The football team will not be the first major LSU athletic program hitting Las Vegas this weekend.
The No. 13 Tigers play No. 23 USC Sunday at Allegiant Stadium in the season opener for both teams (6:30 p.m. central, ABC). Well, the baseball team of legendary coach and frequent slots player Skip Bertman did Vegas early in the program’s first national championship season in 1991 to play UNVL in a three-game series.
And five cards on that team, including an ace (junior Paul Byrd), a closer (senior Mark LaRosa) and a power trump (senior cleanup hitter Rich Cordani), found themselves in a version of “Leaving Las Vegas,” as far as the games, because of curfew suspensions. Also suspended were junior starting center fielder Danny Zahl and freshman left-handed pitcher Ronnie Rantz, a major recruit at 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds out of Menard High in Alexandria.
This is their story:
The 1991 LSU Baseball Team Took Las Vegas
The No. 2-ranked Tigers had just busted Nevada-Las Vegas, 14-4, on Friday night, March 8, 1991, at Roger Barnson Field to go to 14-4 on the season behind Cordani, who went 3-for-4 with three RBIs and a double. LaRosa, in a rare start, picked up the win as he allowed seven hits over five innings. Zahl was 1-for-3 with a double and an RBI. Rantz pitched a shutout ninth inning to end the game, and Bertman told him he would pitch the next day in relief again. Or so he thought.
The team returned at about 11 p.m. Pacific time to the Las Vegas Hilton on Las Vegas Boulevard (now the Las Vegas Resort & Casino), which naturally had a casino downstairs. There would be a doubleheader the next day starting at 2 p.m. And Rantz’s parents and brother and sister were flying in for the games.
“Me, Paul Byrd and LaRosa were rooming together,” Rantz, now president and CEO of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Foundation and an entrepreneur, told Tiger Rag this week before leaving for Vegas again. “And we were all three in bed. Paul and Mark each had a bed, and I – being a freshman – was in a cot.”
Curfew was at midnight. Assistant coach Ray “Smoke” Laval did a bed check in the room shortly after midnight.
LSU’s Players Were All Asleep In Their Beds … Until
“Pretty soon, we were all asleep,” Rantz said.
And shortly before 12:30 a.m., there was another knock on the door.
It was Cordani decked out in a full, high roller suit – basically Robert Redford in “Indecent Proposal,” which came out two years later.
“Let’s go,” Cordani said. “We’re going downstairs.”
“It’s past curfew,” Rantz said.
“I don’t care,” Cordani said. “This is my dad’s suit, and we’re going to go win some money.”
Isn’t this how “The Hangover” started, sort of?
“So, we got in our suits and went downstairs,” Rantz said.
They started playing Blackjack and were only about 30 minutes in … when … Laval hit the casino.
“I’m on the end of the table, and somebody says, ‘Oh crap, there’s Smoke,'” Rantz said. “As soon as I heard that, I jumped under the Blackjack table by the dealer’s feet. Smoke was on the other side of the casino, which just had rows and rows of Blackjack tables.
“Ay, Byrd, LaRosa, Cordani, Zahl,” Laval yelled. “Don’t worry about dressing out tomorrow. Good night.”
But Laval didn’t see Rantz, which, considering his size, perhaps signaled to Rantz that this was his lucky night.
“So, like an idiot, I jump up, get back in the chair and keep playing Blackjack,” Rantz said.
And not 20 minutes later, he got a tap on the shoulder. And it wasn’t to go in the game. It was Laval on patrol again.
“Hey, Rantz, don’t worry about dressin’ out either,” he said. “Good night.”
So, the next morning, Rantz, Byrd, LaRosa, Zahl and Cordani took the walk of shame to pre-game breakfast in the hotel.
“Everybody’s laughing at us,” Rantz said.
“You all are a bunch of dumb asses,” junior outfielder Lyle Mouton says. “You don’t go to the casino in the freakin’ hotel. We all went out to The Mirage on The Strip after curfew. I just got in 30 minutes ago.”
Mouton went 1-for-4 in a 5-1 loss in the twinbill opener on Saturday before going 2-for-4 with a solo home run in a 9-4 win in the second game.
“Me and Byrd and the other guys watched the game from the stands, charting pitches in our sweats,” Rantz said. “And my family walked up. ‘What are you doing?’ Well, I got something to tell you.”
And they’ve been telling and retelling the story for more than three decades now.
A less-detailed version of the events appeared in the Baton Rouge Advocate as sportswriter Bruce Hunter covered the series. LSU then and now is one of the few baseball programs in the nation – if not the only one – staffed on the road regularly during the regular seasons.
“We had a curfew problem,” Bertman explained in the Sunday, March 10, Advocate. “We lost two starters and some pitchers. There’s no big problem. Some guys just wanted to get some extra Blackjack in.”
Rantz was quoted as well.
“When Smoke showed up, there were players duckin’ under tables all over the place,” he said.
But only Rantz was quick enough.
“Skip was not that upset,” Rantz says now. “It was early in the season, and saw it as a good teaching point, which it was.”
And the weekend was not a total loss for the Rantz family. They got front row seats for a Bill Cosby show.
“I actually high-fived him,” Rantz said.
The players all returned to uniform for LSU’s next game back home on Tuesday. And the Tigers would go on to win just about every hand, going 8-0 in the NCAA postseason to win Bertman’s first of five national championships in 10 seasons. They tied the school record for wins by finishing at 55-18 and were barely threatened at the College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska, beating Florida, 8-1, Fresno State, 15-3, Florida, 19-8, and Wichita State, 6-3, in the title game.
Then it was off to the White House, where the team met President George H. Bush.
“I don’t think any of us ever missed curfew again,” Rantz said. “I don’t remember any of us winning much money either.”
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