USC’s first full-time head baseball coach Harvey Holmes (standing, left) and members of his 1908 team, which went 17-2.Fred Lynn

USC’s first full-time head baseball coach Harvey Holmes (standing, left) and members of his 1908 team, which went 17-2.

The Early Years (1889-1923)

Scheduling in the earliest days of USC baseball had about as much consistency as Yogi Berra’s grammar. USC played its first baseball game on Nov. 23, 1889, losing to a club team called Bonny Brae, 13-10, on a campus field. Records don’t indicate another game until Feb. 20, 1892, when USC logged a 14-13 win over Woodbury Business College on its way to an undefeated (5-0-1) season. The 1893 season began prior to the calendar year with a 13-0 victory over El Monte on Oct. 29, 1892. Although 10 games were played that season, records show USC playing only a combined total of three games over the next four years.

The program regrouped in 1898, going 8-3 with L.W. Umsted serving as manager and catcher, but wavered without distinction again until 1902, when Hall of Fame pitcher Rube Waddell, who starred for the Philadelphia Athletics and three other teams, directed the team in early-season training.

A limited number of games were played each season thereafter until 1905, when a 12-game schedule included the first international game, in which USC lost to Waseda of Japan, 13-6. Official statistics were first kept in 1906, when shortstop and captain Walter Bridewell hit .461. In 1908, USC’s first full-time head baseball coach was named.

Harvey Holmes, who had coached the Trojan football team from 1904-07, led Troy to a 17-2 mark for the season. The next USC team with an official head coach was the 1911 squad. Curtiss Bernard, a professional player for the Pacific Coast League’s Los Angeles Angels, led the Trojans to a 10-3 mark. Another PCL player, Len Burrell, took over the following season.

Then, in May 1913, USC baseball was abolished in order to focus all springtime athletic pursuits on the track and field team. For the next three years, the university’s law school team represented Troy on the baseball field, with the squad open to non-law students the last two years. George Wheeler, who played for the National League’s Philadelphia Phillies in the 1890s, led the law school team to an 8-2 record in 1914.

Ralph Glaze, the Trojan head football coach in 1914-15, took command of the baseball program in 1915, and Charles “Pat” Millikan was head coach in 1916. In 1917, Phil Koerner, a first baseman for the Los Angeles Angels, was named USC’s head coach, but he was traded to San Francisco midway through the season, so Millikan reassumed control for the remainder of the year. Students organized one game in 1918, a 3-2 loss to Union Oil on March 24, but other than that baseball was not played in 1918-19 due to World War I.

The then-not-yet grand old game was brought back as a full-fledged university sport in 1920, with famed football coach Elmer “Gloomy Gus” Henderson leading the squad to a 9-4-1 record. The 1921 team co-coached by Henderson and Willis O. Hunter was also very successful: 9-3 overall.

Records don’t indicate who coached the 1922 squad, but Wheeler returned to coach USC for one more year in 1923.

The Sam Crawford Era (1924-29)

The rest of the 1920s belonged to Sam “Wahoo” Crawford, who brought USC baseball to prominence by actively seeking to enlarge the schedule and improve it through tougher competition. He was a key force in the development of the California Intercollegiate Baseball Association, founded in 1927 by USC, California, St. Mary’s, Santa Clara and Stanford, and led USC to a second-place finish in the CIBA’s initial campaign. Crawford was 59-46-3 in all games, 55-33 against other college teams and 19-19 in CIBA games.

The CIBA lasted until 1966, with a brief resurrection in 1976. Through its first 40 years, other CIBA schools included Loyola Marymount, UCLA, Occidental, Pepperdine, the University of San Francisco and Whittier. In 1967, USC joined the Athletic Association of Western Universities, with Cal, Oregon, Oregon State, Stanford, UCLA, Washington and Washington State. The AAWU changed its name to the Pacific-8 Conference in 1968, and in 1979, Arizona and Arizona State joined the conference.

The Sam Barry Era (1930-41)


Coach Sam Barry, whose teams won five CIBA crowns and posted five seasons of 20-plus wins.

