By Chris Low
ESPN.com
BATON ROUGE — His eyes wide open, Paul Mainieri knew precisely what he was getting into nearly two years ago when he accepted what he says was the only job in the country that could have pried him away from Notre Dame.
Let’s face it. Baseball at LSU is in many ways what football is to Alabama and basketball is to Kentucky.
They live it, breathe it and don’t just expect championships — but demand them.
Skip Bertman, who is retiring as LSU’s athletic director in June, made sure of that with a Hall of Fame coaching career that included five national championships from 1991 to 2000. The Tigers have led the nation in attendance each of the past 12 seasons, and this is the last year for historic Alex Box Stadium.
A new state-of-the-art stadium is being built about 200 yards south of the 70-year-old monument to LSU’s baseball glory.
Mainieri’s mission was simple: Restore that glory.
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