“I’m excited for him, I’m proud of him (Bill Mosiello, above). Obviously he’s one of my best friends, but there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s one of the best baseball people I’ve ever been around.” – USC baseball coach, Andy Stankiewicz
Prior to actually joining the Big Ten Conference in 2025, USC coach Andy Stankiewicz and the Trojans provide a cameo of things to come, starting this weekend…while renewing relationships with boyhood friend, OSU coach Bill Mosiello.
Tempe, AZ – When we spoke by phone last week, University of Southern California baseball coach Andy Stankiewicz could not have been more energized, or enthusiastic, about the Trojans’ imminent move to the Big Ten Conference in 2025.
Weather aside, of course.
In his first year, Andy Stankiewicz moved the Trojans from three games under .500 in 2022, to eleven games over .500 in 2023.
“We have better weather in California,” he said. “And the Big Ten is a football conference. But I think all of us coaches look at it and say so what, why couldn’t it win a national title in baseball? That’s my goal as we move to the Big Ten. And if we don’t win a national title, I hope another Big Ten school does. It’s gonna’ help us all with recruiting.
“No one is going to use weather as an excuse, because every coach in the Big Ten is a competitive person and everyone has indoor facilities to get their work done. So yes, it’s a football conference, but it’s our job as coaches to change that.”
And that’s your introduction to University of Southern California baseball, coming to a Big Ten campus near you, and sooner than you realize. In just his second year as the head coach of the venerable USC program, Stankiewicz is eager over the impending move and to get the Trojan program back to the future, in a sense. As you may have forgotten, it has been a while. But from 1948 to 1998 the Trojans won twelve national championships in NCAA baseball, including 11 under hall of fame coach Rod Dedeaux, and a record five in a row between 1970 and 1974!
More about that in a few hundred words, or so.
But for the moment there’s another backstory to game three of this weekend’s Desert Invitational kickoff to the season, as long-time friends Stankiewicz and OSU’s Bill Mosiello, exchange lineups Sunday as opposing head coaches. Both are from southern California, grew up together, played baseball together, and set out on a baseball career together, although they followed different routes when they came to a fork in the road.
Stankiewicz took the professional player route after he was drafted by the Yankees out of Pepperdine University in 1984. He spent seven major league seasons with the Yankees, Houston, Montreal, and Arizona, logging a .241 lifetime average in 957 plate appearances; and as a slick-fielding infielder it was front page news if he made an error. He retired in 1999 to pursue a career in coaching, spent eleven seasons as the head coach at Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, before taking the USC job last year.
Mosiello took the coaching path from the outset, and actually worked at USC as an assistant in 2007 before landing more permanently with Texas Christian University in 2014.
“Yeah, we grew up in the same town, Cerritos, California,” says Stankiewicz. “And we played Pop Warner football on the same team, and Little League in the same league. We were like ten years old, I guess, and we just grew up together and became good friends. We pulled for one another, respected one another and we were in each other’s wedding. So that’s how far we go back.”
The legend…venerable Rod Dedeaux won 11 NCAA baseball titles with USC, and five in a row from 1970 thru 1974.
Ironic from a career standpoint, how both now stand on the threshold of restoring the baseball glory of their respective schools – Stankiewicz, who’s all too familiar with the legacy of Rod Dedeaux (pronounced Day-Doe) and the Trojan dynasty…and Mosiello, with his pledge to create sustained relevance at Ohio State in something besides football.
“A lot of great things have happened with college baseball over the years,” says Stankiewicz, waxing on the expectations in Los Angeles and a hoped-for return to those glory days.
“The popularity of the game has blown up. It used to be that if you got drafted out of high school you just signed. But now players and parents look around and see beautiful stadiums, great college coaches, the opportunity to get a degree, and they see college baseball as a win-win. There’s a lot of pluses and you’re seeing a lot of young men choosing college baseball over signing [professionally]. It’s a good thing. It’s a competitive start to a competitive world we live in. It’s all good for the young player who wants to become the best he can be, overall.”
Back in Columbus, Mosiello smiles at the mere mention of Stankiewicz, their backgrounds together and his boyhood friend’s opportunity at USC.
“He’s a super guy, my best friend and a great baseball coach,” says ‘Mo’. “He does a lot of things right. He cares about his kids and he respects the opportunity of coaching at a place like Southern California.
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“It’s really a tough job. There was a time when Rod Dedeaux got every player he wanted (Tom Seaver, Fred Lynn, Dave Kingman, Steve Kemp, Mark McGwire, Aaron Boone and a hundred more like them). “It’s always been an expensive place to go to school. Back then it was $18,000 a year. Now it’s $70,000 a year. That makes a difference on who can come to USC and who can’t. You don’t get every kid like you used to.
“It’s a unique place, but Andy’s the right guy for there. He’s got that balance of being a competitor, and he gets along with people. You don’t hear people say bad things about him, and there aren’t very many people like that in the world.”
USC is not part of the state-supported university system in California. Rather, it’s the state’s oldest privately-funded university and far smaller (approximately 21,500) than schools like Cal Berkeley (33,000) and UCLA (35,000).
But while the culture of college baseball is different now than the Dedeaux era, Stankiewicz shares that the expectation for winning is still strong at USC and like any other Division I NCAA job, there is a pressure to produce. Like Mosiello, he agrees it’s tougher than it used to be.
“There’s a lot of great baseball around the country now. We’re competing against some programs with a lot of money. They have a lot of facilities and now there’s NIL. That’s not an excuse, I’m just saying that the competition now is pretty doggone tough.
“But are there expectations in the tradition of USC baseball? Yes, I feel them every day. I understand where I am and I know that if we don’t win I’m going to get fired.”
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The first returns, however, point towards a more traditional prognosis. Prior to his taking over the program in 2023, the 2022 Trojans finished 25-28, overall and just 8-22 in the PAC 12 standings. In Stankiewicz’s first year (2023), they flipped the record to 11 games over .500, finishing 34-23, overall and 17-13 in conference play, rising from last place to fourth.
But he quickly pivots when you talk about relationships and his threshold of modulation to baseball in the Midwest.
“Give my boy ‘Mo’ my best, man,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m excited for him, I’m proud of him and I’m proud of the opportunity he’s gotten. Obviously he’s one of my best friends, but there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s also one of the best baseball people I’ve ever been around.”
You can tell by listening, even over the phone. They go back a ways – way, way back.
Fifty years, and here in Arizona, still counting.
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