The great John Madden once wrote a football book with the equally great New York Times sports columnist Dave Anderson titled, “Hey, Wait a Minute (I Wrote a Book!).”
My version of that: “Hey, I Wrote Another Book!”
Well, to be honest, I’m in the process of writing it. The subject is, once again, LSU football. To drill down a little deeper, it’s about Tiger Stadium. To drill down even deeper, it’s about Tiger Stadium turning 100 this year.
The book is called “100 Years in Death Valley: How Tiger Stadium Became One of the Most Legendary Venues in American Sports." It will be released in November, just in time for the actual 100th anniversary of the first game in Tiger Stadium on Nov. 27, 1924.
Tulane beat LSU that day, 13-0, in a stadium that more resembled a modest high school facility than the 100,000-seat monolith it is today. Just 12,000 seats, no lights, not even a decent place for the Tulane players to suit up for the game. They dressed on the train they rode on from New Orleans that day.
That anecdote is just one of the stories we’ll have in this book, which is a project of The Advocate being published by our friends at Pediment. It will have stories of great games, great players and how Tiger Stadium came to be one of the greatest sports venues in America.
Now the time has come to ask you the reader for a bit of help (we’ll ask you to buy a book, or books, later).
Part of the book is going to be about how LSU fans celebrate Tiger football and Tiger Stadium when they’re away from campus. I’m looking for folks who have an LSU room full of memorabilia. A scale model of Tiger Stadium made out of Legos. A piece of Tiger Stadium turf in your yard, protected by an electric fence and lasers. You get the gist.
So email me your information at srabalais@theadvocate.com. A photo also would be appreciated. Let me know something about your shrine and how it came to be.
Please keep a couple of things in mind. One, it has to be truly special. A box full of old game programs is not going to make the final edit. Neither is a giant Mike the Tiger cutout in your TV room. And a submission is not a guarantee of a response or being included in the book.
But let’s see what you’ve got and where it goes.
Thank you in advance for reading, for submitting and, hopefully, buying this book.
You can preorder them at www.Pediment.com. The preorder cost is $31.95, a 20% discount.