How Penn State baseball coach Mike Gambino is re-energizing the program
Mike Gambino paused for a moment and shuffled his feet on the dirt at Medlar Field. He knew what he wanted to say, but was struggling to do it without choking up.
The Penn State baseball coach peered into the outfield where his 9-year-old son was playing catch and his 8-year-old daughter was doing cartwheels minutes after his team won a game against Rider in late April.
He took a swig of water to compose himself.
“I love my job. I love what I do,” Gambino told the Centre Daily Times. “But family, to me, is No. 1. I tell my daughter, the only thing that can ever make me feel better after a loss is when she comes up and gives me a hug. I tell my son my favorite part of games is when he’s on the bench with me.”
He has taken to being present and enjoying those moments. Like when he smiled and waved to his kids as he entered the dugout during the win over Rider. Or when he wrapped his daughter in a hug and picked her up after the game. Or when he watched his kids play on the field his team just won on.
That presence in the moment has become crucial in helping the head coach achieve what he wants.
And in year two as the leader of the Nittany Lions, Gambino is changing the outlook of the program after already making a run to the Big Ten title game in his first year at the helm. And he’s doing it by changing the culture, and embracing each moment that comes with it.
A personal shift
The Penn State head coach’s outlook on leading his players has always been the way it is now, but there was a clear point when it became amplified.
Gambino’s son suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2021 and the head coach found his mind wandering at times during games. And he felt obligated to be transparent with his players at Boston College, where he coached prior to joining Penn State in 2023, about what was going on.
“One of the things that it really affected and impacted — I was not a good manager right after he got hurt,” Gambino said while sitting in his office. “Part of what I was doing was, I was bringing the anxiety on a daily basis about whether or not my son was OK. There was an anxiety about me ... the guys could feel it. It changes the feeling in the room.”
Gambino apologized to his players for being distracted, but the long-term impact of his own realization, and the ability to talk to his players about it, helped him grow.
It opened the door for him to lean even more into what he’d always believed in — the importance in connecting with his players.
That still impacts how he coaches now.
“We had a player going through something a little bit tough off the field recently,” Gambino said. “And he said to me, ‘Don’t worry. It’s not gonna affect me when I come here, not gonna affect me on the field.’ And I said, hold on, it is and that’s OK. It should. Let’s just talk about what to do about it, how to handle it.”
Gambino’s empathy has guided him as a head coach, and family plays a big role in that. He tells his coaches frequently that he wants their families to be around the program as much as his is. After all, his family steers all of the decisions Gambino makes — like the one to come to State College.
He believed in athletic director Pat Kraft, who was the AD at Boston College during part of the coach’s tenure at his alma mater. And he believed in what the floundering program could become. But the personal aspect had to be handled. His son’s recovery required visits with a neurologist and the family had one in Boston. That alone was enough reason for him to want to stay at Boston College. But Kraft was determined to get it done.
“That really was the linchpin,” Kraft said. “He and Jill came and they looked at [State College] on their own and they felt like it was a good place. And I told them this too, that there is no better place to raise kids and have a family. We just had to get over the hump of the medical care piece.”
Once that hurdle was cleared and Gambino was comfortable with the medical care arrangements for his son, it was enough to push him to take the job at Penn State and begin to build a baseball program that had mostly struggled for the decade prior.
Changing the culture
One of the first priorities for Gambino was a familiar one for Penn State fans. He strongly believed in the talent in Pennsylvania and that it could be the foundation of his program — much like Penn State football coach James Franklin did when he arrived from Vanderbilt more than a decade ago.
Unlike Franklin, Gambino had the benefit of the transfer portal to make that happen. He could go find those players who didn’t consider Penn State out of high school and bring them home. That started with several players in his first year, namely Bryce Molinaro.
Molinaro went to Hazleton Area High School in Pennsylvania, but never considered the Nittany Lions and instead went to St. John’s. At the time, Penn State wasn’t even in the conversation.
“I always thought it was an OK baseball team,” Molinaro told the CDT. “I always heard different things about the culture, that it wasn’t very good, that the coaches cared, but they didn’t really push their players to be great.”
But then Gambino came to State College and changed everything for Molinaro.
“Now with Coach Gambino, it’s totally changed. The culture has totally changed,” he said. “People are really starting to take notice that Penn State is going to be a huge baseball program. And he’s really changed that culture, for not only us, but the outsiders too. And it’s really something special.”
He wasn’t the only one who was swayed by Gambino, whose players sometimes call “Bino.” Paxton Kling, who played at Central High School in Martinsburg and competed against high school opponents less than 30 minutes away from Penn State, took his talent south out of high school. Kling was a projected first-round pick but chose to go to LSU to begin his college career.
But two years in, Kling went in the portal and heard from his now-head coach fairly quickly.
“As soon as I was in the portal, like the first day, Coach Gambino called me,” Kling said. “I didn’t take any phone calls because I was trying to drive home from Baton Rouge. It’s like, an 18 and a half hour drive. So Bino called me multiple times, and then texted me multiple times.”
It was enough to convince Kling to take the 45-minute drive to State College a couple days later. And once he made the trip with his dad and his fiancee, the decision was made — he’d be coming home to play for the Nittany Lions.
Now he and Molinaro are two of the team’s best hitters and are helping set the foundation for what Penn State can be.
What comes next
Year one was a clear success for Gambino, with the Nittany Lions making a run to the Big Ten title game before falling to Nebraska. And year two isn’t far behind, with the Nittany Lions set to compete in the Big Ten Tournament once again, this time as the No. 9 seed, with Kling and Molinaro helping lead the way at the plate.
But the goal for Penn State and Gambino isn’t to make the Big Ten Tournament or to reach the title game.
Their aspirations are much higher.
“Long-term goals — I want to host regionals here,” Gambino said, pointing out to Medlar Field. “I think we can be in the College World Series.”
Kraft agreed.
“We gotta go to Omaha,” he said about the location of the College World Series. “We’re not doing anything not to win. ... I can not wait for Penn State fans to enjoy and experience Omaha for the College World Series.”
That fits with the athletic director’s stance on all of his sports, saying the goal is to win championships across the board at Penn State. And while that might not be realistic in all 31 sports, there’s reason to believe there is upside to tap into with the baseball program.
That was part of the reason Gambino took the job in the first place.
“I called some close friends of mine to ask about (Penn State baseball), and one of the terms they used was sleeping giant,” Gambino said. “So I remember saying to my wife, there’s not many programs left that you look at that you say that place from a baseball standpoint could be really, really special.”
He pointed out to the field as he glowed about what things could become. After all, that comment came the day after a raucous crowd helped lift the Nittany Lions to a win over a ranked West Virginia team in April.
It helps that the program has introduced novelty to their games — like a dollar hot dog night that has become a social media craze. But Gambino is hopeful that won’t be the only draw.
“I said the first time we were on our field with our group, I said to the guys ... ‘you guys realize that the product that we put on the field is so bad that they have to give away free food to get people to watch you play,’” Gambino said. “I think dollar dog night is awesome, but our job is to make people want to come and see us and dollar dog night is fun. [We need to make it so] they’re coming out all the time, and it’s just one of the other fun things they do here.”
With Gambino and his team’s trajectory, the on-field product should, in due time, be more than enough to pack the stands.
And maybe even enough to play host to postseason baseball for the first time in over half a century.
