The Missouri State Bears baseball team represents

Missouri State University Missouri State University (MSU or MO State), formerly Southwest Missouri State University, is a public university in Springfield, Missouri. Founded in 1905 as the Fourth District Normal School, it is the state's second largest university by enr ...

, which is located in

Springfield, Missouri Springfield is the third largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and the county seat of Greene County. The city's population was 169,176 at the 2020 census. It is the principal city of the Springfield metropolitan area, which had an estimat ...

. The Bears are an

NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of College athletics, intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major ...

college baseball College baseball is baseball that is played on the intercollegiate level at institutions of higher education. In comparison to football and basketball, college competition in the United States plays a smaller role in developing professional pl ...

program that competes in the

Missouri Valley Conference The Missouri Valley Conference (also called MVC or simply "The Valley") is the third-oldest collegiate athletic conference in the United States. The conference's members are primarily located in the midwest. History The MVC was established ...

. They began competing in Division I in 1983 and joined the Missouri Valley Conference in 1991 after seven seasons with the

Mid-Continent Conference The Summit League, or The Summit, is an NCAA Division I intercollegiate athletic conference with its membership mostly located in the Midwestern United States from Illinois on the East of the Mississippi River to the Dakotas and Nebraska on the W ...

. The Missouri State Bears play all home games on campus at John Q. Hammons Field. Under the direction of head coach

Keith Guttin Keith Guttin is an American college baseball coach who has served as the head coach of the Missouri State Bears baseball team since the start of the 1983 season. Following the 2015 season, he has 1,138 wins, and, during the 2015 season, he became ...

, the Bears have played in 11 NCAA Tournaments, and they reached the

College World Series The College World Series (CWS), officially the NCAA Men's College World Series (MCWS), is an annual baseball tournament held in June in Omaha, Nebraska. The MCWS is the culmination of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Divisi ...

in 2003. Over their 29 seasons in the Missouri Valley Conference, they have won six MVC regular-season titles and four MVC tournaments. Since the program's inception in 1964, 20 Bears have gone on to play in

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

, highlighted by three-time All-Star and 2006 NL MVP

Ryan Howard Ryan James Howard (born November 19, 1979), nicknamed "the Big Piece", is an American former professional baseball first baseman. Howard spent his entire Major League Baseball (MLB) career playing for the Philadelphia Phillies, from to . He is ...

References

External links

* {{Missouri-baseball-team-stub