I don’t know if you remember the IFC show “Table For Five” that actor/director Jon Favreau hosted for a couple of years. It was the free-form interview/conversation show where he would go to a restaurant with four of his favorite actors, directors or musicians and just sit down at a table to talk about movies, influences and life in general with the cameras rolling, the waiters serving and the beer flowing.

I had Favreau-style deja vu on Monday after the Florida-LSU football game as I sat at my favorite hangout in the entire world, The Chimes, near the gates of LSU. There was myself, the doctor of college baseball, Lady Stitch-head and our guest of honor, national championship coach Paul Mainieri, who was able to make room in his hyper-busy schedule.

The hostess sat us down at a table in the middle of the same room I once saw the Meat Puppets play (The Chimes used to have bands play there in the evenings). Then, we tucked our napkins inside our shirts and we got underway.

Me:
First off coach, thank you again for meeting with us here and doing this in this forum. As you know, if there’s anything you want “off the record” you let me know. It’s no problem.

Coach Mainieri:
Okay. But I think we’ll be fine.

Waitress (Interrupting for our order):
Can I get y’all something to drink?

Lady S:
Abita Amber for me.

Doctor K:
Purple Haze.

Me:
Pilsner Urquell.

Coach Mainieri:
Diet Coke.

Me:
Coach, it’s okay to have a beer here. I won’t mention it you know.

Coach Mainieri:
(Sorry, his response is off the record)

Me:
Okay coach, the way we set this up was to not be an interview per se, but for it to be a bit more of a conversational thing – even though we all kind of came up with our own questions.

Coach Mainieri:
Okay. That’s good.

Me:
First off, I don’t live here anymore, but how can you NOT come to The Chimes and eat here every freakin’ day?

Coach Mainieri:
(Laughs) Well I don’t get here as often as I should, maybe once every month or two. But Walkons (another restaurant near the stadium) is just so much more convenient.

Me:
Still I could eat this food every day.

Lady S:
Yeah, you don’t know how many cajun things Eric has made me learn to cook.

Coach Mainieri:
(Laughs) is that right?

Me:
That’s sorta true. Well coach, one of the things I wanted to start off with was more of a philosophy type of thing, would you rather have a player that was a wildly talented, top 10 round type of guy? Or would you rather have a Joe hustle, gym-rat type of guy that gives it his all every play?

Coach Mainieri:
That’s a good question and I think the answer to that is if you want to win, you better have a combination of those. I don’t think teams in the Major Leagues win because they have 10 all-stars on the team, but I don’t think teams that aren’t as talented are going to win it all either. That reminds me that when I was first hired here at LSU and was at the press conference, somebody asked me ‘What kind of team do you want? Are you gonna be a gorilla ball team? Are you gonna be a small ball team with pitching and defense?’ and I said, ‘We’re gonna be a winning team.’ Because I think it’s important to have balance on your team. If you live-and-die by the home run you’re gonna die. If you live and die by small ball, you’re gonna die.If you don’t have good pitching, you’re gonna die. So what I wanna do is win a 3-to-2 game and a 13-to-12 game.

Doctor:
Which you guys seemed to do in Omaha this year.

Coach Mainieri:
Yeah. One of the neatest things about the College World Series this year was I got complimented on what a balanced team I had. There were better hitting teams than us in the country. There were better fielding teams. There were better pitching teams too. But I don’t think there was anybody who did all three of them as well as we did.

Me:
Off of that, do you think Coach Bertman’s teams would do as well today, since they seemed so heavy on gorilla ball?

Coach Mainieri:
Well, going back a bit, the funny thing about Coach Bertman’s high school teams that I knew when I was growing up in Miami was that his teams were known for 1st-and-3rd plays and pick off plays and everybody could bunt, they did all the small things and all the fundamentals.

Our waitress:
Y’all ready to order?

Lady S:
Small shrimp and corn soup and a small etouffee.

Our waitress:
You want the soup out first?

Lady S:
Yeah, thanks.

Doctor:
I’ll have the shrimp gumbo and a small etouffee. Gumbo out first.

Me:
I’ll have the large crawfish etouffee please.

Coach Mainieri:
Shrimp and corn soup and etouffee for me.

