Beyond the Scoreboard: A conversation with Baylor's all-time winningest baseball coach, Steve Smith | Ep. 123

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What You'll Learn in This Episode

Host Ross Hawley welcomes back Steve Smith — the all-time winningest coach in Baylor Baseball history and the author of the recently released book Beyond the Scoreboard. Smith played at Baylor after transferring from a Division II school, spent four seasons in pro ball, and coached at Texas A&M and Mississippi State before 21 years as Baylor's head coach. Since then he has coached at Santa Clara, Tennessee Tech, and Auburn, worked as a pitching coordinator with the Detroit Tigers, and coached at McGregor High School near Waco.

This is a conversation about building a program and about what the game does to the person coaching it. Smith explains how Baylor won with a blue-collar first recruiting class and two trusted assistants, what changed after the program reached Omaha, and why his book is really about faith, identity, and how a coach responds when the results do not go his way.

The highlights:

  • Why he still wants to coach, and why coaches get better with age
  • What a year-plus with the Detroit Tigers taught him about analytics and seam-shifted wake
  • The two assistants, Steve Johnigan and Mitch Thompson, who stayed beside him for about 18 years
  • A first recruiting class of 16 players nobody else signed, and what it built
  • How reaching Omaha changed recruiting, and what he would manage differently
  • Why he wrote Beyond the Scoreboard, and the locker room sign he had to live up to

Still Wanting to Coach

Smith calls his entry into coaching easy compared with most. Texas A&M, Mississippi State, and Baylor account for 28 years. The last nine or ten have looked more like the road most coaches travel early on, with stops as a volunteer at Santa Clara, a couple of years at Tennessee Tech, and a return to the SEC at Auburn. He points to Dave Van Horn and Tim Corbin as men who climbed from small jobs, and says he has been making that journey in reverse.

He has no desire to stop. People see a coach's age and put him in a box, but he believes coaches improve with experience as long as their health and their energy hold up.

"Coaches get better with age."

Learning the New Game with the Tigers

Smith spent a year-plus as a pitching coordinator with the Detroit Tigers about three years ago. He did not want to be a coach who never understood analytics or could not hold a good conversation about it, and he says the time felt like earning a PhD. Data takes a lot of the guesswork out, even though much of baseball is still about feel.

His favorite example is the seam-shifted wake fastball. As a natural cutter-type pitcher, he struggled to run the ball in on right-handed hitters because he tried to turn it over. The modern answer is counterintuitive: reposition the ball in the hand and throw it the same way, with the help of high-speed video and tracking tech. He also points to Tarik Skubal's changeup, which moves more like a heavy sinker.

A Playing Career and a Faith Journey

Smith grew up loving football and baseball and chased baseball because it gave him the best chance to go furthest. He transferred from a Division II school to Baylor, and the bulk of his four pro seasons were spent in rookie ball and A-ball, with what he calls a cup of coffee in Triple-A. Through the injuries and uncertainty, he could not separate his faith from playing or coaching.

He traces his coaching career back to a high school hitting clinic run by Mississippi State assistant Mark Johnson. About ten years later, Johnson was the head coach at Texas A&M and gave Smith his start in college baseball. Smith then spent five years at Mississippi State, the place he always wanted to play, and says he would only have left for his alma mater.

No Excuses at Baylor

Early in his Baylor tenure, Smith refused to let a Christian school or a private school become an excuse for losing. He also notes that the payroll gap now discussed in college football has always existed in college baseball. The question used to be what a family would have to pay to play somewhere, and now it is what a player will be paid.

His book grew out of years of moments about control, criticism, and the game's small details. He went into coaching expecting to shape his players. The longer he coached, the more he realized the game was shaping him.

How Baylor Was Built

Smith credits two assistants. Mitch Thompson's passion was recruiting, evaluation, and building. Steve Johnigan, known as "Hoot," was as good an instructor and as positive a coach as Smith has known. The three had worked together at Mississippi State and stayed together at Baylor for about 18 years. Asked on another show for the best decision he made at Baylor, Smith said it was hiring Johnigan, who retired from Baylor after 30 years and spent his last several seasons coaching softball hitters.

