A Most Entertaining Double Header

Last week, I had the chance to attend a very unusual double header. It started with game 4 of the Hornets-Heat playoff series. Tip off at 7:00 in New Orleans arena, followed by the LSU-Tulane baseball game next door in the Superdome.

Being close to the basketball court is good.

The basketball game was great. We had seats on the 10th row in the corner. I could get used to the lower deck. My only real problem with it is that the New Orleans fans sit on their asses during the action. They are more apt to get up to do the chicken dance during a timeout than they are to stand up and try to rattle the opponents. I know that the NBA is new to us, but come on. This is the playoffs. It's time to start acting like the loud obnoxious a-holes that we are.

That reminds me of a story. A couple of years ago, I was at a hockey game in Baton Rouge. It was a week night, and there weren't too many people there. There was one guy in a suit seated near us who was at the game after work by himself. He seemed to enjoy the game, without being noticeable or rowdy. He was reading the newspaper during time outs.

But when the chicken dance started, the guy calmly folded up his paper, put it away, stood up, and started shaking his ass. He really got into it -- smiling, doing gyrations, and all. At the end of the music, he went immediately back to a serious face, sat down, unfolded the paper, and started reading. You have to wonder if he was hypnotized and whether he even knows that he did all of that dancing.

But I digress...

Call me a geek, but twice during the basketball game, the Hornets made passes that were so beautiful, I got chills. In the first half, David West (no mistake), threaded the needle from the free throw line to an open teammate under the basket. It's a testament to the beauty of the assist that I have no idea who actually scored the basket. In the second half, West (go figure) was on the receiving end of a Baron Davis pass. Excellent.

You can't beat a 300-yard walk from one event to the next. The setup was like Jazz fest for the Louisiana sports fan. It's a little bit difficult, though to get from basketball fan mode to baseball fan mode. It sounds stupid, but I not knew what to yell. Once I did even blurt a "c'mon ref!" No one seemed to notice that I didn't know that baseball has umpires. The basketball and baseball centers of the brain are surprisingly far from each other.

The narrator watches baseball.

The baseball game was moved up to an earlier than expected start for the typical LSU baseball fan, who is around age 80. An 8:30 start meant that LSU Baseball Fan would have to drive home around midnight, which of course, would really put a damper on that 5:30 am breakfast at Denny's with their geriatric buddies.

Stacie did manage to catch the attached photo of your favorite web scribe. I know that it's my site, and that I don't have to publish this, but I sure as hell would put the same photo of any of you here, so in the name of journalistic integrity, here is the photo that Stacie titled, "7th Inning Stretch."

7th Inning Stretch

In the three innings of baseball that we caught, LSU only managed one hit, and they gave up a few. Fortunately, they had built a big lead by the time we got there, so we managed to leave with a 2-0 record on the night. That's a pretty good night, and by all reasonable measures, we should have headed straight for the casino, but like responsible grown-ups, we headed back to Baton Rouge.