Our waitress:
Thank you.

Coach Mainieri:
(Looking up at the TV screens showing highlights of the Rockies/Phillies game from the night before) Is that Brad Lidge?

Doctor:
Yeah, he came in late.

Coach Mainieri:
That’s Brad. He was one of my players at Notre Dame. Man, that’s great!

Me:
Oh yeah, you were traveling last night and missed this.

Coach Mainieri:
Yeah, we didn’t get home until about 12:30 or so. Then I had an 8:30 meeting with the athletic director this morning.

Me:
Oh really?

Coach Mainieri:
Hopefully to keep me on as the LSU coach for a long time.

Lady S:
You sign an extension and get a huge raise then?

Coach Mainieri:
Well, we’re still negotiating. (laughs)

Me:
Okay, then I won’t break the story yet. So you were talking about Coach Bertman’s teams.

Coach Mainieri:
Yeah. Well if you remember, early in his LSU career, he was winning with great pitching and not so much power. But I think as time went on he saw what kind of bats were being used…

Me:
Easton! (shameless sponsor plug there)

Coach Mainieri:
You know, and in the SEC there are small ballparks and guys were getting bigger and stronger, it’s hot and the ball carried down here. And when you get to Omaha, it’s usually hot, the stadium sits on a hill and the winds blowing out, he realized you have to win with home runs. I think that’s the sign of a great coach. A great coach knows the players abilities and matches their style and not try to get his players to do something they’re not capable of doing.

Me:
Gotcha. Going off of that, would you rather have the kind of pitcher that can throw mid-90s heat or a guy that throws 67-68 miles per hour and can trick people and strike them out?

Coach Mainieri:
I’ll answer that straight out, I’d rather have the hard thrower.

Me:
Why is that?

Coach Mainieri:
I think when you have a power pitcher there’s more margin for error. You can throw a 93 mile-an-hour fastball right over the plate and the guy might still pop it up to short. If you throw an 80 mile-an-hour fastball it’s probably going to end up in the cheap seats.

Lady S:
But what about pitchers like that Spence guy at Arizona State?

Me:
Yeah, I was thinking him and also Daniel Bibona at Irvine, those guys don’t throw hard at all.

Coach Mainieri:
Well those guys are just SO good at what they do, if you find somebody like that, those guys are equally as effective. But me, I’d rather have an Anthony Renaudo. (laughs)

Me:
Okay, this one might be a little bit touchy, and I don’t wanna piss you off. Just answer it however you want. I noticed a lot of turnover on your team when you took over at LSU – guys like J.T. Wise and Robert Lara moved on to other places and did really well. But in general, how tough is it for a coach to come into a new situation and gel with the players he inherits? Or is there just always going to be people that are dissatisfied and move on?

Coach Mainieri:
Well my first year here we went 29-26. Would you believe me if I told you that I though we over-achieved that year?

Me:
Well, hell no.

Coach Mainieri:
We hit .250 as a team. We had the worst ERA in the league. We were second-to-last in fielding. Yet we won four weekend series against top 25 teams in the SEC, three of them on the road. Yet, after fall practice was over and before that season, I thought we were headed for a 15-40 record that year. The kids that were involved in the carry-over that season, Ochinko, Dean, Mitchell, Schimpf… they saw the limitations that we had. Yet they believed in what I was preaching to them about the right way to do things. But some of the kids, and you mentioned their names, they didn’t have that kind of confidence in me. They wanted to do it their way, which was never gonna win here. People were in an uproar when Jared Bogany left. You know, I don’t think you can win without having great character. So I tried to judge who were the kids with great character. We had 21 kids on that team that were carry-overs. And they all were great kids that cared about the right things and had some talent. It just took them some time to develop confidence and fit their role.

(The food comes and we start grueling down. I try to keep talking while eating without spitting food everywhere. Coach is nice enough to oblige me in this.)

Lady S:
Do you have any more of those holdovers from that first team of yours?

Coach Mainieri:
We only have two players that were left over from that team as seniors, (pitcher) Paul Bertoccini and (DH/OF) Blake Dean, and they’re great to have.

