The West Virginia Mountaineers baseball team is the varsity intercollegiate

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

program of

West Virginia University West Virginia University (WVU) is a public land-grant research university with its main campus in Morgantown, West Virginia. Its other campuses are those of the West Virginia University Institute of Technology in Beckley, Potomac State College ...

, located in

Morgantown, West Virginia Morgantown is a city in and the county seat of Monongalia County, West Virginia, Monongalia County, West Virginia, United States, situated along the Monongahela River. The largest city in North-Central West Virginia, Morgantown is best known as th ...

, United States. The program has been a member of the

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 ...

Big 12 Conference The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its ...

since the start of the 2013 season. The program currently plays at

Monongalia County Ballpark Wagener Field at Monongalia County Ballpark is a baseball stadium in Granville, West Virginia. The stadium, opened April 10, 2015, is the home of the baseball team of West Virginia University (WVU), a member of the Big 12 Conference, and the West ...

in the adjacent city of Granville.

Randy Mazey Randy Mazey (born May 23, 1966) is an American college baseball coach. He is the head baseball coach at West Virginia University, a position he had held since the 2013 season. Mazey attended Clemson University, where he played baseball for the Tig ...

has been the team's head coach since prior to the 2013 season. As of the end of the 2019 season, the program has appeared in 13 NCAA Tournaments. It has won five conference tournament championships and 15 regular season conference and division titles.

History

The program began varsity play in 1892 and had an above-.500

winning percentage In sports, a winning percentage is the fraction of games or matches a team or individual has won. The statistic is commonly used in standings or rankings to compare teams or individuals. It is defined as wins divided by the total number of match ...

in each season until 1920, when the team had a 10–11 record. It adopted the nickname "Mountaineers" in 1905, when West Virginia instituted the state motto "Mountaineers are always free." After discontinuing the program for three seasons (1943–1945) because of

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the program began again prior to the 1946 season and qualified for its first NCAA Tournament in

1955 Events January * January 3 – José Ramón Guizado becomes president of Panama. * January 17 – , the first nuclear-powered submarine, puts to sea for the first time, from Groton, Connecticut. * January 18– 20 – Battle of Yijian ...

under head coach Steve Harrick. On-campus venue

Hawley Field Hawley Field is a baseball field in Morgantown, West Virginia, United States. Along with Appalachian Power Park in Charleston, West Virginia, it served as one of two home venues of the West Virginia Mountaineers baseball team before the new ...

opened in 1971 and was used for all home games until after the 2012 season, as the field did not meet the standards of the

, to which West Virginia moved in summer 2012. It remained in use for non-conference home games through the 2014 season, after which the team's current venue, Monongalia County Ballpark, opened. As a member of the

Southern Conference The Southern Conference (SoCon) is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I. Southern Conference football teams compete in the Football Championship Subdivision (formerly ...

from 1951–1968, the team appeared in six NCAA Tournaments. As a member of the

Atlantic 10 Conference The Atlantic 10 Conference (A-10) is a collegiate athletic conference whose schools compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Division I. The A-10's member schools are located in states mostly on the United States Eastern ...

from 1978–1995, the team appeared in four NCAA Tournaments. However, as a member of the

Big East Conference The Big East Conference is a collegiate athletic conference that competes in NCAA Division I in ten men's sports and twelve women's sports. Headquartered in New York City, the eleven full-member schools are primarily located in Northeast and M ...

from 1995–2012, the team appeared in only one NCAA Tournament.

Conference affiliations

Independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

– 1892–1942, 1946–1950, 1969–1977 * Southern – 1951–1968 *

Atlantic 10 The Atlantic 10 Conference (A-10) is a collegiate athletic conference whose schools compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) Division I. The A-10's member schools are located in states mostly on the United States Eastern ...

– 1978–1995 :*Known as the Eastern Athletic Association, popularly the Eastern 8, from 1978–1982 *

Big East The Big East Conference is a collegiate athletic conference that competes in NCAA Division I in ten men's sports and twelve women's sports. Headquartered in New York City, the eleven full-member schools are primarily located in Northeast and ...

– 1996–2012 *

Big 12 The Big 12 Conference is a college athletic conference headquartered in Irving, Texas, USA. It consists of ten full-member universities. It is a member of Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for all sports. Its fo ...

