Baseball: Memorable brawls part of Tigue Moore Field history

Kevin Foote, The Advertiser, June 3, 2016

Former UL pitcher Garrett O’Connor was part of the infamous 1984 brawl against McNeese State back at Tigue Moore Field.(Photo: Advertiser file photo)

When M.L. “Tigue” Moore Field is demolished shortly after the 2016 UL Ragin’ Cajuns’ baseball team is no longer able to play another home game, it will mark the end of an era.

During the past 38 years, that field – located between the track and tennis courts – has grown from a simple chain-link fence field in a sport not remotely ready to attract 3,000 fans into a grandstand area to one that sometimes doesn’t have enough space for a standing room only crowd.

While the structure of Tigue Moore Field will soon be gone forever, the almost four decades of memories it produced for coaches, players and fans alike won’t be gone any time soon.

For some former Ragin’ Cajuns, though, topping the list of memorable events during their careers at Tigue Moore Field were a few memorable brawls.

For former UL catcher Ken Meyers, that one came on May 8, 1992 at Tigue Moore Field against the South Alabama Jaguars.

The animosity between the two clubs actually began a year before in the 1991 NCAA Baton Rouge Regional, a game the Cajuns won 6-3 before also defeating Texas A&M 13-10 to reach the finals for the first time in the program’s history.

UL star outfielder Papo Ramos and the Cajuns didn’t like South Alabama ace right-hander Jon Lieber and Lieber and his Jaguars didn’t like Ramos.

Lieber, who later had a 14-year Major League career with four different clubs, came up and in Ramos in his first at-bat in the rematch in Lafayette to finish out the regular season in 1992. And when he hit him in the ribs in the second at-bat, a brawl ensued that’s still being discussed by those who witnessed it.

“It’s still alive,” Meyers said. “People still talk about it.”

Meyers said he actually missed the split second the incident ignited. At the time, he was in the corner of the dugout talking to an assistant coach.

“The things you remember,” Meyers said. “I still had my chest protector on. I just starting running out there, ripping it off so I could get on the pile.

“It was so strange to be on the bottom of a pile hearing fists making contact with people’s faces. This wasn’t one of those shoving matches that you get sometimes. This was a real brawl.”

For those UL fans under the impression that the UL-South Alabama baseball rivalry began in the 1991-92 era, former UL pitcher Garrett O’Connor says, ‘Think again.’

O’Connor played for the Cajuns from 1982-85 and he remembers hating South Alabama as much as any team they played, and he’s got the memories of several brawls to prove it.

O’Connor remembers current Barbe High coach Glenn Cecchini getting in a tussle sliding into third base against South Alabama. In those days, the home dugout was on the first-base line.

“By the time we could get over there to help him, several of their guys had jumped on him and gotten punches on him,” O’Connor said. “They got him really good.”

In those days, Eddy Stanky was still coaching the Jaguars. During the trip to Mobile, Stanky had an army ready. As O’Connor recollects, he had recruited football players to put on baseball jerseys and be ready to rumble.

“It was about 65 of them against about 40 of us,” O’Connor said. “We kind of knew we were in trouble.”

No brawl, though, was more brutal than an April 26, 1984 home game against McNeese State.

As the story goes, former Acadiana High southpaw Todd Credeur hit the McNeese first baseman. Later, as Credeur went to cover first on a ground ball to UL first baseman David Alvis, the Cowboy baserunner took Credeur out with a forearm.

And the fight was on.

“It was worst than the South Alabama brawl (in 1992),” O’Connor said. “There was no security and the umpires couldn’t control it. The fight lasted so long that they were able to dispatch three university police units and four units from the Lafayette police department.”

For the record, the Cajuns were up 5-2 at the time and had to forfeit the game.

“I actually ended up in the dugout head up with two other guys,” O’Connor said. “It was a brutal brawl.”