They were all in only the bottom of the second inning of their lives back then, Richie LeBlanc and the guys.
 
Most were shaving but some weren't. Most had cars, or something that resembled cars, but some didn't.
 
But what they had in common was they all had bats and gloves and they could all play baseball a little. In that fall of 1984, 19 new faces didn't know how good they'd be (pretty good, turns out) or how close they'd become (pretty close).
 
"We did everything together," said LeBlanc, a two-time Southland Conference Pitcher of the Year, the small but fierce mound kingpin of back-to-back NCAA Regional teams in 1986 and '87. "We lived together, we ate together, we went out together. Since then we've been in each other's weddings … That was the beginning of a lot of strong relationships."
 
The team's first meeting was in the Thomas Assembly Center in the Joe Waggonner Room where plaques hung representing the University's inaugural Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 1984: Joe Aillet, Terry Bradshaw, Antley Donald, Garland Gregory, Pam Kelly, Maxie Lambright, and Jackie Moreland.
 
"I had just walked onto campus and we met in that room," LeBlanc said. "To think … all this was so far away."
 
"All this" being a family, friends for a lifetime, baseball, and now, LeBlanc's own plaque in that same room as a member of the Tech Athletics Hall of Fame Class of 2021.

"Those '86 and '87 teams, we had a lot of good players," LeBlanc said. "Dale Akers. Sam Moore. David Segui. Charlie Montoyo. On and on. All you really had to do was throw strikes and let them go to work. They were gonna score some runs."
 
And LeBlanc wasn't going to give up many. In May of '87 after he'd beaten Lamar, 9-1, in Game 4 of the best-of-5 Southland Conference title series, Montoyo, the Bulldogs slick second baseman and future manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, said, "We had Rich on the mound, and that's 95 percent of it."
 
Tech pitcher Jimmy Faircloth and the Bulldogs beat the Cardinals the next day to send Tech to back-to-back Regionals for the first time in program history, something not repeated until the 2021 and 2022 Diamond Dogs did it.
 
"We actually went deeper in '86 in the Baton Rouge Regional than in '87 at UNO," LeBlanc said, "but it was still a lot of fun."
 
It was a confident bunch both springs, and for good reason. As freshman, those 19 new guys and the Bulldogs returning were 35-12 — with 15 rainouts. Three of those were at Houston, the No.1-ranked team. Back then, 40 wins would pretty much guarantee you a Regional ticket, but Mother Nature made Tech miss 15 chances at five more wins.
 
Even in the rain, the sun shined on this bunch. That wet spring was the beginning of something special.
 
"Several of us played summer ball and brought back a lot of instruction from coaches around the country and a lot of experience," LeBlanc said. "Then we just blossomed. When I was a sophomore (spring of 1986), we even recorded a rap song, Omaha Bound. Went into Tech's sound studio and the whole thing. That's how confident we were."
 
LeBlanc didn't lack in that. If you'd just met him today, you'd see a mature businessman, president of Hunt Forest Products, sweet, charming, funny, not a competitor who would metaphorically strangle you if you were at the plate and the game was on the line. Or even if it wasn't. Stories of his mid-game arguments in meetings on the mound with coach Pat "Gravy" Patterson are legendary. His wife Holly quit playing cards with him during a layover at the Denver airport because he was so merciless — and that was on the couple's honeymoon.
 
"Over the years I've matured a bit and realize you don't try to win all the time at all costs," he said, something he can laugh about now, but back then, it was a real thing. A sports thing. A competition thing.
 
He was 5-8 ("and-a-half"), 160 pounds and rarin' to go. A kind of untamed drive that helped him and St. Thomas More in his Lafayette hometown win the state championship his junior season in 1984, a kind of thing that won him the Hardest Worker on the team award.
 
LeBlanc's father-in-law, Dr. Pat Garrett, a championship sprinter for Ruston High and Louisiana Tech, was beaten twice at the wire in the 100 in the late-1950s by Heisman winner Billy Cannon, one of the few races Garrett ever lost.
 
