The plan for Saturday was to play 18 holes at the Preserve Golf Club and then head to Baton Rouge for the Vanderbilt vs. LSU football game starting at 6 p.m. It is about 2 hours from Biloxi to Baton Rouge. We woke up on Saturday morning to a complete wash-out! It had rained all night and continued to rain all day. Between Friday night and Saturday, Biloxi got over 3.5 inches of rain. To put that in context, the greatest rainfall in a 24 hour period in Phoenix was 4.98 inches on July 1-2, 1911. Not to be dissuaded, a few of the "World Of" stalwarts (not me!) headed out to the course to check out the conditions. They rode a couple of holes and when they threw a ball out into the fairway on No. 3 and could not find it under the water, even this hearty group gave up and headed back to the hotel.
Since there were two good football games on television that afternoon, we decided to head to Baton Rouge earlier than originally planned. I drove with Crimson Tide in his crimson pick-up truck with the Alabama license plate and Nick Saban bumper sticker (intending to stay under the radar, literally and figuratively!). We stopped at Wal-Mart to pick up $9 rainsuits for the game. We arrived in Baton Rouge at around 3 p.m. and hung out at the Station Sports Bar and Grill, a well-known Tiger game day hangout in Baton Rouge, and watched the other games and checked out the Tiger faithful. Driving through the campus to Tiger Stadium in the crimson pick-up truck, we got some stares and some Cajun yells of "Tiger bait!". When we got to the stadium and finally got to our seats three rows from the top of the stadium (in rows V and U) and put on our oxygen masks the rain had miraculously stopped (actually, we were so high that the rain was below us!). The first thing that we saw when we caught our breath was a 25-yard-long sign "Welcome to Death Valley'', the politically incorrect nickname for Tiger Stadium. In addition to football, LSU is known for its excellent marching band and its real Tiger mascot Mike. The band was marching and playing and 92,000 rabid fans were singing along and yelling "Geaux Tigers" (which sounds a lot like "Go Tigers" unless you saw the thousands of tee shirts with the correct spelling). To my chagrin, Mike was nowhere to be found (we later learned that if Mike does not want to get into his trailer for a game, Mike does not get into his trailer and no one messes with him!).
Once the game started Vandy hung tough with the Tigers. Vandy got a safety in the third quarter and was within a touchdown with the ball in good field position, but could not score and LSU added another touchdown in the fourth quarter to win 23 to 9. The Tiger fans were not happy with Les Miles' very conservative play-calling and the fact that the team did not steamroll the lowly Commodores. It was a rousing moral victory for the 'Dores! We got back to Biloxi a little after midnight and it was still raining and I headed to sleep with dreams of playing 36 holes under par the following day. Some of my compadres played blackjack and claimed that they paid for the trip with their winnings.
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2 comments:
Sir - you refer to your driving companion as "Alabama" herein, although your prior entry refers to "Crimson Tide" as a member of your posse. I am flummoxed. Please clarify.
Anonymous - You are correct! I appreciate your diligent editing and comments. I have fixed the error so that it will be clear that we have not added another Thin Red Line supporter to the posse. Roll Tide!
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