Doctor:
I read a bit about your reaction already, but how big was that having Blake Dean come back?

Coach Mainieri:
I was really hoping he would.

Me:
That had to be a big surprise though.

Coach Mainieri:
I was hoping either he or Ryan Schimpf would come back, because it’s great having an established power hitter in your lineup.

Me:
It didn’t have anything to do with him not being ready for pro ball, did it?

Coach Mainieri:
Well Blake was injured last season. He had a bad shoulder and had to have it surgically repaired. It’s an awful feeling to go into pro ball with an injury. But if he would’ve been drafted in the right spot with the right amount of money, he would’ve gone. But when he got drafted in the 10th round, he saw a lot of players from the SEC that he thought – and I thought – he was better than, go higher than him, so he made the decision and announced he was coming back. And it’s going to be great having him back.

Lady S:
Is the surgery going to hold him back any this season?

Coach Mainieri:
A little bit. I’ll probably start him out as our DH for the first month or so, but we’ve gotta get him back out in the outfield, which is his normal position. So that’s how we’ll work him into the lineup.

Me:
Okay, next subject. Other than Doctor Kenny here, you’re the nicest guy I know.

Coach Mainieri:
(laughs) That’s a little embarrassing.

Me:
I know. But my question is, how often do you have to rip ass on some of your players? How often do you have to yell and discipline players?

Coach Mainieri:
I hate to talk about myself like I’m a nice guy or something. I think a big mistake people make is when they misinterpret somebody who is nice and likes to get along with people with being soft. I don’t think anybody who has worked with me will tell you that I’m soft. I can separate my personal feelings for somebody with business. I’ll have a kid over at my house to eat with my family, but if the next day he doesn’t run a ball out on a grounder, I’m gonna chew him out and bench him. And I hope my players know that I’m fair and honest with them, but if they screw up it’s not gonna sit well with me.

Lady S:
What is your most effective form of disciplining them? What do they not wanna hear from you?

Coach Mainieri:
i have high expectations, really. And i try to get across to the players that if it’s important to me, it should be important to you. But I also tell them, don’t try to please anybody else. Don’t try to please the fans. Don’t try to please the alumni. Don’t try to please the media, heck don’t even try to please me. The only guy you have to please is the one you look at in the mirror every morning. If you set your standards high for yourself, then we’re not going to have a problem. I can handle failure, but what I can’t handle are kids that are not committed. If a kid strikes out I’ll be the first one to put my arm around him. But if he strikes out because he didn’t prepare himself well enough or if he acted like a jerk after striking out, that’s different. Every discipline situation is different. Sometimes you might think I’m gonna chew a guy out because he did something wrong, but really all I’m trying to do is pick his spirits back up. I think if a kid feels good about himself and he’s confident, he can do anything.

Me:
Okay, I’ve got about a million other questions, but I know Dr. Kenny has some too, so fire away.

Doctor:
One of the main questions I wanted to know about was your feelings about the signing deadline, it seems like it hamstrings coaches more than any other college rule. Would you have any suggestions to fix that?

Coach Mainieri:
The hardest part about being a college baseball coach is that you work so hard to recruit a player and in a spur of the moment a team drafts him, throws a bunch of money at him and they sign. And they’re gone. That’s just the way the system is and you have to accept it. If major league baseball really cared about college baseball, they should change that rule. It’s ludicrous. This year I had a kid actually sitting in freshman orientation who had told me earlier that day that he was 100% coming to LSU. Then he got a text message, got up, walked out of orientation and signed with the Philadelphia Phillies.

Lady S:
Wow. That sucks. Who was it?

Coach Mainieri:
It was Brody Colvin, a pitcher that went in the 6th round. And yeah, after talking to me at 7:30 that morning and telling me he was 100% in and then walking over to freshman orientation… three hours later he was gone.

Doctor:
Did he stop by on his way out to tell you or anything?

Coach Mainieri:
No. He just disappeared.

Lady S:
Did that really surprise you?

Coach Mainieri:
Yeah. I mean I guess anything is possible. But he had just told me he was coming to school that morning.

Me:
Well, that’s 18 year olds for ya’.

Lady S:
Yeah no doubt.

