I watched it when it came out today. REALLY GOOD! And really pleased with how it turned out.
I think it would be a good compliment to watch Thunder and Lightning first and then Banner Season. I have a lot of complaints about the SEC Network. But our baseball documentaries are well done and I enjoy both of them.
Honestly wouldn't change anything about it. I will say that if there was a "Bonus scenes" section I would include the LSU series where we beat them on the road which is always big, I would have said something about Preston dominating USM in Pearl which is where I think he emerged as a pitcher, and something about no-hitting Kent State.
I didn't really realize how close we had come to National Titles lately until I stepped back and they reviewed it. The 2014 football season seemed a little out of place though because we really didn't get to where we were that close to playing for a National Championship relative to baseball, women's basketball, the men's basketball Final Four, and even really as far as football we were probably at least as close in 1999 as we were in 2014.
One thing that stood out early in the film. When they were talking to our players about why they came to MSU and they were talking about how they were MSU fans at an early age and also how they loved how hard we played and how hard we grinded out games- THAT IS OUR CULTURE AND IDENTITY that I've been talking about. We need to get back to that ASAP.
Ron Polk's house looks like my house except my house has more Cardinals memorabilia. Definitely want to take a tour of his house though.
The MSU/Ole Miss baseball series in 2021 was the biggest one in the history of the series. Winning that series was HUGE for us that year. The atmosphere for that series was like a Super Regional.
I thought it was funny that pretty much every player and coach at MSU felt like the SEC Tournament is basically worthless and a waste of time. Like basically all of our fans.
The comments that Lemonis made about Notre Dame being a team that was Omaha caliber was interesting to me in light of the fact that this was made before Notre Dame eliminated Tennessee.
I'm really glad they didn't show Niko's home run. I figured that they would show it followed up by Everett Kennard talking about how it's the farthest hit ball he has seen since he invented the LFL. Kudos to the directors for leaving that out. The guy hit a long home run. Congrats on getting one hit the whole Super Regional.
Will Bednar talking to his brother for advice was something that I suspected and was confirmed. Also- Notre Dame's pitcher tipping his pitches in game three. That was cool to hear. I bet that guy is kicking himself.
Bednar's game one the best pitched game in CWS history? Maybe. Best pitched game by a MSU pitcher ever given the stakes? YES.
The Virginia game was interesting how Gautreau called a meeting before the seventh and they changed their hitting approach. Tanner Allen home run I think was the biggest in MSU history. I also didn't realize that TA and Schoch were teammates in summer ball.
TA working with Tanner Leggett on hitting sliders shows what a great leader he was. That whole sequence with Leggett and Skinner sounded like it was out of a movie. Leggett struggling with sliders and working with TA on it and then hitting a slider for the game winning hit sounds like something out of a baseball version of Rocky.
I do kind of wish that they would have showed the fans greeting the team at the hotel in Omaha. Our guys were literally treated like rock stars. I think that would have showed the country a little bit more about how much our fans are invested in the team as well.
Game one of the finals- that was the best I have ever felt after a loss in a championship series best of three. It was literally one bad inning that beat us. And it sounds like the team felt the same way.
I like how the documentary mentioned that after NC State was eliminated due to COVID that it allowed Vandy to have a fresh pitching staff compared to ours which was a little more taxed. Because a lot of fans of other schools like to talk down about our title because of that when it actually gave Vanderbilt an advantage. Not the other way around.
Game 2 of the finals- "If you are going up against a young pitcher and you can get to him early you can knock him out". And that's exactly what we did.
Game 3 of the finals- that might be the best I've ever seen MSU play baseball. We almost no hit Vandy. We hit home runs, we played great defense. We played so well. Looking back on it and the season as a whole and also remembering other MSU teams in the past it really shows you just how hard it is to win a championship in baseball. I knew that going into watching the show but it still made me appreciate it even more.
This year sucked. But this National Championship is going to be something that our baseball program is only going to build on. I think we have much brighter days ahead. I think our team is going to be pissed off next year. I look forward to seeing what Lemonis does to build the team for the short term.
Hail State!
