Beneath flashes of lightning and menacing clouds, an LSU fan stood around on Saturday evening, arms crossed and waiting, but smiling, beside three fans of Oregon State.
Their baseball teams have history. But the four fans, huddled under the oaks outside Alex Box Stadium, do not. They only met this weekend. And there they were, standing in a parking lot, killing a rain delay, chatting like old friends.
Terry Power wore purple. Jim Copeland, a retired middle school teacher who was born in Corvallis, Oregon, and raised in northern California’s San Joaquin Valley, wore orange. He and his wife Tina, a nurse, flew in from Oregon on Friday to watch their Beavers play LSU, he said.
Before his friend, Andy Lake, cut him off, to issue an important clarification: Copeland flew down to see Oregon State beat LSU, he said, chuckling.
“Who wouldn’t want to come to the Box to watch a baseball game?” Copeland said. “It’s a beautiful stadium. Great atmosphere. You come here because it’s a great tradition to be able to play a great school like LSU.”
Lake wore a bright orange baseball jersey and a black cap to Copeland’s tailgate. He was born in Hillsboro, Oregon, and like Copeland, grew up in California before enrolling at Oregon State for college. He bumped into Power in the lobby of their hotel, where he was looking for an extra ticket to the regional.
Power is from New Orleans. He’s a real estate agent who went to UNO. But back in his college days, all his friends swore that he went to LSU. Because every weekend, he was in Baton Rouge for a sporting event, either a football game in Death Valley or a baseball game at the Box.
On Friday afternoon, Power watched LSU ace Paul Skenes throw a complete game in LSU’s 7-2 win over Tulane before Oregon State rolled past Sam Houston State, thanks to their hitters’ 18 runs on 22 hits and their starter Trent Sellers’ strong 7⅓ innings of work on the mound. That set up an intriguing matchup.
It’d be Oregon State’s red-hot hitters against the rest of the Tigers’ pitchers, an embattled bunch that needs to throw well for LSU to reach the College World Series. For the two teams, the stakes are high. Which means they’re each in a familiar spot.
LSU and Oregon State have clashed in the postseason seven times in the past 11 seasons. They first faced off in 2012 at a regional in Baton Rouge, then again in consecutive years: the 2017 CWS and a 2018 regional in Corvallis.
The Tigers have the hardware. The pedigree. The one-game edge in the matchup. But the Beavers have found more recent success. Since the last time the two teams met, Oregon State has won a national championship, 12 more games overall than LSU and 11 more NCAA tournament and CWS contests.
But Copeland, Lake and Power all agreed LSU-Oregon State is not a rivalry. At least not yet. It’s more of a friendly opposition based on mutual admiration, a matchup that’s happened to come along a few times at key moments in the past decade, with one side looking to the other as a model for more sustained success.
“We respect and really appreciate what you guys have,” Lake said. “This is what we want. We’ve been successful, but we’re a West Coast, northwest team. How many northwest teams have won a College World Series? We’re the only ones.”
So in the hotel lobby, Power and Lake exchanged numbers. And later, Power shot him a text, to invite him to the tailgate and say he had, in fact, stumbled on a spare ticket. A few hours later, they were munching on Copeland’s jambalaya and sipping on Lake’s Colorado whiskey and Oregon pinot noir outside Alex Box Stadium.
It started with a serendipitous encounter. It ended with more lightning strikes, a late, heavy thunderstorm, and an official postponement of the LSU-Oregon State game, over four hours after the initial pause and 40 minutes after the Tigers and Beavers were supposed to take the field.
Just “baseball fans helping each other out,” Copeland said as they attempted wait out the weather delay and see their teams meet once again.
“I’m a big proponent of getting to know people and welcoming them to Baton Rouge,” Power said, “Not just southern hospitality, it’s LSU baseball hospitality. I’m a big fan of people having a great experience here.”
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