'Part of the whole picture'

• By CHRISTINE M. ARCENEAUX
• Advocate Livingston-Tangipahoa editor
• Published: May 7, 2008 - Page: 1C - UPDATED: 12:30 a.m.

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Longtime LSU baseball fan Anita Haywood scurried to the fence behind home plate and carefully hung a K sign on the railing.

As she hurried back to her seat in Alex Box Stadium, Haywood held up two fingers — a sign that LSU had struck out two of the opposition’s batters — and cheered, her voice permeating The Box just as her enthusiasm has for years.

“It’s part of the whole picture,” Haywood said of her self-appointed position as LSU’s “K Lady.” “It’s part of coming to The Box. It’s a responsibility to the fans.”

For years, Haywood has sat behind the third base dugout at Alex Box Stadium and hung signs featuring the letter K — baseball slang for strikeouts — on the fence behind home plate whenever a pitcher retires a batter on strikes.

It’s a job she loves. A job she fears will go down in history with the closing of The Box.

Unless LSU is awarded a regional bid, the team will close the stadium’s 70-year history with a three-game series against Mississippi State this weekend.

The rejuvenated Tigers (32-16-1 overall, 12-11-1 in the Southeastern Conference), who returned to the Top 25 polls this week, take a nine-game winning streak into Friday night’s game.

Haywood will be ready.

“I’ll still be the K Lady for LSU baseball but (in the new stadium), the Ks may be on the (score) board and I would be out of a job,” Haywood said.

For now, though, Haywood isn’t making any promises to quit the position that has made her a household name among LSU baseball fans.

Senior associate athletic director Herb Vincent, who remembers running into Haywood in Atlanta where she hung red, white and blue Ks during the 1996 Summer Olympics, is certainly one of them.

“I would hope that she would continue to do it in the new stadium,” Vincent said. “We want to take the ambiance of the old stadium and put it in the new Box and she is definitely a part of it.”

Vincent said the university is willing to help accommodate Haywood in the new baseball stadium.