How Paul Mainieri's Relationship With Tommy Lasorda Led Him To Columbia

Paul Mainieri remembers driving through Denver.

It was the summer of 1993, and the head baseball coach at Air Force ventured up from Colorado Springs to see a longtime friend passing through town.

Two other men were in the car. In the passenger seat, Darryl Strawberry. The eight-time MLB All-Star was heading to the ballpark with his Los Angeles Dodgers in town to face the Colorado Rockies.

And in the back of the car, Mainieri's friend, Strawberry's manager, Tommy Lasorda. His reputation as one of MLB's greatest-ever managers — and most eccentric personalities — is legendary in baseball circles.

A baseball life of over 40 years between his playing and managerial days naturally touched almost every corner of the sport. But few were as close with the Hall of Famer as Mainieri, who still leans back and smiles when he thinks about those days.

"I probably drove him to 100 of his speeches that he would give," Mainieri told GamecockScoop. "And he was just such a generous person with his time and everything else, he was such a great role model for me. I've tried to live my life with a lot of the things I've learned from him."

Mainieri is trying to pull off a Lasorda-esque feat by returning to college baseball after three years of retirement. The 66-year-old is back in the dugout as South Carolina's new head coach, a role he admitted having "no inkling" of even as late as May, when he watched South Carolina take on a team of LSU players he helped recruit in the SEC Tournament.

Lasorda won a World Series title as a 61-year-old manager in 1988, and took his Dodgers to the playoffs as a 68-year-old in his last full season. One year later he retired amid health problems, something Maineiri can relate to after excruciating neck pain plagued him in 2021, his final season in Baton Rouge.

The two men first met in 1983. Mainieri's father, Demie, was the head coach at Miami-Dade North Community College and hosted an annual golf tournament and youth baseball clinic. Naturally, he contacted everyone he knew.

To this day, Mainieri is not exactly sure how his father knew the iconic man. But one way or another Lasorda not only showed up, he wanted to meet Demie's son following the tournament.

"We sat in the lobby at the hotel and talked for four hours after the golf tournament," Mainieri remembered. "It was amazing he would give me that kind of time, and then he said to me, 'I want to help you raise some money.' If you put together the banquet and sell the tickets and get auction items, I'll get myself down to Miami."

Mainieri did not take it seriously. Why would he?

Was arguably the most recognizable manager in baseball seriously going to take a five-hour flight to help a Division II baseball coach he had just met raise some money? It sounded like something more appropriate for a movie script or a pipe dream for an aspiring baseball coach.

A week passed. No correspondence. Then, at 1 a.m., a phone call.

From Lasorda, inquiring on event details. A shocked Mainieri had to backtrack a little, admitting he thought it was all just polite conversation.

"He chewed me out over the phone," Mainieri said. "He said listen, 'When I tell you something, I'm not just talking. I'm doing it.'"

It was a lesson in honesty, kindness and giving back. It never left him.

Sure enough, Lasorda made his way to Miami for a St. Thomas University baseball banquet, the tip of the iceberg of their friendship.

The almighty Lasorda, World Series rings and international fame and all, invited Mainieri into the dugout on Dodger game days. He opened his office before and after. Mainieri called it an "unbelievable experience" and as you would expect, soaked up everything.

"My father and him and my college baseball coach at the University of New Orleans [Ron Masteri] were the three great mentors of my life," Mainieri said. "Lasorda did so much for people besides being a great manager. He had great relationships with his players despite the fact it was professional sports, and I learned from him about how to bring joy to the field and how to have relationships with your players."

Denver was the meeting point when Mainieri coached Air Force. When he took the job at Notre Dame in 1995, it became Chicago. He named his fourth child Tommy to honor him and made Lasorda the godfather. Mainieri attributes much of his reputation in Baton Rouge, especially as someone who was open in the community and always willing to lend a hand with charity donations, banquet speeches or anything else, to Lasorda.

He wants the same to remain intact in Columbia.

"If people in Columbia want me to help and think I can help in any way, all they have to do is ask and I'll do it," he said. "Because Lasorda did it. And if I didn't, my conscience would kill me. The little Tommy sitting on my shoulder would be smacking me on the back of the head saying, 'Go help those people.'"

Less than two years apart, Mainieri lost both his father and Lasorda.

Two of the three mentors in his life had passed. His neck throbbed with pain, and its weight only mounted with each passing day at the ballpark. The everyday pressure cooker of life at the top of a baseball factory like LSU continued as always.

The SEC baseball standings pay no mind to grief or agony.

He ached physically, and even more so mentally. The game he loved — the game Demie and Tommy helped him love — was no longer fun.

"When my father died in March of 2019 and Tommy died in January of 2021 right before the season began, it was such a void in my life," Mainieri said. "It was just such a void to not have my father and Tommy around to talk to so frequently. It took a lot of the joy out of coaching from me, combined with my neck hurting and the pandemic protocols and all that kind of stuff. I just thought that I needed to step away from it, and I did."

But he was bored. Three decades of first-pitch times and practice schedules gave way to a life where his only routine activities were picking up the grandkids from school and playing golf.

Minutiae details of college baseball still ran through his head, particularly on the LSU team he helped assemble. Getting away from college baseball was supposed to be a release from the pain of everything and what it represented, but he was too deeply invested.

"It was like watching a car crash," he said. "I didn't want to, but I had to look. I didn't want to watch because it made me nostalgic and it made me sad that I wasn't still involved in it, but I couldn't resist. I just watched every game I possibly could. It just made me miss it more and more."

Three years, a neck procedure and valuable time off later, he is anything but bored. Ray Tanner gave him the keys to another SEC program, a fallen blue blood with a fanbase craving a return to Omaha. In many ways, it is a job busier than even what he left at LSU with the emergence of the transfer portal and NIL.

When he talks, you can see the energy. A spring in his step, an unrelenting desire to make good on this last chapter of a sprawling, successful baseball journey.

"I just am so grateful for the things I've had in my life," Mainieri said. "To have a man like Tommy Lasorda in my life, I'm more grateful now than sad that I don't have them anymore.

"It takes you awhile to come to grips with that. Being out of baseball kind of gave me a chance to kind of put everything back into perspective, and I know they're watching down on me and they're proud of me, too. And I think the way that I coach and the impact that I can have on people is kind of a tribute to them and their legacy for coaching me all along."

The pressure is off his neck, and his mind.

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