Funeral for the Left Field Lounge is a Bad Idea

Funerals are a great way to show how much we loved someone and to pay homage to the recently deceased for all they might have meant to us in this life. Funerals are not to be taken lightly.

So it was with great shock and dismay that I saw this on Joel T. Coleman’s Twitter account this weekend when the Mississippi State Baseball team was playing the Georgia Bulldogs.

My views on the Left Field Lounge differ than that of most in the Mississippi State fan base. I think it is unique and makes for something no other school in the country can come close to having.

But I’m not incredibly attached to it. I don’t sit in the Lounge when I go to games, and despite the uniqueness of the Left Field Lounge, I truly believe the same great atmosphere we see at Mississippi State Baseball games can be replicated with a renovated version, even if it does not have the unique quality it once possessed. I believe this because I’ve always thought what made the atmosphere special about Mississippi State baseball has been the people in the Lounge, not the rigs themselves.

So I’m not upset about the Lounge as it is currently constructed going away. People can still tailgate and have as much fun with their friends when the new version of the Lounge is complete. Some people are, and I can understand that. This will be a significant change to the way we do things, and most people don’t like change.

But to take it so far as to hold a fake funeral for the Left Field Lounge reeks of one of my least favorite phrases that has been coined in the last few years. That phrase is butt hurt.

Doing a fake funeral is always a bad idea. You go to a real funeral because you have lost a person who was very dear to you. Holding a “funeral” for some rigs people brought to baseball games and putting it on the same level as losing a person who was most dear to you is in very poor taste.

Making it even more poor taste is the fact the Mississippi State Track and Field team will have attended the funeral services for the recently passed Kaelin Kersh less than a week from this event. If you are okay with this event because you think your love for a rig rivals that of what the parents of Kaelin Kersh are feeling right now, then you are sorely mistaken.

The Lounge was always going to change. This has as much to do with liability as it does anything else. Whenever I bring up liability, there are always two arguments against it.

The first is a lawsuit has never been filed. All it takes is one to ruin the program financially. To keep the lounge because no one has sued the school yet is as short sighted as it can be.

The second is people should be forced to sign a waiver. Any lawyer worth his or her attorney fees is going to be able to get around a waiver without thinking about it. You may not like it, but the Lounge always had an expiration date, even if it wasn’t known what it was.

The current Left Field Lounge should be celebrated this weekend as it comes to a close. There should be people celebrating and reminiscing about what the Lounge was like and meant to them. It should also be a time of excitement as Mississippi State is getting ready to embark on a building project which will give it the best College Baseball stadium in the country in every aspect, not just the Left Field Lounge. And while the purpose of a funeral is supposed to be a celebration, they are often somber events. Holding a funeral this weekend will do nothing but rob Dudy Noble Field of what should be one of the best celebrations the school has ever seen.