Mainieri and three ex-LSU athletes elected to Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame

Former LSU baseball coach Paul Mainieri and three former LSU athletes have been elected to the 12-member Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2023.

Ex-Tigers Wendell Davis (football), Walter Davis (track) and Paul Byrd (baseball) will also be enshrined next July 29 at the Hall of Fame’s home in Natchitoches.

A 40-member Louisiana Sports Writers Association committee selected the 2023 inductees. The panel considered 151 nominees from 28 different sport categories.

During Mainieri's 15 seasons at LSU, he was 641-283-3 before retiring last June because of recurring neck issues. He took five teams to the College World Series, winning the title in 2009 over Texas and losing to Florida in the 2017 finals.

Mainieri’s Tigers won five NCAA Super Regionals, eight NCAA Regionals, four SEC regular-season titles and six SEC tournament titles. He coached 13 first-team All-Americans and 25 of his former Tigers have reached the major leagues with 88 players being drafted.

Davis was a two-time All-American receiver in 1986 and ’87 when he teamed with Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer Tommy Hodson. He set school records for receptions in= a game (14) and single-season marks for catches (80), receiving yards (1,244), receiving TDs (11) and yards per game (113.1) in 1986.

He had the school record for career receiving yards (2,708) and still holds the school mark for career receptions (183).

In his 5½-year NFL career with tje Chicago Bears, he had 207 catches, 3,000 yards (14.5 yards per catch) and 14 TDs before he tore the patellar tendon in both his knees just five games into the 1993 season.

Davis, a two-time Olympian in the horizontal jumps and a two-time World Games champion and four-time medalist, won six NCAA national championships in his two seasons at LSU.

He claimed six NCAA titles with victories in the indoor and outdoor triple jump in 2001 and ’02, the outdoor long jump in 2002 and 4x100-meter relay in ’02, helping LSU win two of its six men’s national championships in the sport.

Byrd, who starred on Skip Bertman’s first College World Series-winning club in 1991, was 109-96 with a 4.41 ERA for seven teams in a 14-year major league career.

A fourth-round draft pick by Cleveland in 1991, Byrd won at least 10 games six times in his 14 MLB seasons. He posted wins in the ALDS (Yankees) and ALCS (Red Sox) to help Cleveland reach the 2007 World Series, becoming one of only two pitchers to beat those storied clubs in the same postseason.

At LSU, he remains in the top five in career pitching in wins (31, fifth) and strikeouts (319, fifth) in only three seasons (1989-91).

The right-hander holds the school season record for victories with 17 in 1990, going 17-6 with a 3.84 ERA in 140.2 innings, including six complete games, while striking out 130. In the Tigers’ national championship season he struck out 116 in 102.1 innings with an 8-3 record capped by a CWS semifinal win over Florida.

Other members of the Hall of Fame Class of 2023 are two-time Super Bowl MVP quarterback Eli Manning, four-time WNBA All-Star Alana Beard, New Orleans native Ron Washington who managed the Texas Rangers to a pair of World Series appearances, former Tulane great and Chicago Bears two-time Pro Bowl running back Matt Forte, weightlifting champion Walter Imahara and retired Baton Rouge-Parkview Baptist baseball coach M.L. Woodruff, whose teams won 11 state championships.

The final Hall of Fame inductees, recipients of the 2023 Distinguished Service Award in Sports Journalism presented by the Louisiana Sports Writers Association, will be announced later this year.

The 10 new competitive ballot inductees will raise the total of Hall of Fame members to 377 competitors honored since the first induction class. Baseball’s Mel Ott, world champion boxer Tony Canzoneri andLSU football great Gaynell Tinsley were enshrined in 1959 after their election a year earlier.

The Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame already includes 25 Pro Football Hall of Fame members, 18 Olympic medalists including 11 gold medal winners, 12 members of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, seven of the NBA’s 50 Greatest Players, seven National Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, 42 College Football Hall of Fame members, nine National High School Hall of Fame enshrinees, jockeys with a combined 16 Triple Crown victories, six world boxing champions, nine Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame enshrinees,seven College Baseball Hall of Fame inductees, 10 College Basketball Hall of Fame members, four NBA Finals MVPs, four winners of major professional golf championships, five National Museum of (Thoroughbred) Racing and Hall of Fame inductees and two Super Bowl MVPs.