The head coach steps out onto the baseball diamond and into the afternoon sunlight. As his team stretches on the outfield grass, Larry Lee can be seen cracking a smile near the dugout. It’s a smile that will likely be replaced by a much more determined face once the practice session begins. In his 10th year on the job, the homegrown coach has plenty to grin at, but today it’s going to be strictly business.
Along with the sound of aluminum bats, Lee’s calm, yet hard-nosed demeanor resonates through the air as he instructs the Cal Poly baseball team on the structure of practice. The squad is coming off a recent 3-1 series win against non-conference opponent Cal State Bakersfield and is looking forward to the dying stretch of a grueling 56-game schedule. It’s Lee’s job to make sure his guys don’t dwell on the season behind them, but rather, focus on the remaining six conference games ahead of them.
“This team understands how important every win is,” Lee said in a nonchalant tone. “We’ve stressed that throughout the course of the year … but we really don’t bring it up anymore; we know that we have to win as many games as possible. And if that’s good enough, then great; and if not, that will be disappointing.”
Lee was raised just a few blocks away from Cal Poly’s campus and Baggett Stadium. As a kid, his life was consumed by sports. His father coached baseball, basketball, football and most notably, the boxing team in 38 years at Cal Poly. His mother was also a coach and a teacher at San Luis Obispo High School.
After many successful seasons, including one that produced a national champion boxer in Eduardo Ochoa, Tom Lee was inducted into the Cal Poly Athletics Hall of Fame in 1990. Lee said that without his dad’s influence, he might not be coaching today.
“We were all influenced by my dad,” he said. “We were just brainwashed into sports.”
Growing up, Lee was a three-sport athlete playing basketball, football and baseball. While talented in all, the coach decided to pursue baseball in college and professionally, following in his brothers’ footsteps.
Lee was the youngest of three brothers and admits he had a better capacity to understand his potential as a professional baseball player after college. Lee, a 1979 San Luis Obispo High alumnus, played baseball for Santa Barbara City College and Orange Coast College before transferring to Pepperdine University. He had a laudable career with the Waves, batting .304 overall, and helped the team earn an NCAA West Regional berth as a junior.
He went on to play a year in the minor leagues with the Utica Blue Sox before making an impromptu decision to leave his playing career behind in his second year as a professional. Lee finished his career in the Seattle Mariners’ organization.
“I weighed my options, and I didn’t think I was going to play at the major-league level,” he said. “So, I actually walked out of spring training.”
Two days later he was back in San Luis Obispo taking classes, working his way to a master’s degree in physical education. It was where Lee belonged, and he doesn’t regret the decision.
“Cal Poly was like my backyard (growing up),” he said. “Especially in the summers, I spent a lot of time here … I’m sure I made the right choice.”
His decision to walk out on a potentially lucrative professional career wasn’t a childish impulse based on poor performance; in fact, it was quite the opposite. Lee, a mature 23-year-old, hit over .300 in the minors, but having seen his brothers’ futile attempts to make it to the highest level, he opted for a change of careers. His true passion rested on coaching, just like his father.
Lee took the reins of the Cuesta College baseball team in 1986 and didn’t let go for the next 16 years. He amassed an exceptional 460-241-3 record with the Cougars and led the team to 11 regional appearances, including four trips to the California Community College State Final Four in his final 13 years. He is currently 15th in all-time wins among community college coaches.
“There’s a lot of people in college baseball that know the game forward and backward, but I think there are only a handful of guys who can really teach fundamentals of baseball (like Lee does) in a way that 18-, 19-, 20-year-old kids can really pick up on,” Cal Poly pitching coach Jason Kelly said.
Lee brought his coaching touch to Cal Poly in 2003. With it, he inherited a team that plays in one of the toughest collegiate baseball conferences in the country, essentially facing baseball royalty in Cal State Fullerton and Long Beach State.
