Sitting in the dugout, choked up with sunglasses hiding teary eyes that occasionally glanced at the wrong end of a 15-6 scoreboard is probably no way to end a Hall of Fame coaching career.

But baseball can’t always groove you a fat tomato of a fast ball on the way out.

So LSU’s Paul Mainieri had to sit through the final outs of Sunday’s super regional loss to Tennessee.

As usual, the sunglasses couldn’t hide his emotions. He has always worn those feelings right out in the open, right there on his sleeves.

No different in the final act.

With a perfect script, it would have ended with him watching a dog pile.

And he saw one, but it was the wrong team, all orange, with the Vols headed to the College World Series.

But one thing never changes.

As he did from the moment he stepped on campus 16 years ago, Mainieri handled it with pure class.

As old-fashioned as it sounds in today’s bat-flipping society, there should be something to say for that.

You expected anything else?

Let LSU basketball play under the cloud of a seemingly never-ending NCAA investigation while football struggles to get its Title IX issues addressed.

There’s never been a hint of anything messy with baseball. Whatever problems have arisen generally involve not getting a man in from third with less than two outs.

So in the postgame Zoom conference Sunday, Mainieri wished Tennessee well, of course.

The Vols were the better team over the weekend and sometimes, even as fickle as baseball can be, that’s the difference.

No doubt the fan faction that never appreciated him because he wasn’t Skip Bertman was still questioning him to the end, wondering if maybe he didn’t have too quick of a hook with Ma’Khail Hilliard in Game 1 and ace Landon Marceaux in Game 2.

The first was tactical — Hilliard isn’t overpowering and his coach didn’t want the Vols’ lineup to get a third trip through the order against him — the second might have been Mainieri’s ever-present loyalty and sentiment.

Marceaux was obviously off of his usual game and Mainieri didn’t want to watch that and wasn’t going to put him through it.

Neither decision worked out well, but that’s baseball, which is always far easier in retrospect.

Afterwards, open as always, the only question he tried to dodge was whether he is leaving the program in better shape than he found it in 2007.

And only to a degree.

“I’m not going to get into what it was like when I got here,” he said, in deference, no doubt, to commenting on his immediate predecessor, Smoke Laval.

So I’ll answer for him.

LSU had actually been to the College World Series in two of the previous four seasons —and had come home winless both times — but it wasn’t the same. Recruiting had slipped markedly. Moreso, Laval, though a good enough guy, didn’t seem to understand what made LSU baseball different and what it meant to so many people.

Mainieri did. Mainieri relished it, embraced it. It was fun again.

This wasn’t the year to be a young, inexperienced team in the SEC, and the Tigers predictably struggled in the regular season.

But the Mainieri era ended, actually, with a bit of a miracle just to get to Tennessee, the super regional round, with a team with obvious holes that had no business winning the Eugene, Oregon regional the week before.

You know the chronic neck and back pain that were at the root of his retirement must be painful to keep him from coming back to coach the year-older team he leaves behind for his successor.

“I think there’s a really strong foundation,” Mainieri said, “and I think we’re leaving the program in very good shape.”

No doubt.

The four home runs LSU hit Sunday were all hit by freshmen. The freshmen arms that struggled out of the bullpen Sunday were also the main reason the Tigers slipped in and stole an NCAA regional the previous week.

The new coach should appreciate the cupboard he will inherit. I suspect as time goes on, LSU fans will better appreciate the man who left it.

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Scooter Hobbs covers LSU athletics. Email him at scooter.hobbs@americanpress.com