Bakich wants his players to have a team-first mentality, not worry about Twitter swing

Erik Bakich and the Tigers are close to the start of the season (Photo by Merrell Mann).

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Sun Feb 12 07:01:06 GMT-04:00 2023

CLEMSON – Erik Bakich knows this Clemson baseball team is talented from the neck down, but he wants to see them flourish from the neck up this season.

Bakich enters his inaugural season at the helm of the Tigers after spending the last 10 seasons at Michigan, where he went 111-69 and advanced to the NCAA Tournament each of those seasons. In 2019, Bakich led Michigan to its first College World Series appearance in 35 years. The Wolverines finished that season as the national runner-up.

He wants that same type of success at Clemson, and he said recently that his players are physically talented.

“The talent on our roster from the neck down, I would put up against any team that we had at Michigan,” he said. “We had some pretty talented teams, but the physical talent from the neck down on the baseball team right now - I've said it many times, the previous staff did a great job of accumulating a lot of physically talented players. And it's been eye-opening to see how some of them have, No. 1, gotten better, but No. 2, just their God-given natural abilities. It's been very impressive.”

His teams at Michigan made the most of their abilities because of how they used their heads.

“We got the most out of our teams at Michigan not because we were the most talented team from the neck down but because of what we had from the neck up,” Bakich said. “Everybody is born with a certain level of toughness, leadership, and those character traits that are also learnable traits. Everybody is born with a certain level, but everybody can improve those levels. So that classroom curriculum, and that classroom in general, I would say was the most valuable piece of real estate in this stadium this past fall. The talent from the neck down, the collection of baseball talent, is phenomenal.

“I’ve said a million times that the previous staff did an awesome job of recruiting some awesome baseball players. For us, it was getting them to have this collective buy-in that Clemson is not their three-year stepping stone to pro ball. That may be a byproduct of having very successful teams, but it’s just this team-first mentality and understanding that there’s been a lot of great teams and a lot of great players that have come before them. We’re just standing on their shoulders, and we’re trying to add as much value to an already storied program as possible.”

Bakich sounds a lot like another Clemson coach – head football coach Dabo Swinney – when describing the type of players - and men - he wants to build.

“It follows this philosophy personally that if you want to have a great team, you’ve got to have a bunch of great teammates,” Bakich said. “Building a teammate is where we do it in the classroom, and building the teammate is simply building the person, building the man, building the future husband, the future father, the future community leader. So you’ve got to get out in the community, you’ve got to engage with this community, and you’ve got to take the target off of yourself and not think I’m going to go be an independent contractor at the plate and just try to do my Twitter swing

“But I’m playing team baseball. It’s not nine independent contractors at the plate trying to get their swings off. It’s we’re a super run-scoring unit, and the offense is about scoring runs, the defense is about preventing runs, and we’re working in constant synergy together because we are one team. We do our separate stuff, but we’re together in everything.”

Bakich said champions are made before the season starts.

“It’s just tightening that circle and getting that collective buy-in, and I feel like that’s where we’ve made the most strides. What’s going to happen on the field is going to happen on the field,” he said. “It just feels like we’re not missing anything and we’re not lacking anything from a physical talent standpoint, and connecting those dots from the neck up is what’s going to make us a championship team. Because champions behave like champions before they become champions. How you do anything is how you do everything, so what they do in the classroom from a GPA standpoint is connected to the community service, which is connected to playing well on the field.”