Huge Ellis Article on The Legend...............
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the comments by McDonald were probably the most significant part. A friend of mine has an older brother who played for Patty Mac, and he still gets the cards from Polk.
I went to Polk's camps when I was a kid and got to meet him a few times in his Humphrey Coliseum office while he chewed on his fat cigars. But his attitude during his second tenure has really soured me on him. The losing is one thing, but the apathy and defiance of any criticism is another. And his determination to promote an unqualified successor really makes me wonder if he gives a damn about the school, or if it's all about Ron.
I went to Polk's camps when I was a kid and got to meet him a few times in his Humphrey Coliseum office while he chewed on his fat cigars. But his attitude during his second tenure has really soured me on him. The losing is one thing, but the apathy and defiance of any criticism is another. And his determination to promote an unqualified successor really makes me wonder if he gives a damn about the school, or if it's all about Ron.
That was a great article, and it is very admirable how Polk is looked at by the baseball community as a whole. I'm glad he was a Bulldog, because we need more coaches like that in terms of overall success.
However, that being said as one of the "harsh critics" we shouldn't just be satisfied with where our program is just because our coach writes his players letters and teaches them to be men. Once again, we see the perception that Ron Polk is bigger than MSU baseball where really Ron Polk is a part of MSU baseball.
Also, you can see how his recruiting practices have fallen by Ben McDonald's comments. We've gone from going hard after the best to "they should come to us".
The time has come for someone to take what Polk has built and take it to the next level. It's something that's seven years overdue.
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However, that being said as one of the "harsh critics" we shouldn't just be satisfied with where our program is just because our coach writes his players letters and teaches them to be men. Once again, we see the perception that Ron Polk is bigger than MSU baseball where really Ron Polk is a part of MSU baseball.
Also, you can see how his recruiting practices have fallen by Ben McDonald's comments. We've gone from going hard after the best to "they should come to us".
The time has come for someone to take what Polk has built and take it to the next level. It's something that's seven years overdue.
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The bad thing is, we have to give whoever we hire the dreaded time to put the pieces back together. The world's greatest pitching coach ain't gonna get quality innings out of the rag arms we have now. He is gonna have to do it thru recruiting. And not many freshmen do that well pitching in the SEC. 2 to 3 years before we see any pitching improvement. The bats have a chance to be good next year. The arms,not so much.
My grandmother loves LSU sports, my grandfather went there and they always followed the Tigahs. She sits in her living room listening to LSU on the radio if their games aren't on TV. She even follows women's hoops and softball. When they hired Manieri I told her it would take him at least a year to a year and a half to recover from the poor recruiting Smoke did in his final years. She didn't like Manieri and thought he was a terrible coach after last year and early this year. I reminded her he won at Notre Dame and that I wish we had hired him in 2001 instead of bringing Polk back. Well, low and behold LSU is on a roll and looking more like the LSU of old. The man knows how to win, but it took him a little time to get things going.
Our situation is even worse than LSU's when Smoke was canned. Much like them we aren't too far removed from Omaha but the pieces just aren't there. Unlike them we don't really have but just a handful of players that will be back next year to help a new coach win consistently. The rest are just not up to par. It will take good recruiting and patience to get out of this. Perhaps by the middle of the new coach's second year if not beginning of the third year we will be much better. Next year we are going to suck again. The only difference is if we hire the right guy he won't sit back and make excuses. If we make the right hire, like LSU did with Manieri, we'll eventually get back to where we should be and the fans will be there in droves.
Our situation is even worse than LSU's when Smoke was canned. Much like them we aren't too far removed from Omaha but the pieces just aren't there. Unlike them we don't really have but just a handful of players that will be back next year to help a new coach win consistently. The rest are just not up to par. It will take good recruiting and patience to get out of this. Perhaps by the middle of the new coach's second year if not beginning of the third year we will be much better. Next year we are going to suck again. The only difference is if we hire the right guy he won't sit back and make excuses. If we make the right hire, like LSU did with Manieri, we'll eventually get back to where we should be and the fans will be there in droves.
.......expecting to host regionals every year(back when there were only 8 of them, before the current format) to just being satisfied if we'd make it into a regional somewhere,,,,,,anywhere. Now we're at the point where just a winning season is probably good enough for a few.</p>
I keep seeing us compared to LSU, but my belief is that the MSU baseball program isn't even close to LSU history-wise. LSU has 5 national titles, and we have none. They have a brand new stadium on the way. They have a strong fan base, just like ours, but that's where the comparisons end. Ron Polk gets the credit for pushing the SEC to become what it is today in baseball, but it's increasingly obvious that all he really did was take advantage of a time period when the SEC wasn't worth a crap and baseball wasn't being taken seriously. Recruits flocked to Starkville simply because we cared. Polk's early success forced the rest of the league to catch up, and eventually pass us by, but with the exception of 1985 he never really had a team make a serious challenge for the CWS title once they got to Omaha. LSU, on the other hand, had a tremendous run of success after things had already started to become tougher in this league. In my mind, what Skip Bertman did for that program outweighs anything Ron Polk ever did for MSU. His success left an indelible mark on the LSU baseball program and truly put the SEC on the map as THE perennial power in college baseball.
