If you have a son playing college baseball for the first time it’s important to know. Plain and simple, it’s different from the culture and expectations you’ve previously experienced. Be prepared.
Phoenix, AZ – On opening day of the 2025 NCAA baseball season…and a wonderful experience for both college athlete, and family, alike…I’m going to share a pillar truth about college baseball – college sports, in general.
Plain and simple, it’s different – this level of baseball and competition. The mindset, the expectations, and the reality of what happens day-to-day has consequences you never experienced in high school – far beyond short-term excitement, and emotion.
Blast from the past…former Buckeye reliever Brett McKinney nails down a win during the 2013 season.
It’s a different culture – the responsibilities – how everyone ascends to the next level of reality and duty. The stakes are higher for program and athletes, alike, and that’s a good thing for the matriculation of student-athletes becoming young adults.
Several years ago, while covering another baseball beat, I witnessed the situation of a young freshman called in to pitch his team out of a bases-loaded jam on opening weekend. The game was on the line, his team up a run in the bottom of the ninth, but momentum was squarely on the side of home team. He needed two outs, and this was his first collegiate experience.
He got the first out on a popup in foul territory…on his second pitch.
Then he got the final out…on a 3-2 count, a pitch that the hitter chased. Game over, the win secured, the young pitcher threw a total of just nine pitches.
Celebration, of course, with his teammates, and later with his family, who had traveled far to share his debut as a college baseball player – a dreamed-about experience for hundreds of young men each year.
This was on Friday, the first of a three-game series in the sunny South, in a new culture where success can never be taken for granted. It can dull your mental preparedness, and that’s exactly what happened.
Because on Sunday, just 48 hours later, this same young pitcher was called into the game again. This time it didn’t go well – a line drive to the outfield that drove in a pair of runs. Down a run at this point, the next hitter delivered the hammer, a two-run homer that ensured a series-clinching win.
The euphoria of Friday was suddenly gone, replaced by the reality that no one in Division I college baseball is invincible, or lucky all the time. Mistakes in the strike zone do get popped up, but not nearly as often as in high school.
The player’s family, who celebrated with him on Friday, was now moved to console.
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“He didn’t deserve that,” someone mentioned in the parking lot as family and fans packed up for the trip back home. “He did his job on Friday. Someone else needed to step up today.”
Take a breath. And consider what I just wrote. Because it happened, I witnessed it, and it will happen countless times this weekend. It’s college baseball – something different from what you just left.
It’s a culture of daily, not weekly, expectation. If there had been someone else trusted he would have been in the game. There’s no such thing of you doing your job on Friday, and then getting six days off before you’re asked to do it again. It may happen, but no guarantees.
It’s a culture where careers are on the line in some cases, governed by consistency.
Coaches’ futures are at stake. In some cases…legacies. They’re known, they’re hired, and they’re fired for their ability to pick and develop talent that can deliver a winning outcome. And rarely do they make the excuse, publicly, of a player not doing his job, because failure is a part of baseball. But they do remember.
It’s an emotion, and a reality, that everyone who’s played the game has experienced. First impressions are good; but second chances, and what you do with them, are more realistic, and often more important.
Columnist Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA sports and Ohio State baseball for Press Pros Magazine.com.
Baseball at this level is about executing, delivering on the training you get on a daily basis. Practice is not a routine, like in high school. When it’s time to bunt success is expected. With two strikes and a man in scoring position you have to make contact. Striking out is not an option, just like walking the leadoff hitter.
The margin for error is less, and the sooner you understand, and make the mental adjustment the better the experience is for everyone.
Baseball at the professional level is often referred to as a job. As a parent, this is just the next step in that pursuit, should your child be so fortunate. No different than your own career experience.
Baseball is no longer just a Friday responsibility. Now, you have to be ready for Saturday, and sometimes…Sunday!
Baseball is supposed to be fun, that’s true. But this is a different culture of fun, the best you’ll ever know.
It can set you apart.
And if you can pull it off…it only gets better from here.
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