In addition to playing Big West foes, Lee schedules tough non-conference opponents to bolster his team’s visibility to the NCAA selection committee. Even so, the fact that it’s a lesser known baseball school on the West Coast has proved tough for Cal Poly to earn an NCAA Regional bid in recent years.
Overall, Lee said he is critical of the NCAA’s RPI formula that ranks teams based on their wins, losses and strength of schedule.
“You still have to win ballgames,” Lee said. “Each year, there’s always three or four teams out in the West that should be playing postseason baseball that don’t.”
The Mustangs have reached the postseason only once in Lee’s tenure — a 2009 stint in the Tempe Regional where they lost 10-9 to Kent State and 13-3 to Oral Roberts. Nevertheless, he’s produced three All-Americans and has had 45 players sign professional contracts in his time at the helm — Mustang alumni Bud Norris and Kevin Correia are starting pitchers for the Astros and Pirates, respectively. Lee also owns a 303-252-2 record and passed Berdy Harr as the winningest baseball coach in Cal Poly history earlier this season.
Among baseball critics, Lee is known to be an excellent developer of young, raw talent on the diamond. But just as with any other acclaim, he simply shrugs off this distinction by mentioning that it’s just the way he’s “wired.”
“I’d feel guilty if each day I didn’t try to make each individual better at what they do,” Lee said. “It’s paying attention to detail, it’s being out there with them, it’s creating an environment to develop. That’s just the way I’ve always been.”
His most prolific offensive weapon in 2012 has been junior center fielder Mitch Haniger. Cal Poly’s No. 1 pro prospect leads the Big West in home runs (11) and RBI with 54 knocked in. For Haniger, Lee boasts an attitude that fosters success in the clubhouse.
“(Lee) brings a blue collar type of mindset to the field, and it reflects on us by working hard,” Haniger said.
Lee spends countless hours working with his hitters and position players. He isn’t shy of working overtime after practice to help improve their swing and their mechanics, Haniger said.
“(Lee) is one of the reasons why I chose Cal Poly,” Haniger said. “He really preaches being the best hitter you can be.”
Kelly is also a product of Lee’s tutelage and understands his unrivaled ability to connect with the young “kids” on the diamond.
Kelly was a pitcher under Lee at Cuesta in 2001. Although Kelly only pitched for a single season with the Cougars, Lee liked what he saw from the hurler and asked him to join the Mustang staff in 2007.
In his seven years spent with Lee, Kelly said he most fondly remembers his days at Cuesta. In a regional championship game in 2001, Kelly recounts Lee’s elation following a walk-off home run hit by the ninth batter in the order. As soon as the ball left the hitter’s bat, Lee put his hands up in anticipation of the game-winning drive and let out an uncharacteristic, euphoric yell to punctuate an important win for the Cougars.
“That was one of the first times when I was like ‘Holy cow, this is big; this is a big deal to him,’” Kelly said. “Seeing that raw emotion from him was a really cool thing.”
Raw emotion isn’t Lee’s thing necessarily, though. His demeanor comes off as stoic and professional — those that know him best say that isn’t always the case though. As a leader, it’s necessary for him to present himself in a collected manner for his players to emulate, but underneath that harder outer shell lies a softer core. He’s a “player’s coach,” Kelly said.
Senior starting pitcher Kyle Anderson agreed that Lee’s disposition might be a bit intimidating as a young player, but his ultimate goal is to help players reach their full potential.
“He tells you how it is,” Anderson said. “He’s not gonna sugarcoat anything. If you’re not doing well, he’ll tell you you’re bad. It only helps you out though.”
Six games left in the regular season means six more opportunities to make an impression on the NCAA selection committee. But Lee isn’t stressing over the final two weeks of the season. He said he believes that if this team truly deserves to make it to the postseason, all its hard work will pay off and it will earn a bid.
When asked if he thinks the 2012 squad has what it takes to make it to regionals, Lee apathetically shrugged and said, “We’ll see.”