Yesterday’s story, published on Alex Box’s August 5 birthday, traced his name from a one-year LSU baseball letterman killed in World War II to the stadium LSU dedicated in his honor in 1943. During the next six-plus decades, the original ballpark was expanded repeatedly, became the home of five national championships, and eventually, and maybe sadly, was demolished.

And through it all, maybe the man most responsible for keeping Alex Box’s legacy alive is the man who has the new field now named after him.

Selected in January of that year, it was later on August 6, 2001 that legendary Skip Bertman officially assumed his duties as LSU’s athletic director. By then, his influence over LSU baseball had already spanned 18 seasons. The appointment changed the form of his authority, of course, moving him from the dugout to the all-expansive world of an athletic program about to explode beyond the diamond.

Exactly six years later, on August 6, 2007, LSU conducted the official groundbreaking for the new Alex Box Stadium.

Although the recurrence of the date was coincidental perhaps, the historical connection was direct, since the legacies of LSU baseball’s two greatest names would be historically and irrevocably linked.

The Ballpark Bertman Inherited

When Bertman arrived in 1983 to take over the LSU program for the 1984 season, the original Alex Box Stadium already possessed a venerable name and 45 years of history. It had hosted the New York Giants for spring training, LSU’s first SEC championship team, and several generations of Tiger baseball players, although its importance remained principally local.

During Bertman’s first season, LSU drew 22,021 fans across 24 home dates, an average of 918. Measured against the crowds LSU now regards as ordinary, that figure illustrates the magnitude of Bertman’s grassroots efforts to lift LSU to national prominence.

He inherited a stadium originally built for 2,500 people, then created a program whose growth continually rendered the existing facility insufficient. LSU renovated the locker room in 1985, adding a training room, coaches’ dressing room, and players’ lounge. In 1986, the university enlarged the dugouts, constructed a new outfield fence, expanded the press box, and moved the right-field fence to accommodate additional bleachers. Restroom and concession improvements followed in 1987.

And those are just a handful of the improvements made in that time period. Bertman was not one to wait around.

Because those projects accompanied an ascendant program, each alteration was a marker of sorts, intermittent, symbolic points that LSU baseball would eventually plant its flag on the mountaintop. LSU hosted the SEC tournament in 1985 and 1986, welcomed its first NCAA regional in 1986, and reached Omaha for the first time that same season. By Bertman’s third year, average attendance had increased from 918 to 2,385.

A Stadium Enlarged by Success

As the Tigers stalked their first national championship in 1991, reaching the CWS and coming ever-so close several times in the late ‘80s, the improvements accelerated. A new grandstand roof, left-field playground, and picnic area opened for the 1991 season. Expanded chairback seating, terrace seating, and left-field bleachers followed in 1992, while improved drainage, additional first-base seating, enlarged players’ areas, and a new outfield fence arrived across the next three years.

By 1996, when LSU won its third national title, average attendance had reached 5,816. LSU moved light towers behind the seating areas to eliminate obstructed views, then erected the Intimidator above right field before the 1997 season. The sign displayed three championship years of ’91, ’93, and ’96—CHAMPIONS, AGAIN, AND AGAIN (I have them all!). Bertman’s team promptly made it necessary to change the facade for a fourth baseball on the billboard, drumming that year’s nemesis Alabama 13-6 in the title game.

Personally, as an aside, I wish they would return to the look of the original, especially the baseballs! Jay Johnson, make it happen….

By 1998, a right-field picnic area had opened. Before the 1999 season, LSU moved the scoreboard and installed new left-center-field bleachers, raising the old stadium’s capacity to 7,760.

Bertman’s final record explains the continual pressure placed on the old Box. Across 18 seasons, Bertman went 870-330-3, reached the College World Series 11 times, won seven SEC championships, and captured five national titles.

What began as a modest WPA ballpark carrying the name of a fallen LSU soldier had become one of college baseball’s most iconic venues. It became a most intriguing collision between the world of war and the world of sport.

August 6

On January 19, 2001, the LSU Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Chancellor Mark Emmert’s selection of Bertman as athletic director of LSU. Bertman completed his final baseball season, a disappointing loss to Tulane in the Super Regionals, then assumed the new office on August 6.

Having built the program that overwhelmed the old stadium’s limitations, Bertman now inherited institutional responsibility for busting LSU’s seams across the entire athletic program, and on a national level.

Its most prominent program, in 2003, led by Nick Saban, won its first national title since 1958.

But Bertman also still had his eye on that baseball field.