Doctor:
But isn’t now having the mid-August deadline date better than the previous rule of having to wait until the player physically sits in his first class?

Coach Mainieri:
Well it’s a little better, but in a way it’s also virtually the same.

Me:
Well I always felt bad for coaches whose school was on the quarter system, so for example, John Savage at UCLA would have to wait until early October when their classes started. It was just a freaky rule. Now it’s a little bit better.

Coach Mainieri:
Yeah, that’s awful. It’s got to be a lot better for them. But it’s still not better in the sense that you still can’t scramble to find another play to fill that loss.

Doctor:
My other question had to do with non-conference scheduling. Who does it? Is that all you?

Coach Mainieri:
Yeah, I do it.

Doctor:
How tough is it to find teams?

Coach Mainieri:
That’s a tough one. Our non-conference schedule is nothing to write home about.

Me:
I know. I’ve bashed you for it. (nervous laugh thrown in)

Coach Mainieri:
I’d love to play another top 25 team, I would. But you’ve gotta do a home and home. Here’s what is tough. When Skip (Bertman) hired me here, he told me, ‘You have to play a minimum of 35 home games. I’d prefer 37, because we’re building a new stadium and charging 41 thousand dollars per suite and 24-hundred dollars a year per ticket for the seats behind home plate.’ So those prices were set, long before I got here regardless of how many games we play. Skip didn’t want to set those prices and play only 28 home games. So I definitely feel this pressure for me to go out and schedule all these home games. But I must say, after spending 18 years at Air Force and Notre Dame in these cold-weather climates where you have to play your first 20 games on the road, I feel like I’ve earned the right to play more games at home.

All of us:
(Laughs)

Me:
I see your point there.

Coach Mainieri:
Plus, the biggest thing is that for 18 years I had to make decisions about our roster and who to take on the road before I even knew my team well enough to do that. I hated that. In essence I had to make a decision about a guy before we played a game.

Lady S:
How many players were you allowed to take on the road?

Coach Mainieri:
It was 25 guys, so that meant we usually had to leave 10 kids at home. One of the things that really helped us last year was that early in the season we had some blowout wins and I was able to put guys like Austin Nola, Tyler Hanover and Mikie Mahtook into those games. It got them used to the big crowds and speed of the game. So later on in the year when I wanted to plug them into the lineup that experience really helped them feel comfortable. You see? Now if we were on the road for the first few weeks I might not have even taken them with us and they wouldn’t have played at all.

Doctor:
With all that said, I’m an LSU grad that lives in North Carolina so I’m making my pitch for a home-and-home series with UNC.

Coach Mainieri:
(laughs) Yeah I know. That’d be great.

Me:
When you’re in Omaha is there ever any talk about playing some of those teams in the regular season?

Coach Mainieri:
There’s been some talk about North Carolina.. of course I’m not afraid to play anybody, that’s why we have Fullerton coming out here in 2011. And we had Southern Cal coming in this year, but they had a conflict and they’re going to Hawaii instead, so it didn’t work out. In a couple years we’ve got Michigan and Notre Dame coming down for a tournament and Pepperdine this year. Again, we have to look at our situation and consider how many home games we can play. If I play a three-game road set early in the season, I would probably have to cut out some games against the in-state teams, who are always really wanting to play us and have us come to their stadium.

Me:
Do you know of any other teams that put that kind of mandate on the number of home games they must play like Skip did with you?

Coach Mainieri:
Not specifically, I mean, I hear whispers about it. But any school that can generate money from their baseball program is going to be like that. At LSU, we don’t make as much money as basketball because they have the SEC TV contract and all. They could go 0-27 and still make money because of their TV contracts. But through gate receipts, parking and concessions, we generate more revenue than basketball. That’s the price to pay for so many home games.

Doctor:
Off of that, do you think with money starting to play a bigger and bigger role? Has college baseball lost some of its intimacy?

Coach Mainieri:
Kenny, what did you think when you were here for a game this past season, did you think it was different from the old Alex Box as far as atmosphere?

Doctor:
Not really. It’s just a lot nicer. But is the sport losing any of its charm?

