Beginning play in 1915, and Mid-American Conference (MAC) play in 1948, Miami has made the NCAA Division I Baseball Championship 7 times. The team has won 4 MAC conference championships, 3 MAC East Division titles (divisional play in the MAC was held from 1998-2017), and 3 MAC Tournament titles (the tournament began in 1981).[3][4] The team plays its home games at McKie Field at Hayden Park in Oxford, Ohio.
Miami Baseball Hall of Famer
Walter Alston, Dodgers 1976.
Walter Alston lettered three years for Miami in both baseball and basketball. He played professionally for the St. Louis Cardinals organization, playing just one game at the major league level (two innings, one at bat) in 1936. After stints in the minors as both a player and manager, Alston returned to the big leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers as manager in 1954, then moved with the team to Los Angeles in 1958, where he coached until retiring in 1976.[5][6]
Alston won seven National League pennants in his 23 year tenure as Dodgers manager. The franchise won four world championships as well -- in 1955 with Brooklyn and in 1959, 1963 and 1965 with Los Angeles. Named Manager of the Year three times, Alston also guided a victorious National League All-Star squad a record seven times. He retired after the 1976 season with 2,063 wins (2,040 in the regular season and 23 in the postseason) and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1983.[7][8]
Alston is a charter member of the Miami Athletics Hall of Fame,[9] inducted in 1969. In 2001, indicative of the history of developing coaches at the university, Alston was inducted into the Miami Cradle of Coaches alongside Miami legends such as Ara Parseghian, Weeb Ewbank and Paul Brown.[10]
Charlie Liebrandt, First Team All-MAC in 1978, won 140 games in a stellar 14-year MLB career, including helping the Kansas City Royals to a World Series title in 1985.[16][3]Steve Fireovid pitched for 6 seasons in the majors, but is perhaps best known as the subject of the book The 26th Man: One Minor League Pitcher's Pursuit of a Dream, written with fellow Miami alumnus Mark Winegardner. In 1990, while pitching for the Montreal Expos’ Triple-A affiliate Indianapolis Indians, Fireovid composed a journal of his experiences. The journal was turned into a book, The 26th Man: One Minor League Pitcher's Pursuit of a Dream in 1991.[17] The book was co-authored by Winegardner.[18]
And Miami continues to serve as a launching pad for coaches. Tracy Smith played for Miami (1985-1988), coached the RedHawks (1997-2005), including the 2005 MAC regular season and MAC Tournament championship team, and has also led Arizona State, Indiana and the Michigan Wolverines.[22] Smith was named the Big Ten and National Coach of the Year in 2014. Danny Hall was a 4-year letterman for Miami baseball (1974-1977), served as the head coach for Georgia Tech for over 30 years, and is a member of the Cradle of Coaches along with Smith.[10]
In total, since the Major League Baseball Draft began in 1965, Miami has had over 74 players selected. [23] Robert Bixler was the first Miamian ever drafted, in the 46th round by the Detroit Tigers in the inaugural draft, who would go unsigned.[24] Over 26 RedHawk players have appeared in the major leagues, [25] and 9 have been honored as All-American - Gary Cooper (1972), Buddy Schultz (1972), Dennis Smith (1973), Mark Naehring (1977), Bill Doran (1979), Jason Knoedler (2001), Michael Carlin (2002), Mike Ferris (2004), and John Slone (2004).[3]
