Dubois: No deficit too much for LSU

• By CARL DUBOIS
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Jun 18, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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OMAHA, Neb. — There is a drill I remember from my first college baseball practice, an unforgettable sprint marathon in which you run until you catch the teammate in front of you.

That’s what it resembled in the bottom of the ninth inning when LSU scored three runs on Blake Dean’s double for a 6-5 victory against Rice to stay alive in the College World Series.

Jared Mitchell, who was on first base, chased Michael Hollander, who was on second, and Chris McGhee, who was on third. Mitchell, arms raised before he was halfway down the third-base line, scored the winning run.

Once Mitchell gets motoring, which doesn’t take long, he’s a joy to watch in full stride, and he’s never had the incentive to get home quickly like he did Tuesday afternoon at Rosenblatt Stadium.

Mitchell closed the gap so fast, Hollander could probably tell whether Mitchell’s pregame meal was spicy or mild.

“I’m a lot faster than Jared,” Hollander joked. “I let him get a little head start. That’s why he was right up on me.”

At a glance, it seemed as if a dozen LSU players were circling the bases, and you began to wonder if there would be a traffic jam at home plate.

“When I saw him,” Mitchell said of Hollander, “I was (thinking) it was just going to be like the movie ‘Major League,’ where one’s sliding one way and the other one’s sliding the other way.”

The great finishes in sports always have a signature snapshot or two that stay in the photo gallery of the mind. That series of high-speed left turns is one that might crash YouTube before the day is over.

Then there is Dean’s double that started the carousel. Rice left fielder Aaron Luna ran back in pursuit of the line drive, and as he reached the warning track, he had to turn and run the other way after the ball smacked — audibly — off the wall and began bouncing toward the spot where his chase began.

What’s the Charlie Chaplin line? Life is tragedy in close-up, comedy in long shot? Luna’s sprint one way, then his desperate reversal, had a perverse touch of the comic from a distance, but from Luna’s perspective, it was a Rice victory slipping away in one long nightmare shot.

Later, the kind of laughter that breaks tension followed Rice pitcher Cole St. Clair’s response about whether he was surprised by the force with which the ball ricocheted off the wall.

“It was hit hard,” St. Clair said, “so, it’s just physics. It’s going to come back.”