LAFAYETTE — The air was weighty and stagnant in Lafayette Monday, like pea soup that had been left out overnight.
The rains from the previous couple days were mercifully gone, but in their place was that motionless and oppressive air. The Cajuns played 18 innings Monday, and most of the thousands of fans who were there to witness were there for all those innings with that heat just sitting on them and suffocating them.
They sat there in those miserable conditions for a reason. This Cajuns team felt like it had the right stuff. Going into Monday, it had won 12 straight games, had arms that go on for days and an offense that finally started to find itself.