– 2013–present

Stadium

Monongalia County Ballpark

In 2013, plans were announced to build the program a new Morgantown venue. Ground was broken for the new ballpark at University Town Centre, an off-campus shopping and entertainment complex in nearby Granville, on October 17, 2013. The ballpark will be a fan friendly design with 2,500 fixed seats with additional hillside and club seating, a fan amenity deck, and a park that will be open year-round. The field will be a synthetic surface, other than the clay pitcher's mound. Also using the new ballpark will be the class-A short-season affiliate of the

Pittsburgh Pirates The Pittsburgh Pirates are an American professional baseball team based in Pittsburgh. The Pirates compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central division. Founded as part of the American Associati ...

, the

West Virginia Black Bears The West Virginia Black Bears are a collegiate summer baseball team of the MLB Draft League. They are located in Granville, West Virginia, and play their home games at Monongalia County Ballpark, which is across the Monongahela River from Morganto ...

. The stadium, tentatively known as

, is set to open for the 2015 season.

Head coaches

The program's most successful coach is former head coach Dale Ramsburg, who had 540 career victories from 1968–1994. Ramsburg is also the program's longest tenured head coach, having led the program for 27 seasons.

Yearly record

Below is a table of the program's yearly records.

West Virginia in the NCAA tournament

*The

NCAA Division I baseball tournament The NCAA Division I Baseball Championship is held each year from May through June and features 64 college baseball teams in the United States, culminating in the eight-team Men's College World Series at Charles Schwab Field Omaha in Omaha, Neb ...

started in 1947.

Notable former players

Mountaineers in Major League Baseball

Below is a list of notable former players of the program and the seasons in which they played for the Mountaineers. SD Padres Jedd Gyorko (9699149844)

Babe Barna Herbert Paul "Babe" Barna (March 2, 1915 – May 18, 1972) was a left fielder in Major League Baseball who played for the Philadelphia Athletics (1937–1938), New York Giants (1941–1943) and Boston Red Sox (1943). Barna batted left-handed an ...

(1935–1937) * Frank Barron (1913–1914) *

David Carpenter David Joseph Carpenter (born May 6, 1930), a.k.a. The Trailside Killer, is an American serial killer and serial rapist known for stalking and murdering a variety of individuals on hiking trails in state parks near San Francisco, California. He ...

(2004–2006) * Bucky Guth (1967–1969) *

Jedd Gyorko Jedd Lindon Gyorko ( ; born September 23, 1988) is an American former professional baseball infielder. He played in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the San Diego Padres, St. Louis Cardinals, Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers. He is curr ...

(2008–2010) * Jim Heise (1953–1956) *

Charlie Hickman Charles Taylor Hickman (May 4, 1876 – April 19, 1934) was an American professional baseball player and college baseball coach. He played all or part of 12 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a utility player for seven different franchis ...

(1897) * Joe Hudson (1990–1992) * Steve Kline (1993) *

Alek Manoah Alek Isaac Manoah (born January 9, 1998) is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays of Major League Baseball (MLB). He was selected by the Blue Jays with the 11th overall pick of the 2019 Major League Baseball draft ou ...

(2017–2019) * Ryan McBroom (2011–2014) * John Means (2013–2014) * Harrison Musgrave (2011–2014) *

Dustin Nippert Dustin David Nippert (born May 6, 1981) is an American former professional baseball pitcher. He played for the Arizona Diamondbacks and Texas Rangers of Major League Baseball, and the Doosan Bears and KT Wiz of the KBO League. Nippert won the KBO ...

(2003) * Paul Popovich (1960) *

Scott Seabol Scott Anthony Seabol (born May 17, 1975 in McKeesport, Pennsylvania, United States) is a former Major League Baseball player. He made his major league debut on April 8, , with the New York Yankees, but only for a single game. After a short time ...

(1996) *

Darrell Whitmore Darrell Lamont Whitmore (born November 18, 1968) is an American former professional baseball player for the Cleveland Indians and Florida Marlins of Major League Baseball (MLB) and was a college football and baseball player for the West Virgini ...

(1988–1990) * John Woods (1920–1923)

References

External links

* {{Big 12 Conference baseball navbox