LSU junior outfielder Blake Dean was a high school senior three years ago, and the attraction of playing in the new Alex Box Stadium lured the All-American to Baton Rouge. With the first pitch of the 2009 baseball season days away, the new Alex Box is not only shaping up to be one of the nicest stadiums on campus, but one of the LSU baseball program’s best recruiting tools.”You’re seeing beautiful facilities going up all over the place now,” said LSU coach Paul Mainieri. “If LSU is supposed to be the very best baseball program, it is only appropriate that we have one of the facilities that would rank in the same category.”Penn State’s Medlar Field at Lubrano Park was completed in 2006. Penn State coach Robbie Wine said the new stadium has helped keep talented athletes in the state. He said a lot of Pennsylvania’s talented prospects were heading South to play baseball before it was built. “Having the stadium here has done wonders for our recruiting and done wonders for people even knowing we have a baseball team,” Wine said.Former LSU pitcher Kurt Ainsworth said recruits care about more than just tradition when they are deciding their baseball futures.”You have to show them better facilities, and you have to have the top-notch coaches and support staff with training.” Ainsworth said. “Now, not only do you have the tradition that everybody knows about, but you have the best facility to go along with it.”Former LSU catcher Brad Cresse said even recruits who do care more about tradition may not be aware of LSU’s history. “People over in New York and California or Texas, when they come in for a recruiting trip, they are not quite up-to-date on all that tradition yet,” Cresse said. “So when they see this new stadium on top of the stories they hear about the past, that will lock them in.”Cresse likened the new facility to the Football Operations Center on Skip Bertman Drive, which was built in 2006.”It’s been a big help in winning those national championships,” Cresse said. “When those recruits come in and see the facility, they sign. It’s proven to work with them, so it’s time to put it to use in baseball.”The new Alex Box also features a larger locker room and indoor batting cages. “In today’s competition for recruits, coach Mainieri needs a bigger locker room than we had,” said Skip Bertman, athletic director emeritus and former LSU baseball coach. “He needs a player’s lounge, which we never had before. He needs a big team meeting room and a nice training room. In the old Alex Box, you couldn’t go to the locker room through the dugout, like other schools do it.”Bertman said the new stadium can “light up a recruit’s eyes.”Ole Miss’ baseball stadium underwent renovations last summer, giving it many of the same amenities of the new Alex Box Stadium. But Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco said he doesn’t feel recruiting will be drastically affected by the new stadiums.”I don’t mean this egotistically, but we’ve done pretty good without [the new stadium],” Bianco said.Baseball is one of the few sports in which athletes can still bypass college and play professionally. Bianco said that facet of recruiting is what a newer facility will affect the most. “When a kid is choosing to go play baseball, is he gonna go to Billings, Montana, and play in an old, beat-up minor league park, or is he gonna go to the Southeastern       Conference where it is not just Ole Miss or LSU, but there are 12 nice stadiums?” Bianco said. —-Contact Amos Morale at [email protected]