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Elizabeth Merrill
OMAHA, Neb. — Rush hour hits different when you’re towing a 30-foot-long tiger.
There’s no road rage — you’re driving 15 mph — and no rush to get anywhere, just around and around the streets near Charles Schwab Field, home of the Men’s College World Series.
Zane Greene fidgeted with his phone in the passenger seat early Tuesday evening, tapped the screen and started a playlist that blasted over four speakers in the back. “LSU Pregame” was the first song, and Greene’s uncle, Jacob Stone, steered the 15,000-pound fiberglass tiger around traffic. A man in a Jeep sidled up beside them and rolled down his window.
“It sure is an eye-catcher,” he told them.
Mardi Gras Mike, an homage to LSU’s mascot, is a creation of Kern Studios. Fitz Kern, CEO of the company that produces the majority of the floats at Mardi Gras, was inspired to make the float after watching the Tiger Walk before last fall’s LSU-Ole Miss football game. He wanted to create something that LSU fans could rally around.
“We wanted Mardi Gras Mike to channel the spirit of LSU fans,” Kern said, “and the spirit of Louisiana.”
The float was unveiled last week at Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as fans sent off the MCWS-bound LSU baseball team to Omaha. From there, Mardi Gras Mike went on a 900-plus-mile journey to Omaha that was chronicled on social media. There was a snapshot of Mike at Arrowhead Stadium, home of the Kansas City Chiefs, and a little troll photo of the float parked in Fayetteville, Arkansas, at Arkansas’ football stadium.
The Razorbacks — SEC rivals — were LSU’s first opponent in the MCWS. LSU went on to win that game 4-1. They will again be the Tigers’ opponent on Wednesday (7 p.m. ET, ESPN) in the semifinals of the MCWS. An LSU win would put them in the championship series.
Fitz Kern hoped that his Tigers would survive until this weekend so he could join in on the fun in Omaha. He stayed behind so he could help celebrate his daughter’s third birthday. LSU did its part on Tuesday, beating UCLA 9-5 in a winner’s bracket game. As LSU fans celebrated near the east side of the stadium, Stone stopped the float in the street. For a moment, it was a scene from home — fans dancing and snapping photos with the snarling tiger. Then a police officer working traffic gave him a stern warning to move along.
It was Stone’s first day on the job. The farmer from Leon, Iowa, who sometimes helps Kern Studios during Mardi Gras, got a call on Monday asking if he was available to do some work at the MCWS. Stone and Greene were working out in the field until after 1 o’clock in the morning, but they were up at 6 a.m. Tuesday to drive 2 hours and 40 minutes to Omaha.
They didn’t know they’d be driving Mardi Gras Mike around until Tuesday morning. The drivers they replaced sent them a playlist — mostly LSU fight songs plus Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” and Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Born on the Bayou” — and ran them through the route a couple of times. Then they were off to the airport.
Rain was in the forecast Tuesday in south-Central Iowa, so Stone and Greene had just planned to sit inside watching westerns anyway. Because they spend most of their time feeding their cows and baling hay, neither one of them is interested in college baseball, or sports in general.
They seemed nonplussed by the thousands of people surrounding them who rise and fall over the trajectory of a baseball. By midafternoon, though, Greene was picking up on the lingo and hand signals.
“A lot of people throw up the ‘L,'” he said, “which I would think meant ‘loser.’ But it’s the LSU fans.”
Everywhere they went, people grabbed their phones and took pictures and video. LSU fans screamed, pointed, jumped and nodded, as if they’d seen an old friend. A guy in a fireman’s hat looked as if he was going to jump into the truck.
The only negative feedback Greene and Stone experienced, in the first eight hours of the day at least, were a few thumbs-down from opposing fans.
Around 6 p.m., the float headed south, through the Old Market, and diners sitting on patios raised their glasses and cheered. Then Mardi Gras Mike made another trip to the Embassy Suites, the team hotel for the Tigers, while random people on the street yelled, “Tigers!”
Nearly everyone smiled as the float passed by.
“That’s how Mardi Gras is, too,” Stone said. “Everybody’s just happy.
“How many people get to do this in their life?”
