Gamechanger

Tracy Smith is always surprised how much people curse when playing video games.

Smith, the IU baseball coach, plays video games to escape reality. After a tough loss, or if he’s just bored during the day, he’ll fire up his Xbox 360. He doesn’t have to think about if he should have pulled his starting pitcher earlier, or if he should have sent the runner home or not. He can just lose himself.

But he’s selective in what he loses himself in.

“I only play one game,” Smith said. “I play ‘Call of Duty Black Ops II,’ hardcore team deathmatch. That’s it.”

He prefers to remain anonymous when he plays with other people online. He’s free to just be another random player and crack jokes with his famous sense of humor.

“I definitely don’t tell them who I am,” Smith said about his online anonymity. “Because I crush ‘em.”

But Smith is anything but anonymous in the world of college baseball. Smith has spent nine years building IU into what is now a legitimate national title contender. Last season, he won National Coach of the Year after taking IU to the College World Series.

Smith has built several programs in his coaching career, only to leave for greener pastures each time. The question of whether Smith will stay in Bloomington has been brought up in the past. But as he proved last year, he can win a national championship in Bloomington.

First, he’s going to take out his aggression on these damn kids playing “Call of Duty” with him. If they curse at him, sometimes he indulges and fires shots back.

“If I’m feeling rowdy and I want to let go, I’ll let ‘em have it,” Smith said,
wearing his “Call of Duty” T-shirt. “They’ll say, ‘Dude you sound like you’re 40. Get a job.’”

***

When Smith arrived at Miami University Middletown, there was no baseball program.

Smith arrived in Middletown after he played with the Chicago Cubs organization for a few years. He enjoyed playing, but ultimately decided playing professional ball wasn’t for him.

Instead, he had applied for a generic administrative job. He and Jaime — his wife since they were both 19 years old — would lead a normal life.

The only problem is, he didn’t get the job. Smith had never lacked confidence before, Jaime said. He was used to getting what he wanted.

That’s when Jaime’s father, the athletic director at Miami University Middletown, came to Tracy and asked if he wanted to coach basketball. Tracy had never thought of coaching as a profession.

But he was from a small town in Indiana — Kenton, Ind., with a population of 1,748 — so basketball was in his blood.

“God’s country,” Smith said. “Home of Alexander J. Kent. Whoever the hell that is.”

He accepted the basketball coaching job, but wanted to coach baseball. The university didn’t have a baseball program at the time. So he started one from the ground up.

After a few years in Middleton, Tracy came back to his and Jaime’s alma mater, Miami University, to be an assistant coach. He moved on to become an assistant coach at IU until he got the call to come back to Miami and become the head coach of the program.

“The call came from the athletic director,” Smith said. “And he says, ‘Do you want to be our ne-’ and before he could even finish the sentence I said, ‘Yes!’ So there went my negotiations for salary right out the window.”

But Smith wasn’t concerned about the money side of things. He had the opportunity he always wanted — to lead a program. The man who didn’t even fancy himself a coach had become the head of a program by age 30.

***

Smith said the baseball diamond was nothing more than a “glorified high school field” when he arrived at Miami University.

Miami was historically a good mid-major team but had struggled. The Redhawks suffered four straight losing seasons for the first time in 29 years and finished 12-40 the year before he arrived.

While Miami University was bigger than the first college he coached at, it still didn’t have all the resources Smith needed. His family was pulling weeds on the diamond, and Jaime’s father drove his tractor to the complex to tend to the dirt field. Smith would walk into the stadium and push the trashcans to the right places.

“That was him,” Jaime said. “There wasn’t a detail that was overlooked.”

He was able to turn the program around. During his nine seasons, Smith averaged 35 wins a season — the highest average by a coach in Miami baseball history. He eclipsed the 40-win mark twice, something that happened just once in the previous 81 years in Miami baseball, and appeared in two NCAA tournaments.

Smith was instrumental in the building of a new stadium. He transformed the field into a legitimate complex.

But it wasn’t enough.

The only guaranteed bid for smaller schools to get into the NCAA Tournament is to win their conference. In smaller conferences like the MAC — Miami’s conference — usually only one team got into the NCAA Tournament.

Miami was in the MAC championship one time, but lost in the bottom of the ninth inning. The cold reality set in for the Smiths.

“That loss hurt. I cried,” Jaime said. “It felt like we had a ceiling. I felt like he couldn’t achieve something because it wasn’t possible.”

During Smith’s last season at Miami, the program had one of their best seasons ever. The Redhawks went 45-18 — the most wins in school history. They beat Central Michigan 10-6 in the MAC championship game and were headed to the NCAA Tournament.

Jaime remembers standing in the field after the game with her husband. One thought kept creeping into her mind.

“I remember thinking — it will never get better than this,” Jaime said. “We can repeat this 10 times, but it won’t be better than this. This is what this can be. He did everything he could do at Miami.”

***

IU second baseman Casey Rodrigue was talking to the media, answering questions about the upcoming series against Michigan State.

