LSU baseball was in trouble.
The Tigers trailed Milwaukee, 5-2, entering the bottom of the fifth inning of their season opener on Friday. They’d managed only five hits and had left six runners on base, and had work to do after a sub-standard start from newly-minted ace Casan Evans.
Murmurs of the unfathomable, the possibility of the defending national champions falling to a mid-major on the first day of their title defense, began to stir.
Cade Arrambide lined a double into left. One out later, a fresh face entered a stage he’d been watching all his life.
Seth Dardar, a Covington, Louisiana native and self-proclaimed lifelong LSU fan, got tasked to pinch-hit for Brayden Simpson.
Dardar spent two years at Columbia before transferring to Kansas State. Last June, he transferred to LSU for a homecoming in his senior season. For him, stepping up to the plate in an LSU uniform was a dream he had been waiting for his entire life.
“I’ve been an LSU fan my whole life, and it’s super exciting,” Dardar said. “It’s nice being so hyped up because of the crowd and the fans.”
Dardar made his first LSU at-bat, a memory that will already live in his mind for the rest of his life, into a moment that Tiger fans will remember for years to come.
“I don’t think I could have dreamed it up as good as that,” Dardar said. “That was like, I’ve been dreaming of this moment.”
The blast put a jolt into LSU, which scored its first run since the third inning and made it a one-run contest.
“I think it’s a sign of good things to come, I really do,” head coach Jay Johnson said.
Cooper Williams plunked a batter to open the next frame. In an effort to keep the momentum in the Tigers’ favor, Johnson turned to junior pitcher Gavin Guidry.
“Whenever my name was called, and they were kind of getting me going, I knew I was coming in the game,” Guidry said. “I was just really trying to get back out there and execute pitches and do my thing and bring some energy to the dugout.”
Guidry is no stranger to the big moment. He closed out LSU’s 2023 national championship clinching game and received the prestigious number eight ahead of the 2025 season.
That season never came for Guidry. The Lake Charles native injured his back before his first appearance in 2025 and faced setbacks that sidelined him while LSU made a run for its eighth national championship.
“I thought it would give the team and certainly the crowd a charge to see him run out of the bullpen,” Johnson said. “We’re losing at that time, so that was part of it.”
When Guidry took the mound and completed his hero’s journey, the buzz at Alex Box Stadium was palpable.
“When Gavin was coming in, you could hear the crowd, which was super awesome,” Dardar said. “I was out on the field getting goosebumps.”
“As I heard [the fans] cheering when he came in, I was like, ‘Yeah, that’s a special dude,’” Johnson said.
The energy came. Guidry struck out the first three batters he faced on 14 pitches and released 20 months of emotion while he strutted off the mound.
“I went punchie, punchie, punchie, and that’s what you enjoy doing,” Guidry said. “It’s just hard to hold that kind of stuff in.”
The Tigers rode the tsunami of momentum to a six-run seventh inning to give themselves the lead. Guidry returned for the eighth and surrendered just one hit and struck out two more Panthers. A five-run LSU eighth inning ended the game by way of the 10-run rule.
For Johnson, the bounce back being sparked by Dardar and Guidry came as no surprise.
“I think guys like Seth, I think he was in here talking,” Johnson said. “Gavin from the mound — that’s what they’re here for, so it was good to see them do that.”