Coach Mainieri:
Ya’ know, I don’t think so. I mean I just saw the stats the other day that the SEC drew 1.8 million fans last year. We drew 9,600 a game. Arkansas drew 8,000 a game. That’s why I call the SEC the “big leagues” of college baseball. Yet you still see kids going down there getting autographs and you’re still closer to the game here.

And you know what it’s like around here. People of Louisiana are looking for things to hang their hat on. There’s no major league teams around here. And when Skip came here and started winning, it gave this state a great sense of pride and people got into the baseball program. So not only do the fans come to the games, but they participate in the games. Like in Omaha, a kid makes a great diving catch and the fans will cheer him. Skip educated the fans here in the same way. If a kid for the other team pitches 7.1 great innings, they’ll give him a standing ovation. Diving catch in the outfield, standing ovation. So stuff like that shows me college baseball is bigger, but not lost its charm.

Me:
Now answer me this coach, can you assure me that another SEC team other than LSU WILL win a national title someday? It WILL happen, right?

Coach Mainieri:
(laughs) You know, I still can’t imagine how this has happened. It’s as mind-boggling as Wake Forest being the last ACC team to win the title in ‘55. Because I tell people all the time, I’m not sure which tournament is harder the SEC tournament or the College World Series. It’s good baseball. And it’s just weird that the SEC has won seven titles and six of them have been ours. Last season we had seven teams in the top 25. Seven.

Lady S:
But after playing some of those teams in the world series, do you think those rankings were valid at the time?

Coach Mainieri:
I tell ya’, the teams that play in the SEC were every bit as good. I mean, look at Arkansas, they lost their last eight SEC games, but then they made it to Omaha and won two games there. Tennessee was in last place and came down here and beat us two out of three. And you looked across the field and you saw Bryan Morgado throw 97 miles an hour and then there was Kentrail Davis out in the outfield, he was a first round pick. That first baseman Cody Hawn hit 27 home runs. They had a lot of good players. A lot.

Doctor:
If I remember right, several of those LSU teams won the national title without winning their conference title.

Coach Mainieri:
Yeah it’s only happened twice. This past year and I believe in ‘93. Both teams won the regular season, SEC tournament and national championship.

Me:
That raises another question, in your opinion, does it kind bother you that the College World Series winner isn’t usually the best team? Would you like to see it set up differently, you know, like where two teams play a best-of-five or a best-of-seven like the pros?

Coach Mainieri:
I don’t know how to put the answer to that. I love the College World Series. It’s phenomenal. But it IS kind of long. The way it’s spread out you can win it with two good starting pitchers and a closer. Not like in the old days where they were playing four games a day. I think teams should have to have their pitching depth tested. But now they want all the games in prime time for TV and revenue. But I wouldn’t change the College World Series. I love it the way it is.

Lady S:
Any bitterness over just having Joe Biden meet the team and not Barack Obama when you guys went to the White House?

Coach Mainieri:
No. No. In fact, it’s funny because Joe Biden told us that the president was just two rooms over from us when we were there. He said that he was a little busy because he was having a summit meeting on Afghanistan so that’s why he couldn’t meet with us. So I started thinking, ‘Hmmm, Afghanistan or meeting a baseball team.’ (hands out acting like he’s weighing two things) I realized where his priorities were. So that was fine.

Me:
Okay, I’ve got one last request here coach. I know you’re really good friends with Jim Hendry.

Coach Mainieri:
Oh yes.

Me:
Then can you do me a big favor and see what you can do to convince him to quit his job as GM of the Cubs and go back to being the head coach at Creighton again? I need them to become a national power.

Coach Mainieri:
(laughing) I’m not sure I can do that. But I tell you Eric, in ‘91 when they beat Southern Cal in the winner’s bracket game of the regionals out in Los Angeles, he called me 20 minutes afterward and was so excited, but he told me he was completely out of pitching. Lucky for them, Hawaii eliminated USC, and then they were out of pitching too. Jim told me later that if they would’ve had to face Southern Cal in the championship round, they would’ve lost both games by 20 runs.

Me:
Awesome.

Coach Mainieri:
When Creighton made it to Omaha the next week, I was there when they played Clemson in that first game with the crowd going crazy. I’ll be honest, I had tears in my eyes. I was so happy for Jim, but I was so jealous too. It was really incredible.

