OMAHA — Two years after failing to even qualify for the Southeastern Conference’s postseason tournament, LSU is playing for a national championship in baseball again.
Paul Mainieri, a former Air Force coach, has rebuilt the Tigers in the image of Skip Bertman’s powerful teams of the 1990s, with dominant pitching and hitting carrying LSU into the best-of-three College World Series championship series against No. 1 national seed Texas starting Monday.
“This team is as good as any LSU team in the 1990s,” Bertman said Saturday.
The Tigers have hit nine home runs and outscored the opposition 32-11 in winning their first three CWS games, and they are unbeaten in 13 going into the title series. Yes, it’s like old times for the purple and gold in Omaha.
The 71-year-old Bertman, who remains a revered figure among the passionate LSU fan base, took over a mediocre program in 1984 and led it to the CWS in his third year. He won the first of his five national titles in his eighth season. Mainieri guided the Tigers to the CWS in his second year and to the finals in his third.
Mainieri, 51, has known Bertman all his life. As a 12-year-old, Mainieri took batting lessons from him, and Bertman was Mainieri’s coach at Christopher Columbus High in Miami.
Mainieri went on to play one season for the Tigers, in 1976.
