Dubois: Flagging an error of omission

• By CARL DUBOIS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Apr 25, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:10 a.m.

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The LSU Tigers committed 11 errors and a few other mistakes in a three-game baseball series with Georgia that ended Sunday. None were as bad as the one I made that night.

After writing my game story for Monday editions of The Advocate, I wrote a column for Tuesday. Its topic: the SEC pennants that fly at Alex Box Stadium.

They used to be in order of the conference standings. Now they fly alphabetically.

I asked about this early in the season, and one of the people responsible for raising and lowering them told me LSU coach Paul Mainieri didn’t like the former arrangement, so the crew switched to alphabetical order for the rest of the season.

A day or two later, I wrote about it on my blog and moved on to other things. Other blog topics come up when I’m out at the Box, so I know they’re reading it inside the program.

Nobody questioned the item about the flags.

That lulled me into a false sense of security and led to the error in Tuesday’s column.

There’s no need to search for the mistake. It’s not in a specific paragraph. It’s an error of omission, one that speaks to thoroughness and fairness and other issues I take seriously.

I wrote the column without asking Mainieri about the pennants. There’s no defense for that, and I offer none.

Mainieri said he never said anything to the crew about changing the way the SEC flags are displayed. The stories coming out of the program this week match his statements.

What Mainieri said he did change this season was the schedule for his managers. Two, not three, take care of pregame setup, and a third now comes later for postgame laundry.

The person who usually raises the pennants has a full list of duties before each game, Mainieri said, and lacking Internet access at home, he found it difficult to get updated SEC standings in a timely manner and still accomplish all of his tasks.

That person, not Mainieri, made the decision to change the flags to alphabetical order, Mainieri told me after reading the column.