Me:
Alright one last question, any desire to coach in the majors? I know you know a lot of people up there, hasn’t the itch ever gotten to you?

Coach Mainieri:
I’ll be completely honest with you Eric, I have no interest. I really don’t. I made the decision a long time ago to be a college coach. When I played pro ball, you know, I love the game and everything but it’s a different kind of sport at that level. Sometimes your biggest competition isn’t the team in the other uniforms, it’s the guy sitting next to you in the dugout trying to move up the ladder. And I didn’t like that about pro ball. At the same time it IS the highest level of baseball. I had friends that made it all the way to the bigs like Randy Bush, who played for 11 years, and I lived vicariously through him, I admit it. I’ve been close with Tommy Lasorda, so I’ve rooted for his teams for years. But I think my calling for me has been in college baseball.

Doctor:
Well we like you here. If you want to stay in college baseball forever that’s fine.

Coach Mainieri:
Well I really do love it here at LSU. All four places I’ve been at I really love dearly – St. Thomas, Air Force, Notre Dame and now here.

Our waitress:
You guys ready for the check?

Coach Mainieri:
Here, go ahead, take this (hands her his credit card) and put it all on the card.

Us three, nearly in unison:
Oh no! No way! C’mon coach, we asked YOU to this lunch!… (slight pause) okay fine.

Me:
Thanks coach. We all really appreciate it.

.
COUPLE EXTRA NOTES:

- The grand tour.
Before our lunch at The Chimes, coach Mainieri showed us around the new Alex Box Stadium. The doctor of college baseball had actually made it to a game there this past season, but I hadn’t. And yes, I’m looking into changing that this coming season. Thanks again coach. Check’s in the mail.

- The unfinished look.
Coach explained how each of the 12 luxury suites cost $40,000 a year and there are plans for building six more soon. I guess that answers my question about the unfinished look of the new stadium.

- The caste system is alive and well.
There is definitely a status to the style of seats that are in Alex Box Stadium. In the purple seats behind home plate, the seatback and seat are both padded for comfort. In the gold seats that circle the lower parts of the grandstand, the seats are padded. Throughout the remainder of the grandstand is your standard green stadium seats with no padding. Down the foul lines, the bleachers are aluminum benches with a bench-like back rest. Finally, out in the outfield bleachers, it’s just your run-of-the-mill metal bleachers.

- As usual, money ruins things.
As you saw in the interview above, there IS a reason that teams like LSU play a home-heavy schedule and rarely travel for games out of the conference. MONEY… the root of all evil. As coach Mainieri explained, it was former A.D. Skip Bertman who mandated that LSU play at least 37 home games to help pay the sizable bills of the new stadium and whatnot. So the facility wars has played a huge role in the degradation of quality matchups in February and March for baseball freaks like me. Thanks a lot Bertman. (Now I see why there are stories of his being a notorious weak tipper.)

- Please no injuries.
I’m sure Coach Mainieri wasn’t crazy about seeing one of his better relievers, Chad Jones, sitting prostrate on the ground, nursing a knee injury during the 3rd quarter of the Florida game. As it turned out, Jones was fine and returned to action later on in the game. Still, baseball is way too important for this guy to be risking injury on the football field. (Okay, I’m kidding, just a short rant there.)

- Odd side note:
Prior to my long weekend in Baton Rouge I also contacted Southern University about the possibility of talking one-on-one with Jaguar coach Roger Cador. I thought it would be an interesting time to talk to the longtime skipper, considering he was actually up for the New Orleans head coaching job in the off-season. Alas, I never heard back from the Southern media information department and I didn’t get my interview. Oddly, while walking around doing the tailgating thing prior to the LSU game, I happened to see Coach Cador on two occasions walking around by himself through the LSU campus. I decided not to bother him, since I never heard anything back.

- Quick apologies to you guys.
I had intended on taking the next few weeks and continuing my “Best of the 2000s” series. But when I was assigned to work the Florida-LSU football game it gave me the idea to have an interview session with Coach Mainieri once again. I’ll be sure to get back to the Best Of series next week.