He started to laugh when Smith came up behind the reporters, making faces and
trying to distract Rodrigue. When the reporters turned around, Smith rubbed his chin and looked at the ceiling. He tried to act nonchalant.

The reporters turned to face Rodrigue, and Smith went at it again, making Rodrigue chuckle through the interview.

“Sorry,” Rodrigue said at one point. “Skip’s over there making faces.”

Smith tries not to take himself too seriously. His Twitter account is a mix of baseball comments, reviews of various TV shows, interactions with fans and selfies of his beard.

“I don’t have a gazillion followers. I’m getting closer to 10,000 though,” he paused. “9,100, but who’s counting?”

He’s still learning the nuances of social media. On Twitter, he used to respond to people in all capital letters, giving off the impression he was yelling. After being made fun of by everybody in his family, Smith finally stopped using all caps.

“See, I didn’t know that was yelling,” he said. “It was my Twitter ignorance. I was a Twitter virgin. Or a tweet virgin.”

Smith is always trying to come up with different ways to promote his program.

Kyle Kuhlman, Smith’s media relations staff member for three-and-a-half years, said he thinks Smith is one of the best imaginative thinkers he’s met.

Kuhlman and Smith used to do a weekly video called “Skip’s Scoop.” Kuhlman would shoot the video of Smith talking about the team’s upcoming opponent or whatever Smith felt like talking about at the time.

One time, when the team was on a spring break trip in Florida, Kuhlman suggested jokingly they should do the video with Smith in the hot tub.

Smith didn’t take it as a joke. They shot the video with Smith sitting in a hotel hot tub.
“I won’t forget that,” Kuhlman said. “I don’t know another coach who would be willing to do something fun and out-of-the-box like that.”

***

“Breaking Bad” is the greatest TV show of all time, Smith said. “House of Cards” is number two. He also put “Lost,” “Dexter” and “Sons on Anarchy” in his top five.

“Oh, but ‘Games of Thrones’ is good, too,” Smith said, questioning his own list. “Oh, and ‘Homeland.’”

Sometimes after a hard loss, Smith will come home and watch Netflix for four or five hours. It helps keep his mind off replaying bad things repeatedly.

When he was watching “Lost,” he found himself consumed by the show.

He would catch himself thinking about the latest plot on “Lost” while coaching third base during games.

“I was so into that series,” he said. “I have found myself actually wanting to be stranded on an island. I was like, ‘Wouldn’t that be cool?’”

When Smith first arrived in Bloomington, he needed every escape from reality he could get. In his first two years, he went a combined 41-69.

During his last year at Miami, he won 45 games and went to the NCAA Tournament. But he left that situation because of the resources IU had. He was promised a new stadium would be built.

He wasn’t taking over a powerhouse, either. In the two years before Smith arrived at IU, the Hoosiers finished last in the Big Ten both seasons, going a combined 18-45 in the conference.

“And what really clicked in my head was, ‘OK, Tracy Smith, you’re really that good? Let’s see you do it again,’” Smith said.

All of Smith’s hard work culminated last year. He got the stadium he was promised — 2013 was the inaugural season of Bart Kaufman Field. He went from having one of the worst stadiums in the Big Ten to one of the best college venues in the Midwest.

The team’s performance on the field also took off. For the first time in the program’s then 118-year history, they were ranked in the national polls. IU made the 2013 College World Series, another program first.

Smith remembers being in shock for most of the time in Omaha, Neb. This was what he had envisioned for the IU program, and he was trying his best to take it all in.

IU ultimately was defeated by Oregon State, ending the best season in IU history. But IU had climbed the mountain nobody thought they could. Not even Smith, when he came to IU in 2006, was positive he could ever make it to the College World Series.

“I’ll be honest with you,” Smith said. “It always seemed like this distant thing. It always seemed like I was talking about something else. It always seemed like it was somewhere over there. Did I think we could do it? I mean, I gave us a chance. But realistically, the way college baseball is structured, I thought it would be tough.”

***

IU opened up the season No. 3 in the preseason Baseball America poll, the highest-ever ranking for the program.

In less than a decade, Smith built the worst program in the Big Ten into a national title contender. But since IU isn’t historically a baseball program, the question arises — will he stay in Bloomington?

He has had the chance to leave.

He interviewed for the head-coaching job at Ohio State in 2010 but turned it down. He said at the time that IU’s atmosphere and the “24 sports, one team” mantra was true. In Columbus, Ohio, he wouldn’t have that same feeling.

And now he has a state-of-the-art stadium, facilities and one of the more talented teams in the country.

But he also has his wife and three sons, his rural house, his four dogs, his two cats and a program he’s poured his soul into for nine years.

“We’ll retire in Bloomington whether I’m coaching here or not,” Smith said. “Plus, we got a state-of-the-art facility and we’re winning. I see it as, ‘Is there anything better?’”

Follow reporter Evan Hoopfer on Twitter @EvanHoopfer.

This story has been updated. An earlier version of this story referred to Jaime Smith as Jamie Smith.