"Richie had the same thing as Billy," Garrett said. "Will. The will to win. It's what made them great. 'I'm not gonna let you beat me.'"
 
"When I pitched, I felt like I was 6-5 or 6-6," LeBlanc said. "No one was going to work harder, no one was going to compete more to win a ballgame."
 
After he was MVP of the high school All Star game, suddenly coaches who said he'd never pitch in Division I had scholarship money for him.
 
But it was Tech. And it was Gravy.
 
"He was genuinely honest with me from the start," said LeBlanc, who called the Tech coach the evening after he'd graduated from high school, the evening before he left on his senior trip at 5:30 the next morning.
 
Gravy and assistant Mike Kane met him at the Howard Johnson's in Lafayette at 3:30 a.m., and LeBlanc signed his letter-of-intent and headed to the beach.
 
And so it started. Hutcheson Room 135 with roomie Jeff Schwaner. Those 19 new faces. A picture of a beautiful girl in Dr. Garrett's English Department office, a girl who would become LeBlanc's wife and mom of their girl and boy. J.C. Love Field, where you could go and escape everything that was going on in the world. New north Louisiana friends to hunt and fish with.
 
Ruston was beginning to feel like LeBlanc's home.
 
Then the 1987 season, 43-14, LeBlanc posting a light-running 12-2 record, a 3.16 ERA, and wins over Mississippi State, Texas A&M, LSU, even the Shreveport Captains of the AA Texas League. Keep it low. Pitch to spots. Let your fielders help you. And …
 
Oh … about that win over LSU, which would go to its second College World Series in a row that summer. It's only one of the most storied contests in school history. LeBlanc pitches 10, Montoyo homers in the bottom of the 10^th, Tech wins it 5-4 with a then-record crowd of 2,375 there to see it on a warm mid-April night.
 
"I can still remember the way we came out of the dugout after Charlie's homer," LeBlanc said.
 
He was drafted by Kansas City in the 10^th round after that junior season. There would be five seasons in the minors, some really good, a lot of moves, winter ball in the Dominican, a marriage to Holly, a year out with a busted knee, and then a decision to walk away and hit the books and finish his degree and make baseball a golden memory.
 
Once he returned, he didn't leave. Did for a few months once, but he found out what he really already knew: Ruston's home.
 
"This University and the City of Ruston have really embraced me," he said. "I met my wife here. I raised my family here. I could not be happier with the life that we have."
 
Or in the direction of something always near to his heart: Tech Baseball.
 
"What (Tech baseball coach) Lane (Burroughs) has done here in the last several years, it's actually elevated the attention I've gotten for going into the Hall of Fame, and I thank him and his team and my teammates for that," LeBlanc said. "Love what he stands for, how he coaches, how he communicates, what he believes in. The elevation of where the Tech program is today, it's just so good.
 
"The gameday experience is outstanding. The ballpark (Love Field at Pat Patterson Park) is beautiful; it's not small but it's intimate and just enhances the gameday experience so much. I just love it."
 
It's a special piece of ground for a lot of people, including an unlikely hero from Lafayette, dynamite in a tiny package who brought a savage attitude and a violent right arm to town, to a place that became his home.
 
He didn't know it then, but when his mom drove him to campus in the fall of 1984, when they passed the Ruston City Limit sign south of town heading north, he actually said out loud in the car, "Well, I guess I'm home."
 
He shares it with his family now. But first he shared it with a bunch of boys, shortstops and right fielders and catchers and trainers and coaches, teenagers who'd make a little history together, and still do.
 
"Coach Patterson and (assistant) coach (Mike) Kane let us play the game," he said. "They didn't overcoach. They allowed us to use the talent everyone had, and that's what created the success. Those 19 new faces, and we jelled.
 
"We've watched each other's kids grow up. We've watched each other's kids have our grandkids. I love those guys. It was a perfect fit for me. I hope they would say the same."