• By RANDY ROSETTA
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Jun 26, 2009

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When the game LSU coach Paul Mainieri had dreamt about since he was in grade school played out Wednesday night at Rosenblatt Stadium, he didn’t have to look far to see a familiar face.

As usual, his entire immediate family was in the stadium, as well as his siblings and elderly parents.

There were also his best friend, Chicago Cubs General Manager Jim Hendry, and his college coach and mentor, longtime University of New Orleans coach Ron Maestri.

Mainieri’s other biggest mentor, Los Angeles Dodgers legend Tommy Lasorda, wasn’t in Omaha. But the ebullient former big-league manager gave Mainieri a pep talk Tuesday morning.

“It’s just so great to have something happen to you in your professional life and you can share it on a personal basis with the people that you love most and that love you most,” Mainieri said, unable to suppress a smile the entire time he spoke to the media. “I have been so blessed with a great family and even greater friends.

“I’ve learned a lot from everybody that I’ve come in contact with. But really the three mentors that I have been so fortunate to have are my dad, Ron Maestri and Tommy Lasorda. I talked to Tommy (Tuesday) afternoon and he just told me, ‘Get out there and make it happen and don’t be afraid. Put the pressure on them.’ He’s taught me a lot — how to deal with players and treat players.”

The connective layers among Mainieri’s friends, family and mentors help explain why the Tigers’ 11-4 national championship victory was so meaningful to the 51-year-old LSU coach.

Demie “Doc” Mainieri helped plant his son’s coaching seeds, spending 30 seasons in the dugout at Miami-Dade North Community College. In that span, he won 1,012 games and the 1964 NJCAA national championship and sent 35 players to Major League Baseball.

Those 35 included left-handed pitcher Steve Carlton in the 1960s and hard-hitting catcher Mike Piazza in the late 1980s. Lasorda is Piazza’s godfather.

Maestri was Mainieri’s coach for two years at UNO, after a year each at LSU and Miami-Dade North. Mainieri recalled his senior season in 1979 when the Privateers nearly qualified for the College World Series before falling in a NCAA regional in Starkville, Miss.

“I was sick that we couldn’t get Maes here when I was a senior,” he said. “He always told us about how great an experience it was. I was so happy he got to come here in 1984.”

Hendry was the coach who gave Paul Mainieri his first job as an assistant at Columbus High in the Miami area. Their friendship has grown ever since, and it was Hendry who invited Mainieri to Omaha to attend the CWS for the first time in 1988.

That impression stuck with him, and three years later when Hendry took hometown Creighton up the road to Rosenblatt, Mainieri stopped and soaked up several days of the CWS.