IMPROPER BOSTONIAN: Irrepressible Walsh Coaches Harvard His Way

Joe Walsh’s first appearance on a Harvard field was not on the fresh spring morning of an Ivy League doubleheader, with lazy blue skies overhead and Crimson faithful dotting the stands.

Nor was it at a crisp New England fall practice as the team kicked off the school year with a few scrimmages before snowfall forced them indoors.

Nothing half so picturesque for the jovial Boston native.

No, Walsh’s inaugural practice on the Harvard turf occurred inauspiciously, more than eight years ago, in a fervent midnight usurpation of the Crimson’s facilities. Suffolk University, his alma mater and coaching home of 14 years, had no home field.

“We had t-shirts that used to say every year, ‘No Field, No Cage, No Problem,’” Walsh recalls fondly.

This predicament left the savvy coach no choice but to pilfer Harvard’s playing fields just to give his pitchers a mound to throw off. Undeterred by the lack of their own facilties, Walsh and his players would hop the fence and borrow the Crimson’s pitching mounds, tuning their change-ups and slinging their fastballs until dawn (or the athletic director) appeared to chase them off the premises.

“We had dubbed ourselves the Mutts; we were homeless,” Walsh says, remembering how a previous Harvard baseball coach, Alex Nahigian, would kick him out after Walsh had snuck in the back door of the field house.

Assistant coach Gary Donovan, who was with Walsh for seven years at Suffolk and followed him to Harvard, recollects how they used to scrounge for available fields.

“We were a group of vagabonds,” says Donovan.

But trespassing laws be damned when there’s baseball to practice. For Walsh, no measure was too extreme when it came to getting his team playing time, even for the low-on-the-radar Division III Rams. After 14 years as head coach at Suffolk, Walsh was used to scrambling for practice space in any way he could. In an effort to play the maximum number of games possible, he once split his squad so that they could play two opponents on separate fields simultaneously. It was challenging, but exhilarating. It made their wins all the more impressive. It was consistent with Walsh’s hard-nosed, scrappy approach to the game. He was homeless, and he was proud of it.

All that changed for Walsh when Harvard grad Joe O’Donnell made a hefty donation to the baseball program, providing for the first time the monetary opportunity for a full-time coach. When then-athletic director Bill Cleary called up Walsh to schedule an interview, the Suffolk coach was both startled and captivated.

“I always had wanted to be a Division I coach and had been labeled a D-III guy,” Walsh says.

The night before his interview, Walsh made a customary illicit visit to the Harvard baseball field—only this time without his players. As he trespassed for potentially the last time on the silent shadowy grounds, the vision of the future tantalized him.

“I just sat on the stands and walked the field, just preparing for my interview,” Walsh says. “I just wanted to get a feel for it, and I realized how much I loved baseball and wanted an opportunity.”

He got that opportunity. Cleary called after the interview to offer him the position of Harvard’s first full-time baseball coach. Walsh accepted wholeheartedly.

“Bill Cleary gave me that shot,” Walsh says. “It meant a lot to me.”

Now, in his eighth season here, Walsh has given seen the Crimson to four Ivy titles and as many NCAA regionals appearances after years as an Ivy bottom-dweller.

“One of the first things we did was the change the schedule, raise the bar and go out with an aggressive style of baseball,” he says, explaining his earliest actions as coach. “I think the kids that were here just had to believe in themselves a little bit—they were already a pretty good group. I think there may have been a mindset that needed to be changed, but there was a lot of talent and a lot of ability.”

He also was in the right place at the right time.

“I happened to come in when the team had been down for a few years,” Walsh says. “They had been in the cellar of the Ivy League for three or four years. You look at it like, hey, the only way to go is up.”

Up they went. In Walsh’s first season in 1996, the Crimson reversed its previous year’s league record by going 14-6 and winning the Red Rolfe Division before losing to Princeton two games to none in the best-of-three championship series.

The bitter 1-0 loss in the second game set the stage for what Walsh calls the proudest moment of his Harvard career. As he watched the Tigers swarm into a pig-pile in the infield and saw the Princeton crowd celebrating, he could only envision the next year’s championship.

“Wow, someday this is gonna be us, next year we’re gonna get it,” Walsh recalls thinking.

One year later Walsh watched from third base as the Crimson steamrolled Princeton 22-4 to take the series 2-1.

“I’m saying, ‘I wonder if these guys are gonna have a big pig-pile here,’” Walsh recounts.

“We shook hands and walked through the line, and the guys here at Harvard said to me afterwards, ‘Coach, what time’s practice tomorrow?’”

The Ivy title, while satisfying, is only the first stop on the road to the College World Series.

“It has been the goal here not just to win the Ivy League, but to be the last team standing. From the day that occurred, I realized the kids here could think that way, and wanted to think that way,” Walsh concludes. “You don’t always get it, but that’s the expectation level.”

Bolstered by an eternally optimistic outlook, Walsh is not swayed by the odds annually stacked against the Crimson—the relatively weak league schedule, lack of exposure, no scholarships, and unaccommodating weather. Unlike other sports, where size and scholarships present insurmountable obstacles, Walsh sees a level playing field behind every first pitch.

“A three-hopper off anybody’s bat is the same as a three-hopper off of an Ivy League bat,” Walsh notes.

“The greatest thing about Walsh is that he wants to play anybody, any place, anytime,” adds assistant coach Matt Hyde. “He instills it in you to go against the best.”

“To be the best you have to beat the best,” says Donovan in explaining Walsh’s mantra.

Though in many respects the Crimson is still miles behind many opposing teams in terms of funding, facilities, and publicity, Walsh truly believes that the backing of the athletic department to put competitive teams on the schedule makes all the difference in the world. For example, next season the Crimson will kick off the year with four games against Texas Tech.

“That I think is the key—the competition you’re playing,” Walsh says. “It’s not whether or not you’ve got fancy uniforms or publicity in the Boston Globe or if your office has neon signs saying, ‘Here to Harvard baseball.’”

But Walsh is not completely averse to the idea of self-promotion. The man who Donovan dubbed the “ambassador of Harvard baseball” has plans percolating as we speak.

“We do have a little publicity thing in mind,” Walsh reveals. “I’d love to come off the T-station in Harvard Square someday and see a sign that says ‘Harvard Yard’ with picture of the baseball field and an arrow pointing the other way. You’ll see that someday. I’m working on that.”

Until then, Harvard baseball will continue to be nudged forward by the one-time trespasser’s unceasing optimism, eager anticipation, and sincere devotion to his players and the program.

“He has a great love for the game that’s just contagious,” Hyde says.

“He comes to work every day, he just lives and breathes, lives and dies baseball,” captain and closer Barry Wahlberg adds. “You say it’s his job, but he sleeps here—he sleeps at the field.”

At least now it’s his field to sleep on.

—Staff writer Lisa J. Kennelly can be reached at kennell@fas.harvard.edu.