Pulitzer Prize winner Jeffrey Marx is the author of six books including Walking with Tigers: A Collection of LSU Sports Stories. You can follow him on Twitter: @LSUTigersBook
Sophomore pitching ace Alex Lange already owned an abundant collection of “the right stuff” when he initially settled into Baton Rouge as an LSU freshman.
As a baseball player, he carried the lofty labels of 2014 Missouri Gatorade Player of the Year and Perfect Game All-American.
As a student, he had a 4.0 high school GPA.
As a caring teenager – the adopted son of a divorced mom who pretty much raised him alone – he had long been involved with both a school group dedicated to alcohol-free fun and a California-based foundation that supports children with cancer.
It made sense that coaches and teammates routinely used words such as “unusual maturity” and “wise beyond his years” to describe Lange.
Still, it was a private talk with one of the most revered LSU athletes in recent history – two-time SEC pitcher of the year and first-team All-American Aaron Nola (now with the Philadelphia Phillies) – that first gave him clarity on what it really means to be an LSU Tiger.
Nola told Lange that three things were required.
You have to work hard.
You have to do everything with class.
You have to win!
This talk took place during the fall of 2014. Nola was back in town after his first summer in the Phillies organization – just months after he was the seventh overall pick in the Major League Baseball draft – and he was coaching one of the teams in the LSU Baseball Purple-Gold World Series.
Lange Named to Golden Spikes Award Watch List
The conversation, in the Alex Box Stadium training room, lasted only a few minutes. But Lange held tight to Nola’s message.
“I just kind of took it to heart,” Lange says. “I mean, Aaron’s such a class act all the way around. For somebody like that to take the time out for just a little freshman like me, back then, it was pretty awesome.
“That’s why I remember it to this day and just always remind myself, you know, you got to do it like Aaron does, do it like Aaron did.”
In retrospect, that talk in the training room was something of a handing down – a passing of the torch – because Lange quickly moved into Nola’s role as LSU’s number-one pitcher.
Then he established himself as one of the most dominant pitchers in the country. Lange went 12-0 with a 1.97 ERA in his first season as a Tiger, earning multiple honors as a first-team All-American and national freshman pitcher of the year.
Watching games on television, plus picking up personal anecdotes while speaking with his former coaches and teammates, Nola concluded that Lange did an “absolutely outstanding” job representing LSU both on and off the field.
“I remember, going back to my freshman year, I had some success, I had some struggles,” Nola says. “It was kind of a learning experience for me.
“But the way Alex handled it, the way he pitched and competed, he didn’t look like a freshman. He didn’t act like a freshman. That’s why he was so fun to watch.”
Lange has developed his own thoughts on each of the three requirements Nola discussed with him.
Working hard: “For me, it’s just giving 100 percent every day. There’s always a new task that you can get better at every day.”
Doing everything with class: “It’s being respectful, being a good teammate. Not showing up the umpires, not showing up your teammates, not showing up the coaching staff. Being cooperative with the fans. Handling yourself with dignity in the media, in the public eye, on campus. Just being a good person, being a good citizen.”
Winning: “National championships, that’s all that matters here. I mean, you don’t come to LSU because you just want to play in front of 10,000 or whatever the number is. You come to win national championships. That’s what’s expected of you, and anything short of that is a failure.”
Until recently, the 2014 Nola-Lange talk was nothing more than a private conversation. Then – while making remarks on behalf of the sophomore class at the annual First Pitch Banquet (January 31) – Lange spoke publicly about it.
He says he did so because he wanted to offer “a little story with some meaning behind it” and “felt that it would be good for the freshmen to hear.”
LSU head coach Paul Mainieri was moved by the story.
“It made my eyes water a little bit,” he says.
Knowing both Nola and Lange the way he does, though, Mainieri was not surprised to learn that they would have had such a talk.
The coach took it as a wonderful illustration of something he has often stressed to his players: the difference between having a great team and having a great program.
A great team lasts only a season.
A great program thrives for years. It keeps building on its successes. And it relies on the willingness of older players – as well as former players – to keep passing down their knowledge and wisdom.
As Mainieri puts it: “The mantle is passed from one leader to another.”
Nola says it means a lot to him that Lange cared enough about their conversation to remember what he told him – and to share it with his younger teammates.
“It’s all about learning from older guys … who have experienced success or failures at that level,” Nola says. “And to me, Alex is a guy you want to be the centerpiece of your team. You want guys to form around him because – going back to it – he works hard, he’s classy, and he loves to win.”