I’m still in my room at the Courtyard, waiting to leave for the Mizzou campus and today’s baseball game between the home Tigers and the visiting Tigers from LSU.

Waiting is a part of a weekend baseball series. Lord knows I did it dozens of times on a Saturday when I was at LSU.

Early afternoon games, 1 or 2 pm, were the best. Get up, shower, get out of the hotel, grab lunch if need be, go to the park. Once the game was over, I could go out and enjoy a nice dinner, or I could get home at a decent hour, do any work which had to be done for Sunday’s game, then get to bed.

Saturday night games were not bad on the front end. I could sleep late and get a good lunch. Or if I were on the road, my dad and I would kill time by going to a shopping mall or other attraction in the area. The back end for night games was hell, though, because it left very little time for preparation for Sunday’s game, unless I wanted to go to bed at 2 am.

The absolute worst was starting at 4 pm. UGH.

I hated 4 pm starts. The idea came from then-LSU pitching coach Dan Canevari, who figured it would be the best of both worlds, allowing fans to sleep a little later and have a little more time to tailgate.

I saw it in another light. I thought 4 pm starts were murder. I didn’t have time to really sleep late and/or do something before the game. After the game, I had much less time than after a day game to get things done for Sunday. The best I could do for dinner would be the drive-thru, because many restaurants were overcrowded, or I didn’t have time to put my very limited cooking skills to use.

The very few 4 pm starts on the road were even worse than 4 pm home games.

When Smoke Laval succeeded Skip Bertman as coach in 2002, he returned Satruday games to 2 pm. Now, I see LSU starts a lot of games on Saturdays at night.

It’s after 10 a.m. The waiting isn’t much longer. I’ll get out of the room by 11:15, get lunch, then go to the stadium. Probably will leave earlier.