Beginning play in 1884, the Spartans have made the NCAA Division I Baseball Championship 5 times, advancing to the College World Series once, in 1954, with a third-place finish. The team has won 4 Big Ten conference championships and 5 Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association titles.[2] The team played in the MIAA until 1907 and played as an independent until the university joined the Big Ten in 1949 and the Spartan baseball team began Big Ten play in 1951.[3]
Spartan baseball Hall of Famer
Robin Roberts, MSC
Robin Roberts initially came to East Lansing as part of a United States Army Air Corps training program in 1944. After the war ended in 1945, he took his leave of the service and returned to MSC (the name was Michigan State College at the time) to play basketball. Roberts was twice named captain, earning three varsity letters in basketball.[4] After his second season playing basketball, Roberts tried out for the Michigan State baseball team, becoming a pitcher because it was the position that coach John Kobs needed most. After playing for Michigan State, going 9–6 over two seasons, with 6 shutouts in the 1946 season, he was signed by the Philadelphia Phillies in 1948. Roberts would go on to win 286 games, with 7 Major League Baseball All-Star Game appearances in a 19-year Major League Baseball career. Roberts was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1976.[5][6]
In 1992, Roberts was one of 30 members of the charter class of former Michigan State Spartans athletes, coaches, and administrators inducted into the MSU Athletics Hall of Fame.[7] His number 36 is retired, one of only five Spartan baseball players to receive the honor.
Other notable Spartans
Ed "Peanuts" Pinnance
Ed Pinnance made history for Michigan State baseball as the first Spartan (the school was called State Agricultural College at the time with the nickname Aggies) to advance to the major leagues, appearing in 1903 for the Philadelphia Athletics, and was also among the first full-blooded Native Americans to play in MLB.[8]Tom Yewcic was named the College World Series Most Outstanding Player of the 1954 College World Series despite his team not reaching the championship game and would have a brief professional career with the Detroit Tigers.[9] Yewcic was a two-sport star at Michigan State, leading the 1953 football team to a Rose Bowl win. Earl Morrall was a teammates of Yewcic on the 1954 College World Series team, led the 1955 football team to a Rose Bowl victory, and chose a career in the National Football League where he won 4 Super Bowls and an NFL MVP trophy in a 21-year career.[10]Dick Radatz earned first-time All Big Ten honors in 1959, going 10–1, 1.12 ERA, and was a two-time MLB All-Star with the Boston Red Sox in 7-year pro career.[11] A teammate of Radatz, Ron Perranoski would leave a stellar collegiate career in East Lansing for an MLB career, twice leading the league in saves, and twice helping his team win the World Series in his 13-year stint in the majors.[12]
The Major League Baseball draft began in 1965 and the Spartans would be represented in the first year when Dick Billings was drafted in the 25th round by the Washington Senators as the first Michigan State player ever drafted. Billings would go on to a 8-year MLB career.[13][14]Steve Garvey was a two-sport athlete at Michigan State, earning a letter as a defensive back for the football team, and would earn All Big Ten and All American honors in 1968 on his way to the majors where he would earn a World Series ring with the Los Angeles Dodgers as a 10-time MLB All-Star.[15]Rick Miller was a Sporting News First Team All-American in 1969 for Michigan State and then won a Gold Glove for the California Angels in 1978 in his 15-year MLB career as a defensive standout.[16]
Steve Garvey, Michigan State, 1968
In 1974, Spartan coach Danny Litwhiler pioneered the use of radar to measure pitching velocity. Litwiler said, “One day in 1974 while I was the coach at Michigan State, I read an article in the student paper that said ‘Don’t Speed on Campus’ and there was a photo of an MSU policeman who had just received a new radar gun. That got me thinking—could we use it to check the velocity of the baseball? So I found out that the cops’ radar guns were powered by the cigarette lighters in their police cars. So, we got an MSU police car to drive out on the field to time the pitches and the readouts were accurate within one mph each time. Within one week, I had the prototype of the JUGS gun in my hands and today that same prototype is in the Hall of Fame." Litwhiler also invented 'Diamond Grit' to help dry out fields after rain.[17]
Following the two-sport tradition, Kirk Gibson would lead the 1978 Michigan State Spartans football team to a co-Big Ten championship. It was at the suggestion of Spartan football coach Darryl Rogers that Gibson play collegiate baseball.[18] Gibson played only one year of college baseball, but managed to hit .390 with 16 homers and 52 RBIs in 48 games.[19] He was drafted by both his hometown Detroit Tigers baseball team (first round)[20] and the St. Louis Cardinals football team (seventh round). He chose baseball and won two World Series titles (1984 with Detroit, 1988 with the Los Angeles Dodgers) and the 1988 National League MVP award in an illustrious 17-year career.
Mark Mulder would earn All Big Ten honors twice for the Spartans (1997, 1998) on his way to a professional career with two MLB All-Star appearances and a 21–8 2001 season for the Oakland Athletics which was captured in the book and film Moneyball. Bob Malek (2002) and Jeff Holm (2011) both were named the Big Ten Conference Baseball Player of the Year, the only two Spartans honored since the award was created in 1982. Malek finished his career as one of the most decorated Spartans ever with several national awards and is only the second Spartan in history to be a two-time member (2001-2002) of the .400 club (.400 or better batting average), joining Don Fleser, who did so in 1925-1926. Kurt Wunderlich was the Big Ten Pitcher of the Year in 2011, the only Spartan hurler to be so recognized since the award was created in 1994.[3]Second baseman Ryan Jones was named to the All-Big Ten team three consecutive seasons (2010–2012) and had a 33-game hitting streak, a Spartan record.[21]
Retired numbers on the outfield fence in 2018
Recognizing the combination of athletic and academic performance, a number of Spartan baseball players have won the prestigious Big Ten Medal of Honor, including Ty Willingham (1977), who would go on to a successful college football coaching career at Notre Dame and Stanford. Other winners from Spartan baseball are Mike Davidson (1988), Stuart Hirschman (1992), Brandon Eckerle (2011) and Bryce Kelley (2021).
Five Spartan players (Roberts, Garvey, Yewcic, Gibson, Mulder) and two coaches (John Kobs and Danny Litwhiler), have their numbers retired in East Lansing. In addition, the stadium is named after Drayton McLane, a Michigan State alumnus and former owner of the Houston Astros. McLane and his wife Elizabeth donated funds to begin renovations of the stadium, located at the historic Old College Field, and the updated facility quickly made history when, on April 4, 2009, the first official game in the new stadium was played, and Spartan pitcher Nolan Moody threw a no-hitter against Northwestern. McLane donated funds for the building of the football facility at Baylor University, also named McLane Stadium. The baseball field was named for Spartan coach John Kobs in 1969.[2]
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