Baseball Polls, Week of April 7

[CajunFun]

We enter 5 national polls and the conversation turns to LSU. Already played them. They beat us. Obviously the team put it behind them, how about we do the same?

There is merit in this. But I think that we need to rehearse these things, not for LSU, but for our own fans and players.

Because I for one still have a hard time believing it. It is human nature that once we believe something, our performance tends to rise to the level of our belief.

That, in fact, is a big part of coaching: Getting the athletes to believe in themselves.

[CajunRage]

There is merit in this. But I think that we need to rehearse these things, not for LSU, but for our own fans and players.

Because I for one still have a hard time believing it. It is human nature that once we believe something, our performance tends to rise to the level of our belief.

That, in fact, is a big part of coaching: Getting the athletes to believe in themselves.

hard time believing what exactly?

[CajunFun]

hard time believing what exactly?

That with all of their money and power and national presence; and our tiny fraction of any of that; we are not only competing with them, we are passing them up.

Mind you, the history of the world is filled with such things. I am reading a novel about the Varian Disaster, when in 9 CE Germanic tribes trapped and defeated three Roman legions, after routinely losing to the Romans. The event shocked the ancient world, and led to a cessation of major Roman expansion: they started building walls to keep the barbarians out.

There are bunch of 'em in history: Defeat of the Spanish Armada in the Battle of Gravelines (it only started there, it continued up the British coast, and came down west of Ireland); the English victory at Agincourt; the Athenian defeat of the Persians at Marathon; and even one that the U.S. kept hidden for decades, the Battle off of Samar, starring a Louisianian.

But there is a reason these things are well-known. They don't happen too often.