LT basically pulled the wool over everyone's eyes, or most everyone's eyes. It was always like, well we have the top baseball facility in the country, doesn't matter what Baseball America says about Arkansas, and we have the man who wrote the book. I believe he knows what he's doing. And the biggest lie was "Ron Polk has the best interests of MSU at heart."
He never kept up Dudy-Noble Field, he just kept telling people that it was the nicest and the best, and I guess if you're from Eupora, and you only really follow your HS team a little bit and MSU, you have no reference point to compare, so you just buy it and accept it as truth. When your idea of elite baseball is Tupelo high and New Hope, MSU probably does look really awesome. But that's only a small part of the baseball universe.
I think a lot of people liked the fact that Polk made excuses because then they never had to go home feeling bad. We lose to Ole Miss 24-0, well that's baseball. Luck wasn't on our side is all. There is an element of luck, but a lot of playing winning baseball is preparation and fundamentals. Polk very rarely talked about that. Maybe he just assumed that everyone has read his book. And if it wasn't that, it was scholarships, the sun, and one time he blamed an error on someone's white t-shirt. It was ridiculous.
And honestly, I'm happy that Tommy Raffo got out from under him. I think Polk really held Raffo back as far as his career. And I'm glad that Raffo didn't get the MSU job becuase Polk would have still been around, and heck probably would have tried to come back as HC aGAIN whenever he felt like it because he was the MSU baseball demigod , or whatever title he made up for himself. Shoot, I hope that one day I get to MSU and Arkansas State hooking up in the finals of a regional in the next few years. Obviously, I would want MSU to win, but to even get Arkansas State to that point would be an accomplishment.