Ron Polk has his place in history, and he earned it, but his presence hasn't been relevant to MSU baseball for 10 or more years. The best thing that happened for our program in modern times was that he retired in 1997. Unfortunately, in typical MSU sports fashion, we failed to take advantage of it.</p>
I keep seeing us compared to LSU, but my belief is that the MSU baseball program isn't even close to LSU history-wise. LSU has 5 national titles, and we have none. They have a brand new stadium on the way. They have a strong fan base, just like ours, but that's where the comparisons end. Ron Polk gets the credit for pushing the SEC to become what it is today in baseball, but it's increasingly obvious that all he really did was take advantage of a time period when the SEC wasn't worth a crap and baseball wasn't being taken seriously. Recruits flocked to Starkville simply because we cared. Polk's early success forced the rest of the league to catch up, and eventually pass us by, but with the exception of 1985 he never really had a team make a serious challenge for the CWS title once they got to Omaha. LSU, on the other hand, had a tremendous run of success after things had already started to become tougher in this league. In my mind, what Skip Bertman did for that program outweighs anything Ron Polk ever did for MSU. His success left an indelible mark on the LSU baseball program and truly put the SEC on the map as THE perennial power in college baseball.
Ron Polk has his place in history, and he earned it, but his presence hasn't been relevant to MSU baseball for 10 or more years. The best thing that happened for our program in modern times was that he retired in 1997. Unfortunately, in typical MSU sports fashion, we failed to take advantage of it.</p>
is because they hired a status quo coach so to speak, and credit Bertman for firing his chosen successor before he ran his beloved program into the ground, and their team was basically devoid of SEC talent when Manieri took over. I don't think people are necessarily comparing us to their last 20 years, just their last two or three.
I do agree that it is going to take about three years to rebuild our program, but I'm willing to be patient as long as it's not Raffo. One hope that we do have is to maybe go out and get a JUCO pitcher or two to try to band aid the situation. We can cut some pitchers that just haven't been up to par like Hollingshead, Koon, or Wesson and hopefully not get our scholarship situation too out of whack. I think that we will be OK offensively if Freeman, Collins, Conner Powers, and Turner come back healthy in addition to Tyler Moore and Hogue. We may lose some of them as well, we'll just have to wait and see. I guess if there's a silver lining as far as the pitching is concerned, it's that Crosswhite, Bowen, and Whitney have gotten it done before, so maybe a new coach can help them get it figured out again. I still think that they are not 100% healthy, and I just think that Bowen needs to be in the bullpen.
Also, with Manieri, he cut a LOT of his team after his first year because they weren't up to par. And that was after his first season. I don't know where he has gotten a lot of his players but he has done an awesome job there.
I do agree that it is going to take about three years to rebuild our program, but I'm willing to be patient as long as it's not Raffo. One hope that we do have is to maybe go out and get a JUCO pitcher or two to try to band aid the situation. We can cut some pitchers that just haven't been up to par like Hollingshead, Koon, or Wesson and hopefully not get our scholarship situation too out of whack. I think that we will be OK offensively if Freeman, Collins, Conner Powers, and Turner come back healthy in addition to Tyler Moore and Hogue. We may lose some of them as well, we'll just have to wait and see. I guess if there's a silver lining as far as the pitching is concerned, it's that Crosswhite, Bowen, and Whitney have gotten it done before, so maybe a new coach can help them get it figured out again. I still think that they are not 100% healthy, and I just think that Bowen needs to be in the bullpen.
Also, with Manieri, he cut a LOT of his team after his first year because they weren't up to par. And that was after his first season. I don't know where he has gotten a lot of his players but he has done an awesome job there.
Bertman's boys just took better stuff, were better on the stuff or benefitted from magical coonass voodoo in order to achieve the gorilla ball of the 90's. A former player in the late 90's pointed out who was juicing and who wasn't for MSU. And stop calling me Shirley.
they made an interesting comment during the Fla-Bama game yesterday. Florida was dead last in conf games in team ERA last year at 6+. They go and hire Clemson's pitching coach and now they are first in that category at 3.99. 2nd place is 4.33.
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