In 1930, Sam Barry took the baton from Crawford in full stride. His first USC team went 25-5-1 overall, 15-2-1 in college games and 11-2 in the CIBA to take the league title. He ended up with five CIBA crowns (including two ties), five seasons of 20-plus wins and career marks of 219-89-3 against all competition, 133-54-2 versus college opponents and 112-52 in conference games.

In a unique situation, Barry and Rod Dedeaux were co-head coaches in 1942 — until Barry left to join the Navy during World War II — and from 1946 until Barry’s death in 1950. The duo led USC to CIBA championships in five of the six years, including 1948, a significant milestone year for the Trojan program. Not only did USC get its first 40-win season that year, but it also won its first national championship, against Yale. The final marks for the Barry-Dedeaux tandem were 170-70-3 overall, 110-28 against college foes and 67-18 in CIBA games.

The Rod Dedeaux Era (1943-45, 1951-86)

When Barry joined the Navy in 1942, Dedeaux was left as the sole head coach for the next three years, and he made good on the opportunity, finishing second in the CIBA every year. In the 11 years after Barry’s death, with Dedeaux at the helm, USC won 11 CIBA championships (including two ties) and two national titles (1958 and 1961). After falling to second place in the CIBA in 1962, the Trojans came back with a vengeance in 1963 by taking the league and national titles.

USC was 17-3 in the CIBA in 1964 and finished fourth in the College World Series. The next season was a rebuilding year, but the Trojans still went 30-15-1. USC returned to Omaha, long-time home of the Series, in 1966, finishing third. The Trojans again “struggled” in 1967, finishing third in the CIBA and going 38-13-2 overall.

Then the streak, among the most remarkable accomplishments in collegiate athletics, took off. Dedeaux won seven NCAA crowns between 1968 and 1978, including five in a row from 1970-74. The “worst” year in that span came in 1969, when USC went 13-8 in league play to finish third. The best season, arguably, was 1971: the Trojans won all 17 of the conference games, went 54-13 overall and took the CWS championship (losing only to Southern Illinois, whom they beat later in the series). USC was perfect in CSW play in 1968, 1972, 1973 and 1978, going 5-0 each year. Seven 50-plus win seasons were included in the 1968-78 run.


Tom Seaver is the first Trojan player elected to the baseball Hall of Fame; his 98.8 percent of the vote in 1992 was the highest percentage ever.


USC has had at least oneplayer selected each year since theprofessional baseball draft began in 1965.

When Dedeaux stopped coaching after the 1986 season to become USC’s director of baseball, he left behind a record that may never be surpassed. He had winning seasons in 41 of his 45 years — in one stretch, USC went 37 years without a losing campaign. His 1,332 wins (with only 571 losses and 11 ties) were more than any other Division I baseball coach in history until Texas’ Cliff Gustafson eclipsed the mark in 1994. Dedeaux was an on-the-field part of 11 Trojan national championships (he won 10 of his own and co-coached with Barry for the other one). He developed numerous future professional players, including Tom Seaver, Rich Dauer, Ron Fairly, Dave Kingman, Fred Lynn, Roy Smalley, Randy Johnson and Mark McGwire.


Randy Johnson

The Mike Gillespie Era (1987-present)

After winning 72 percent of his games as head coach of College of the Canyons in Valencia, Calif., Mike Gillespie returned to his alma mater, where he had played for Dedeaux from 1960-62. He brought a new style of Trojan baseball, based on sound
execution of the fundamentals and an aggressiveness geared to pressuring opponents.

Gillespie has guided USC to three Pac-10 Southern Division crowns in the past eight years (1991-95-96); 10 trips to the NCAA playoffs in 12 years (reaching the regional finals eight times and coming within one game of the College World Series in 1988 and 1990); a 1995 trip to the College World Series, where Troy came out of the loser’s bracket to reach the finals; and, in 1998, the National Championship, when the Trojans won their last five games in the College World Series to capture the university’s first national title in baseball since 1978.

The National Championships

USC has won 12 NCAA baseball titles, more than any other school. Arizona State, with five NCAA crowns, is second.

