Weird and off topic. I went to State and know a lot of people from there. I'd always heard (and blindly accepted) the narrative that State was this epic baseball power, the apex of the SEC, a national force that was on par with football dynasties like Oklahoma, USC, Nebraska etc. and that it was only a matter of time before the Bulldogs -- with the best gameday traditions in the sport -- would be back at the top of the mountain, dominating the SEC like it always did in the past. A return to domination was an inevitability, a foregone conclusion.
Today, for the first time, I ran into reality.
They've never won the CWS. Nine appearances in the CWS (Auburn made four) wth seven or eight year gaps between almost every appearance. Only won the conference tourney seven times.
I was expecting juggernaut. I got meh. They're not even LSU. They're not even half of LSU. Historically better than Auburn, but not significantly and probably fewer individual pro successes. Other than Papelbon, nobody's come out of MSU recently and done much in the league. Palmerio and Clark were their last big names and that was before our Hudson, Thomas, Donaldson and more.
I love baseball. I wanted to play forever but wasn't good enough. I remember MSU being good when I was in school and remember going to camps run by Ron Polk when I was playing and going to Polk coaching clinics when I was coaching. He wasn't even hot shit, either. Bertman won 870 games in 17 years at LSU. Polk won 1373 in 36 years. If you just do MSU, Polk won 1139 games, more than Bertman, but it took him 29 years to do it. Math that up somehow. 19 years to win the 269 total games difference? Not saying Bertman could keep the same pace, but he won about 50 games per year. He coaches as long as Polk and it's like 1800 games or so.
This is a cautionary tale in a way. I remember MSU being good and because of what I was told I created something in my mind that never really existed, at least not in the way I remembered it to be.
See: Alabama football and the average non-Alabama resident, forever.
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