nick Stavinoha started his third season with the St. Louis Cardinals, where he hit the game-winning home run against the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday.All-Star pitcher Brian Wilson is in his fifth season with the San Francisco Giants.Baseball had long been a program on the back burner until Skip Bertman arrived. LSU went through a steady rotation of coaches until the late 1950s, most of whom also held the positions of football and basketball coach.Fourteen players made it to the majors from 1917 to Bertman’s arrival in 1984. Forty-three players have played professionally since then.The program had sporadic flashes of success in the early years. Joe Adcock and Alvin Dark played in the majors for 16 and 14 years, respectively, but the other 12 players never lasted more than four years.The ’80s and ’90s were the most successful decades in the program’s history. Fifteen players in the ’80s and 22 players in the ’90s made it to the majors. LSU made its first College World Series appearance in 1986 and had its first national championship in 1991.The most successful years didn’t necessarily correlate to the team’s talent. LSU’s back-to-back College World Series wins in 1996 and 1997 had the leanest amount of major-league talent.”We didn’t have the best players in any of the championships,” Bertman said. “We might have had better players when we didn’t win in given years like ’98 and ’99 and some other years … But we were better teams.”A player’s mindset goes a long way toward success in the collegiate and professional world, Bertman said.”When I came here, there was … a locker room with nothing in it except old food on the walls, a couple of torn couches and a turned over refrigerator, literally,” Bertman said. “But … that was easy, fixing those.”What changed was the culture of thinking about being a champion, Bertman said.”It wasn’t just I taught them how to play baseball — it was that we were team-oriented,” Bertman said. “What they have had and have been taught is how to compete every single pitch … Never give up an out, never give up an at bat. … If you do fail, which you must in baseball, you’ll flush it, come back in 15 seconds and not lose the moment.”These qualities help players with the 162-game major league schedule, Bertman said. “Not everybody has the mental toughness to do that,” Bertman said. “That’s what we provide.”Former LSU second baseman Todd Walker, a College Baseball Hall of Famer, said playing at LSU made a big difference in his life. Walker said he felt fortunate to learn from Bertman, former assistant Beetle Bailey and former coach Smoke Laval.”Skip Bertman taught me a lot,” Walker said. “He always used to say, ‘Don’t ever transfer blame … If you do something wrong, it’s your fault.’ That’s basically been a life lesson for me. I think we all constantly want to blame other people to make ourselves feel better. The No. 1 thing for me was to take responsibility.”Walker said playing baseball at LSU taught him to deal with “the overwhelming feeling of everything.” “You learn to hang in there, you learn to persevere, you learn to have faith,” Walker said. “A lot of times you do things you didn’t even know you were capable of doing.”Mainieri said LSU’s environment helps alleviate the mental grind of professional baseball. Big crowds, big expectations, good competition and dealing with the media create a professional atmosphere.”I think it’s very rare when you have a kid that comes out of high school that has the maturity and the emotional well-being to be able to succeed in professional baseball,” Mainieri said. “Professional baseball is a very grinding, difficult world. You have to know how to deal with failure quite a bit. It’s very hard for an 18-year-old to handle that kind of environment.”—-Contact Katherine Terrell at [email protected].