LSU baseball dedicates Missouri win to Sandy Bertman, late wife of LSU legend Skip Bertman

BATON ROUGE – The night before its 2025 SEC series opener against Missouri, LSU baseball lost its matriarch.

Sandy Bertman, wife of legendary LSU baseball coach and former athletics director Skip Bertman, passed away Thursday night. She was 87.

The Tigers (18-1, 1-0 SEC) defeated Missouri, 12-5, at Alex Box Stadium roughly 24 hours after Sandy's passing and the whole time, she was on LSU coach Jay Johnson's mind.

"It's been a tough night, tough 24 hours," Johnson said after the Tigers' victory. "I want to make sure every player that played for Skip that built this into the powerhouse knows that that win today was for her."

Sandy and Skip were married for 63 years after meeting at Madie Ives Elementary School in Miami in 1961. They had four daughters together, Jan, Jodiy, Lisa and Lori and have four grandchildren Sophie, Isaac, Sam and Ezra.

Before Friday's game LSU observed a moment of silence and a dropped pen could've been heard among the paid crowd of 11,741.

Johnson said the relationship he and his wife Maureen have built with the Bertmans since they've arrived in Baton Rouge more than three years ago, is special. And Sandy played a big role in the Johnsons comfortability and transition to a new place and taking over arguably the top college baseball program.

"Personally, the coolest part about this job is my relationship with Skip. He was one of my heroes as a young coach and now, I have a friendship and a mentorship," Johnson said. "The relationship I have with coach Bertman is amazing and (Sandy) was a very big part of that the second we landed here."

Through his friendships with former LSU players that played for Bertman like Ryan Theriot, Pete Bush or Doug Thompson, Johnson quickly found out how crucial of a figure Sandy was around the LSU baseball program — it's matriarch, if you will.

In the team's postgame huddle in shallow right field where Johnson hands out a "magic moment" to a player after each win, Johnson continued his tradition but this time, the magic moment didn't go to a player.

"It doesn't take long to figure out how critical he was to all of this happening. That was for her. She got the magic moment tonight," Johnson said.

"We're thinking of coach Bertman, the girls and their family."

Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@gannett.com.