Why Paul Mainieri Felt This Was Right Time to Retire As LSU Baseball Coach

In the summer of 2018, Paul Mainieri was coming off the honor of a lifetime to coach Team USA. He got to coach some of the best college baseball players around and travel all around the world with the team.

That summer he had also made a commitment to his wife to visit the gravesites of her parents in Toledo, Ohio. On the plane ride back to Baton Rouge, Mainieri developed a stiff neck and the pain would not go away. Months passed with that stiff neck still being a problem so he sent x-rays to one of his former players, who was a surgeon, and would later have surgery to alleviate some of the problem.

It worked to an extent but Mainieri would eventually need to have a second procedure done in less than a year, but the neck pain persisted. The pain has morphed into severe headaches and affects sleeping and the way he feels throughout the day. Fighting back tears, Mainieri candidly spoke about his experiences and how it's affected his ability to coach.

"I've had so many people tell me, friends who were being very honest with me, 'man you look awful,'" Mainieri said. "I said well I feel the way I look and I just haven't felt myself the last couple of years. And I think it's really affected the way I've been able to coach because as a coach I feel one of my greatest strengths has been to be engaged with the players.

"I don't think I've been a bad coach but I don't think I've been the same coach."

So when Mainieri woke up on Wednesday morning, he and his wife Karen spoke at length. In the back of his mind, it was something he had been thinking about for many months but it wasn't until that morning where it began to really settle in.

He reached out to LSU athletic director Scott Woodward and asked for a visit.

"I just told him that I hadn't been feeling well and I just thought that maybe the program--maybe the program would be better served if somebody else was the leader," Mainieri said fighting back tears. "Let me tell you, it hurt to say that because I love coaching and I've loved doing what I've done for 39 years. We agreed that I should step down."

Mainieri's legacy as a coach can perhaps be best summed up by one word, class. Everything he did, whether it was graduating 132 of 133 seniors with a degree, the accomplishments on the field and in the Baton Rouge community, or even when speaking about what it's meant to him to be the coach at LSU during his retirement press conference Thursday, he approached it all with total class.

He had been mulling this decision for quite a while and didn't want to wait any longer as to give Woodward and his staff in the athletic department ample time to find the next coach at LSU.

"I just didn't want to set the program back in any way," Mainieri said. "I think there's a really good foundation, I think we can win a regional and still go to Omaha if we get the opportunity next week. I think we can be a championship club.

“The clock will move forward, Scott and Stephanie will find a new baseball coach. LSU baseball will go forward. I will become history that maybe some people will remember me, and maybe they won’t. And that will be OK."

Mainieri will continue to live in Baton Rouge, where he'll take on an ambassador role in the athletic department, much like DD Breaux has done since retiring as gymnastics coach. He'll start crossing things off his own bucket list, including going to the Masters and the Kentucky Derby.

And this time next year, he'll be watching LSU baseball games with the man who took a chance on him 15 years ago from a suite in Alex Box Stadium, Skip Bertman.

"You know what I want to do really, I wanna go visit former players," Mainieri said. "I don't want them to come to my funeral, I won't be able to enjoy them then. I wanna go visit them while I'm alive, what the fruits of my labor have turned out. I wanna see their families and what they've become.

"Skip [Bertman] and I will be watching the baseball games hopefully and second guessing the guy out there. Why did you leave him in so long? Why'd you take him out so early? I want to see the program continue to prosper and continue to get better just like Skip wanted me to succeed."

Mainieri couldn't talk to his team until he talked to Bertman, the man who gave him the opportunity of a lifetime. So he went to his house to tell him personally of his decision. It was always Mainieri's goal, from the first time he met with Bertman about taking the LSU job, to be a custodian of the legacy that Bertman built.

But through all of the wins, all of the players who have gone on to have successful careers, not just in baseball but in life, Mainieri has carved out a legacy of his own in Baton Rouge. One that shouldn't ever be forgotten or taken for granted.

"It’s been the honor of my life to serve this university and it’s baseball program for 15 years. I told Skip that my only goal was to make him proud, and I hope I've done that. I did my best," Mainieri said. "This decision was my decision and it hurt to make because it's what I've done my whole life, it's gonna be weird waking up and not being a coach but I'm also excited about the next part of my life."