Taking care of baseball business
With another LSU baseball season underway and the boys of purple and gold finding their way into the spotlight again, it is easy to overlook one of the most important parts of the Tigers’ success — the people that support them. One of the most notable of the supporting cast is the LSU batgirls.
Comprised of 30 girls separated into three groups of ten girls each, the LSU batgirls have been doing various activities in support of the team, mainly involving marketing. Despite being an integral of the LSU baseball family, the batgirls are usually the ones behind the scenes.
“We work every game,” said fourth year member and captain Amanda Weilbaecher. “We also work coaches’ committee meetings, we do office hours in the baseball office during the week, and we do different fund raisers that they have; we’re always there helping out.”
Despite the wide variety of activities the batgirls endure, they still have anywhere from 80 to 100 girls that tryout every year which they must narrow down to 30.
“We look for personality,” Weilbaecher said. “We’re not going to make you run the bases or anything. We look for how committed they are and you don’t even really have to know anything about baseball, though it helps.”
The most glamour the batgirls receive is undoubtedly during the actual baseball games in which they have six different positions that are divided among a team of 10 girls. The girls work both left and right outfield, where they retrieve foul balls, the visitor and home dugout, where the prep the teams equipment and take care of the umps on field, sell programs, and manage the office during the game.
But with the glamour of being on the field also comes the mishaps of the game.
“It’s always happened in the past where someone will pick up a ball they think is foul and is really fair, and that’s not good,” Weilbaecher said. “We’ve fallen, we’ve gotten hit by baseballs, the guys like to throw their equipment so we’ve gotten hit by helmets and bats. We definitely have our share of mishaps and making a fool of ourselves.”
One such story related by third year member Michelle Kompare is one she’ll probably never forget.
“We were playing South Carolina my freshman year,” said Kompare. “They were ranked number one and the game was on TV and the radio and it had been raining that morning. And everybody was like ‘be careful because when it rains it gets all slick’ and so then a fastball came by and I was going to get it and I fell in front of the whole stadium, on TV and they replayed it again. It was pretty bad but I got over it.”
Though some are new to the baseball scene and the batgirl system, there are those who have always wanted to be a part of LSU baseball since girlhood, such as second year member and group leader Betty Mathes.
Mathes has been attending the games since she was a young girl. She went to Omaha in 1996 and saw Warren Morris’s famed homerun and after got a chance to hang out with the batgirls of that year’s team. Ever since she’s been hooked on the idea of becoming a batgirl.
Regardless of the apparent dangers of the job, most of the girls are happy to be a part of the team.
“It’s amazing to be a part of LSU baseball,” said second year batgirl Sally Milligan. “The fans here are like none other. And there’s nothing like being on the field in later innings of a game when the games are so close. We’re always out there whether the guys when or lose, it’s still fun.”