Smith was hired in late July and told the inherited roster he was not there to run anyone off if they handled school and their conduct. After four players lost their eligibility to grades, he and Thompson signed 16 players in the spring that nobody else had signed in the fall. By the time that group were juniors, it included a future 10-year major leaguer and seven or eight draft picks. The next class brought Jason Jennings, who went on to win the Golden Spikes Award.

"They were blue chip guys, but they were blue collar makeup."

Omaha and the Next Challenge

After about ten years, Baylor reached Omaha and became, in Smith's words, the flavor of the day in recruiting. Players began choosing Baylor for what it could do for them instead of what they could do for Baylor. Smith admits he managed that group the same way he had managed the first one, and it took three or four years to right the ship while expectations, message boards, and criticism grew.

In 2012, Baylor won 49 games, was ranked number one in the country, won 24 in a row, and lost one game short of Omaha to Arkansas. Over 15 years, he says, the program made 13 NCAA tournaments and won three regular-season conference titles, the first since 1923. The one thing he would change: he would never sit in the stands at a home football game and listen to the criticism around him.

What Readers Should Take from the Book

Smith's message for anyone with a passion like Baseball Forward is that a God-given passion does not guarantee smooth sailing. The struggles, the frustrations, and the criticism may be how God changes the person doing the work. He knows that sounds hyper-spiritual to some listeners, and he says it does not change the reality.

He wrote much of the book while working at McGregor High School, a 3A school in McLennan County, where he was an assistant football coach and head baseball coach. His teaching assignment was to oversee students taking dual-credit classes for five or six hours a day, and he used that time to write.

What We Believe, We Practice

When he was fired, Smith says, he was devastated and mad, but he could not blame God for a job he never felt he had earned. His Baylor locker room had a sign that read, "What we believe we practice. Everything else is just talk." He had told teams for years that they were not defined by how they played but by how they responded, and now his players and his two sons were watching how he responded.

"You're not defined by how you play. You're defined by how you respond to how you play."

He closes with an image that replaced his old priority list. Faith is not first on a list. It is the center of a wheel, and everything else is a spoke.

Episode Timestamps

Tap any timestamp to jump the player straight to that moment.

  • 0:37 — Introducing Baylor's all-time winningest coach and Beyond the Scoreboard author Steve Smith
  • 1:35 — A wall of jerseys and a career unpacked
  • 3:27 — From Texas A&M, Mississippi State, and Baylor to the long road most coaches take
  • 6:06 — Still wanting to coach, and why coaches get better with age
  • 8:51 — A year with the Detroit Tigers and learning analytics
  • 10:34 — Seam-shifted wake and Tarik Skubal's changeup
  • 15:36 — Beyond the Scoreboard and a playing career as a faith journey
  • 20:03 — How the doors opened at Texas A&M, Mississippi State, and Baylor
  • 22:30 — No excuses at Baylor, and college baseball's payroll gap
  • 25:14 — Coaching the game while the game coaches you
  • 28:50 — How Baylor was built: Steve Johnigan and Mitch Thompson
  • 31:22 — The best decision he made at Baylor
  • 33:37 — The first recruiting class of 16 players nobody signed
  • 37:14 — Omaha, the flavor of the day, and blue chip versus blue collar
  • 39:35 — The 2012 season and 13 NCAA tournaments in 15 years
  • 41:19 — The one thing he would change about his 21 years at Baylor
  • 43:17 — What readers should take from the book
  • 46:55 — Writing the book at McGregor High School
  • 50:10 — Getting fired, and "What we believe we practice"
  • 54:22 — Faith at the center of the wheel

Steve Smith is the all-time winningest coach in Baylor Baseball history and the author of Beyond the Scoreboard. Follow Coach Smith on X at @HardBallCoach34 and visit coachstevesmith.com for more on the book. Subscribe to Coach Smith's newsletter on Substack for more of his writing on faith, coaching, and the game. Subscribe to the Baseball Forward Podcast for more conversations with the players, coaches, and leaders elevating the next generation of the game.