The right man

• By RANDY ROSETTA
• Advocate sportswriter
• Published: Jul 5, 2009 - Page: 1C

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Three years ago, when Paul Mainieri was hired to breathe new life into the LSU baseball program, nobody set a time limit on when he was expected to steer the Tigers back in the right direction.

Mainieri sure as heck wasn’t about to do so himself.

Because he was thinking in terms of how quickly things would get better, not how long it might take.

“Who said we had to wait 4-to-5 years?” Mainieri said. “I wanted to be successful as soon as possible.”

Sometimes what you wish for — what you expect and demand — arrives much quicker than expected.
Eleven days ago, Mainieri was at the wheel as LSU climbed back into college baseball’s penthouse by knocking off Texas 11-4 in the decisive game of the College World Series championship round.

The national crown is the Tigers’ sixth on the diamond, their first since 2000, and it came in just the third season of Mainieri’s tenure.

Leading up to the Tigers latest championship, LSU legend Skip Bertman said this year’s team was as good or better as any of the five he led to national titles from 1991-2000.

“That’s quite a compliment coming from a guy who won five national championships in a decade and took 13 teams to the College World Series,” Mainieri said.

“Coming from Skip — who knows the game as well as anybody who’s ever lived — that’s quite an honor. Boy, am I glad we won the national championship with that kind of endorsement.”

Finding his man
When Bertman went hunting for a new coach in 2006, he quietly contacted Mainieri, who was just finishing his 12th season at Notre Dame.

Although Mainieri was a former Tiger and has known Bertman since he was a kid, he didn’t jump at the chance right away, saying he was in a good situation in South Bend, Ind.

When the usual coaching candidates either declined interviews or fell by the wayside for one reason or another, the persuasive Bertman persisted and kept calling Mainieri until he got him to relent and listen.

Once that happened, the courtship didn’t last long, especially once Mainieri and his wife, Karen, had a late-night, heart-to-heart talk.