The first Trojan national championship came in 1948. At the second-ever College World Series in Kalamazoo, Mich., USC bat-tled Yale in a best-two-out-of-three confron-tation for the title. The hero in the deciding game was second baseman Art Mazmanian, who went 3-for-3 with a sacrifice and scored the run in the first inning that gave USC a lead it never relinquished. For Yale, first baseman and future President George Bush had a double in four at-bats in the final game.

The next USC title came 10 years later, when Troy went 5-1 at the 1958 CWS, losing only to Holy Cross, a team USC later beat in the series. In one of the most exciting championship games in baseball history, USC beat Missouri, 8-7, in 12 innings after trailing, 4-0. Third baseman Mike Blewett won the game for USC with a single to right field in the bottom of the 12th to send Rex Johnston home from third with the winning run. Bill Thom pitched 4-2/3 scoreless relief innings to get credit for the win. Thom shut out the Tigers, 7-0, the night before the 12-inning marathon to keep USC’s hopes alive.

The 1961 championship game was exciting as well. This time it was a 1-0 victory over Oklahoma State that gave USC the crown. With no score and one out in the eighth inning, leftfielder Mike Gillespie (yes, the future Trojan head coach) doubled to the left-centerfield fence. One out later, 27-year-old rightfielder Art Ersepke drove Gillespie home with a single. Trojan pitcher John Withers extended his record to 12-1 with the shutout, in which he gave up only four hits and struck out 13.

The next NCAA title came in 1963, when USC lost its first CWS game, then had to win every other game to stay alive. Troy did that and eventually defeated Arizona, 5-2, to take the title, with Walt Peterson pitching a complete game and striking out nine.

If the mark of a good team is the ability to win close games, the 1968 USC team was very good. That team went undefeated in Omaha, though winning no CWS game by more than two runs. The championship was clinched with a 4-3 victory over Southern Illinois. Pitcher Brent Strom got the win.

Two years later USC won the first of an unprecedented five straight NCAA baseball titles, going 15 innings in the 1970 CWS championsnip game to beat Florida State, 2-1, with Jim Barr pitching eight scoreless innings in relief to get his 14th win of the season against only two losses.

In 1971, as they did in 1968, the Trojans beat Southern Illinois to take the NCAA crown. Alfano and Craig Perkins hit homers, and Steve Busby got the complete-game pitching victory. Fred Lynn hit .467 (7-for-15) in the CWS with a home run. USC’s 7-2 win in the championship game avenged an 8-3 loss earlier in the Series at the hands of the Salukis.

USC won the 1972 CWS despite hitting only .198 for the Series. Mark Sogge and Russ McQueen combined on a six-hitter to shut out Arizona State, 1-0, for the title. McQueen pitched 14 innings without giving up a run in the CWS and got the clinching victory over ASU, which entered the game with a 64-5 record.

The highlight of the 1973 CWS was USC’s incredible 8-7 victory over Minne-sota in one of the greatest comebacks in NCAA history. Going into the bottom of the ninth, the Trojans were being shut out, 7-0, by Gopher pitcher and future major leaguer Dave Winfield. Troy came up with eight singles, a sacrifice fly and a stolen base to score eight runs and win the game. USC went on to defeat the Sun Devils, 4-3, in the title game, this time behind an offense that featured Lynn, shortstop Roy Smalley and third baseman Rich Dauer.


Fred Lynn

Infielder Dauer and designated hitter Steve Kemp starred for the 1974 NCAA-champion Trojans, who beat Miami (Fla.), 7-3, in the final game. Trojan pitchers John Racanelli and George Milke combined to strike out 10 Hurricanes (allowing no earned runs) in the clincher, while second baseman Rob Adolph, a backup to quarterback Pat Haden on the football team, hit a two-run home run. USC went 50-20 overall to take its fifth title in a row. No other team has won more than two in succession.

USC’s 11th national title came in 1978, a 54-9 season. The squad set a then-school home run record with 81, and had a .313 batting average and 2.73 earned run average for the season. The Trojans featured future major leaguers Dave Engle, Dave Hostetler, Dave Van Gorder and Tim Tolman. Once again they beat Arizona State in the final CWS game, 10-3, as Hostetler hit a homer and Bill Bordley got the pitching win.