For newly minted Penn State baseball coach Mike Gambino, it’s an interesting choice to do what he has done: uproot his family from a happy and familiar existence in the Boston area and travel to the fairly remote world of Happy Valley to coach a baseball team that has accomplished the better part of nothing for the better part of forever.
The compensation is likely there, although Penn State did not — as per standard operating procedures — disclose the terms of Gambino’s contract. Broadly, the Penn State athletic department itself pulls in more money and more national cache than that of Boston College. So it’s not as though it doesn’t make any sense if Gambino would like to raise a family in State College under the banner of a more substantial brand. All the same, life was fairly simple, and Gambino — fresh off of singing a five-year contract extension at Boston College two weeks prior to taking the Penn State job — wasn’t on the ropes at his alma mater where he was the head coach for the last 13 years..
“Leaving Boston College — there were a lot of knowns [there] for sure,” Gambino told StateCollege.com “But there were a lot of challenges there; there are a lot of challenges everywhere, right? So yes, the unknowns here are everything from, you know, where are the baseballs? I don’t even know where the baseballs are right now. But I think the challenges from a program standpoint, and addressing those challenges and being able to grow and make a program better from top to bottom, that is what’s exciting. The challenges are what is exciting to me. Right? Pressures are a privilege … so yes the job has challenges, yes. It is a job that needs a larger investment, in a lot of ways — a lot of the things are coming — but the challenges are what make it exciting to me.”
The challenges are plenty at Penn State, where baseball is usually far from the first sport people think of when it comes to Nittany Lion athletic offerings. It’s certainly not for a lack of trying, longtime head coach Rob Cooper giving it effectively a decade of effort to take small step after small step in positive directions. It’s also not for a lack of general facilities, Medlar Field at Lubrano Park not hurting for a view, amenities or general quality. While it might not be the state-of-the-art building some programs have, it certainly isn’t a weak point either. A handful of renovations are in the pipeline already as well. Other things like the region’s less-than-optimal baseball weather are more existential challenges, although Penn State’s pending olympic sport indoor practice facility could help there some.
For his part, Gambino says all the right things and ticks off all the right boxes for a program that needs someone willing to take on the seemingly impossible. If Micah Shrewsberry coached Penn State men’s basketball with one eye politely always on the door, Gambino seems willing to take on what lies ahead. Then again, it would be alarming if a new head coach took on his opening press conference with anything less than unbridled enthusiasm. (Penn State did not disclose when asked if it bought out Gambino’s recently signed five-year deal.) Also true, Penn State’s own missteps may have played into Shrewsberry’s departure as much as anything did. A story to rehash at another time.
Back to baseball, the hope is Gambino can turn his program-building experiences at Boston College into something similar at Penn State. The familiarity Gambino has with Vice President for Intercollegiate Athletics Pat Kraft, who was BC’s AD from 2020 to 2022, ought to only help in that matter, but the reality is all of this is going to come down to player acquisition and development. It will also come down to Gambino’s tolerance for the unavoidable angst that is paired with difficult jobs. There will undoubtedly be failure, but Gambino’s own experiences and his relationship with the grind of program building could make him more prepared for the challenge than others with a more impressive resume.
“We didn’t even have a full-time baseball field until five years ago,” Gambino said of Boston College. “So we were competing at a place where our baseball field was also the practice football field and was also the intramural field. We didn’t have a full staff there. So, coming from a place that had a ton of challenges to a place that is also going to have a ton of challenges, that’s one of the fun and exciting things, and trying to figure out a way to build something out [of what we have.]”
Gambino shares the ambitions of Kraft when it comes to what Penn State baseball could become one day. Then again, nobody takes a job wanting to settle for some lukewarm result. All the same, there is a bit more immediate pragmatism in Gambino’s voice when he talks about the immediate future — getting better at multitasking, finding a house, finding his office. The list is pretty basic right now.
“I hope that in a year, we can look at the progress that we have started to make here,” Gambino said. “And the current players, the former players, the fans can look and say, you know, there’s a foundation that’s starting to be laid. We’re starting to have some success, and we can see that the program is starting to grow and build.”
It seems obtainable and Gambino’s enthusiasm makes it seem possible as well. The question of what happens next is a matter that only the passage of time can reveal.