By January 2005, he came to a difficult decision. LSU had spent more than nine months considering whether to renovate the old Box, including a three-month architectural study. Renovation was projected to cost approximately $15 million, require three years, interrupt one baseball season, and restrict future expansion. Bertman instead proposed a new stadium expected to cost approximately $23 million south of the existing one.

“LSU fans, the best baseball fans in America, deserve the best college baseball stadium in America,” he said. “Alex Box Stadium is a treasure and this was no easy decision. A new stadium is in the best interests of the long-term future of LSU baseball.”

Rather than succumbing to affection and nostalgia for what he was so instrumental in building, Bertman separated the ballpark’s historical identity from the concrete and steel. It is why the transfer of the name Alex Box to the new stadium stands apart as one of the great decisions in LSU sports history. The war hero was still the war hero, regardless of how many championships forced the Tigers out of their old dugout.

And Again

Construction encountered delays, as it always does, but LSU officially broke ground on… August 6, 2007—six years to the day after Bertman formally began his new role as AD.

At the ceremony, Bertman called it “an important day in LSU athletics, not just in baseball.” The design then anticipated seating for 8,700 fans, 6,000 additional square feet of locker and meeting space, 700 more seats beneath the roof, expanded restrooms and concessions, a club lounge, and luxury suites.

Because the ceremonial groundbreaking occurred on the anniversary of Bertman’s elevation to athletics director, August 6 now marks both his rise to the authority of all of LSU athletics and a monumental culmination of everything he brought to Baton Rouge and the Box in the 1980s.

The old stadium still had one season remaining in 2008, one remarkable run that saw the Tigers rip off 23 straight wins—with a plus-118 run-differential—after starting the season just 23-16-1 overall and 6-11-1 in the SEC. After a 10-10 Sunday tie with Georgia, and an innocuous-enough 8-4 midweek win at Tulane, they wouldn’t lose again until the Super Regionals against UC Irvine, taking two of three to reach yet another CWS. That run included a stadium-record paid attendance of 8,701 for the final regular-season game against Mississippi State on May 11, 2008.

The Tigers would win the third and final game of the Irvine series, and of the entire history of the Box, by the football tally of 21-7—before the largest actual crowd in its history, 8,173 fans.

In Omaha, they would pick up one dramatic taste of victory over Rice before being ousted by North Carolina—just one year before Paul Mainieri would lead them to the crown, effectively christening the first year in the new Box.

Sometimes you might think only sports can involve such poetry. Had they won it in 2008, then you really start talking about the ghosts.

Inside the Box

LSU opened the new stadium in February 2009, approximately 200 yards south of the old location. The completed park had a listed capacity of 10,326, which increased to 10,718 for the 2025 championship season.

A comparison between the two facilities quantifies the move. The old stadium’s 3,000-square-foot team area became 9,380 square feet. A 250-square-foot press area expanded to 2,000. Restroom space increased from 2,000 square feet to 9,274. And a ballpark without a club lounge or single suite was replaced by one with a 1,800-square-foot lounge and 27 suites.

Yet the dimensions of the diamond remained the same. And so did the winning.

On May 17, 2013, LSU completed a circle of sorts by dedicating the playing surface as Skip Bertman Field. During the ceremony, then-athletics director Joe Alleva called the stadium “truly the house that Skip built.” Bertman, standing before more than 10,000 fans and many of his former players, placed the honor among the highest of his career.

The full honor of the stadium and the field thus preserves two men’s different claims upon LSU history. Alex Box Stadium honors the former Tiger killed while serving his country in World War II. Skip Bertman Field honors the coach who built LSU into the national power it is today.

And so we have it—a fitting couplet of dates, August 5 and 6.

One man was born on August 5, 1920. The other formally entered the athletic director’s office on August 6, 2001, and exactly six years later watched LSU break ground on a brand-new Box. The alignment of those dates is coincidental, but it neatly joins the two men whose names now hang together above the scoreboard in left field—Box and Bertman—permanently announcing that when the lights are on, it’s baseball at the Box.

Thank you for reading The Hayride!

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

• LSU Baseball, 2002 Official Yearbook – Skip Bertman biography.
• LSU Baseball, 2007 Official Yearbook – original Alex Box Stadium history and renovations.
• LSU Athletics, “Construction of New Baseball Stadium Proposed,” January 2005.
• LSU Athletics, “LSU Conducts Official Groundbreaking for New Alex Box,” August 6, 2007.
• LSU Athletics, “Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman Field”.
• LSU Athletics, “Skip Bertman Field Dedicated on Historic Night,” May 18, 2013.