People who do not have an interest in sports often ask why sports fans are so intrinsically attracted to the games we love. They wonder how we get so invested in these games and why these events can drive adults to tears of joy or sadness.
The simple answer is this: sports are dreams made real. They are pages of movie screenplay compounded together, yet the pages are never authored in the past, only written in as time passes through the present moment. Sports defy the natural odds that govern our daily way of life, creating stories that no one person, regardless of the size of their imagination, could ever fathom to potentially occur.
There is no logical reality where Cade Doughty should have hit a three-run home run to tie the game in the bottom of the 10th. There is no plausible universe where Gavin Dugas would work to a full count, be pushed against the wall with his last strike in hand and launch a two-run home run to resurrect his team’s chances to win the game. There is no possible way that Jordan Thompson, after both of these highly improbable events would take place, could send his team home with a walk-off solo home run.
Except for this one timeline we are currently residing in. This is the one where all three clutch hits happened, and LSU walked away from an unbelievable battle against UTSA with a 10-9 win.
Sports fans live for nights like this. This game is the reason why the spouse does not want to leave the game early and beat out the heavy traffic despite any pleading made by any member of the family, or the reason why fans can watch losing season after losing season for decades and still be dedicated enough to give their team their support and affection.
These moments make it all worth it. Every second of time invested in watching every shot, down, or pitch pays off with moments like tonight.
“That was honestly one of the more crazy games that we’ve had in my tenure here at LSU,” Head Coach Paul Mainieri said. “My mind’s a little bit numb right now.”
Over the course of four hours and 40 minutes, the Tigers and the Roadrunners exchanged blow after blow, combining for one of the most epic affairs in LSU baseball history. LSU took an early lead in the fourth inning by way of a Dylan Crews RBI double and a Doughty three-run home run to go up 4-0. However, UTSA rallied back in the eighth and ninth innings to tie it at 4-4, despite losing their manager in the middle of the eighth to an ejection after arguing a called strike three for one of his batters.
After the Tigers were unable to walk it off in the bottom of the ninth, UTSA’s Austin Ochoa launched a two-run home run, and Jonathan Tapia scored a runner with a sacrifice fly to put the Roadrunners back in front in the 10th, 7-4. It looked like the game was going to be out of reach, and LSU would be left to cope with a poor pitching performance from the relief staff, who walked seven batters in their six total innings of work.
Doughty had other plans. With two runners on, he blasted another three-run shot into the left field bleachers, tying the game and continuing the evening for the time being. On the pitch directly after, Cade Beloso hit a triple off the left center field wall. If the LSU crowd was not fired up before Doughty’s massive hit, watching the big designated hitter leg out a triple and celebrate on third base certainly got them excited.
“It was incredible,” Doughty said. “Having that inning before that, we just didn’t get our jobs done. We let up three runs, but after the home run and the triple, it was just electric.”
However, the Tigers could not quite end it there. After a scoreless 11th inning for both teams, Tapia struck again for the Roadrunners with a two RBI double. Surely, this would be the final punch that would do LSU in.
Tre’ Morgan doubled to lead off the bottom of the inning. With Doughty back at the plate, it seemed like he might be the hero again, but he struck out. Will Safford, who had come in as a pinch runner for Beloso after his triple in the 10th, grounded out as well.
That left Dugas. He had to work to a full count to finally get the pitch he wanted, but he used it to slam the ball into the left field sky and pull LSU away from the point of no return. The unthinkable had happened again.
Following the scoreless top of the 13th, Zach Arnold grounded out to bring up Thompson. The freshman had shown his power in fall practices and games earlier in the season, but this was a huge moment in a game with raised stakes. Some newcomers would not be able to handle that kind of pressure.
Not Thompson. He smoked the walk-off home run on the third pitch he saw and was mobbed after rounding the bases with a fist pump, getting the push home from third base coach Nolan Cain, and jumping into the awaiting, cheering arms of his purple-clothed teammates.
“I don’t even know what to really say about it,” Thompson said. “I’m still trying to process if that really happened. It just all happened so fast. I’m just happy that we were able to get the win right there. There are a lot of guys that put us in positions to keep the game going so we could stay in it, so for me to be able to come up in that situation was huge.”
Spearheading LSU’s pitching was Saturday night starter Landon Marceaux, who threw a six-inning, three-hit, 11-strikeout gem as he preserved his perfect ERA for the season. But after those six innings, the waiting game in the dugout was an interesting experience for him. All he could do was watch and pull for his teammates’ success.
“I feel like I pitched three days ago,” Marceaux said.
“Everything goes up and down, up and down, up and down,” he commented. “We get a couple of clutch homers and just keep coming back. The resiliency of this team is outstanding, and the atmosphere was electric. I loved every minute of it.”
The word that kept getting thrown around by LSU players after the game was resilience. The Tigers never quit, even to the point of being one pitch away from losing. According to Thompson, there was no lack of faith in the Tigers’ ability to snatch a win away from the jaws of defeat.
“We just have a lot of heart,” Thompson said. “We don’t want to lose. We don’t want to back down to anyone. We’re going to fight all the way to the end. I think a lot of the older guys really installed that into all of us when came here in the fall that we weren’t going to let anything stop us, and it played huge in tonight’s game.”
This is not the first time LSU will win on a walk off in extra innings, and it will not be the last. So, what made the night so remarkable?
Saturday night was a reminder for anyone that needed it that sports will always disregard any concept of how things should play out. The unpredictability is what keeps us watching, but the likelihood that something amazing will happen keeps us coming back to watch more. Sports reads its own script, dances to its own tune, yet always raises its most loyal fans to inconceivable levels of euphoria.