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| Nate Mulberg fashioned his resume into exactly what a program such as Johns Hopkins should want in a head coach. Richmond athletics photo |
By Patrick Coleman
D3sports.com
July 3, it turns out, was a pretty big day in the Mulberg household. Not only was it the day that Nate Mulberg was announced as head baseball coach at Johns Hopkins University, it was also the first birthday of Makayla, the daughter of Nate and his wife, Kristen.
“I’m kind of a spiritual guy, so I guess I’ll view it as a good sign of life that it all fell on the same day,” Mulberg said in relating the story.
Mulberg is a former Division III baseball player, and a former Division III assistant coach. For the past nine seasons, he’s been an assistant coach at Division I Richmond, and for at least as long, he has been preparing to become head coach at Johns Hopkins.
It goes back to 10 years ago, when Mulberg was a young assistant coach at Franklin & Marshall. Mulberg had played his college ball in Division III as well, at the University of Rochester. And while F&M’s day in 2015 did not end well, with Johns Hopkins sweeping two games to win the Centennial Conference tournament championship, it left a lasting impression on Mulberg.
“I just remember leaving the field that day, and that whole weekend, because they were hosting the tournament ... I just remember thinking in my heart and in my mind, that Hopkins was just an amazing institution with the facilities and the amazing program that Coach (Bob) Babb had built there.
“I remember saying to myself, ‘man, if this opportunity ever presented itself for me to have a chance to be the head coach here, it was something that I had to pursue no matter where in the world I was coaching at the time.”
With Babb having been head coach for 46 years, suffice it to say that the opportunity didn’t present itself to anyone for a long time. But Mulberg’s dream job was something that continued to drive him. “A lot of the choices and decisions that I made over the next 10, 12 years as a coach, were with kind of that mindset of saying, how can I make myself competitive to end up at a place like Johns Hopkins?”
That career path led from F&M, which was his first assistant coaching job, to Bucknell, and then to Richmond, where he began his career as a volunteer assistant before getting hired on full-time.
And along the way, he continued going to school as well. He earned a master’s in sports management from Millersville in 2016 and an MBA as well as a master’s in non-profit management in 2022. All of this made him not just supremely overqualified for any Division III head coaching role, but also had a calculated purpose.
“I felt like they would all bring unique value to my ability as a mentor, so not just as a baseball coach, but just a mentor of young men,” said Mulberg. It’s probably obvious why an advanced degree in sports management would be valuable, but the MBA might not be as clear to some.
But it was perfectly clear to Mulberg. “ I've always viewed leading a college baseball program as kind of like being a CEO. Ultimately the game of baseball is what is bringing us all together, our love for that game. But you're handling so many different facets of an organization. You have assistant coaches that you need to work to motivate and build relationships with. You need to, of course, build relationships, most importantly, with your scholar athletes. You have to figure out ways to market your program effectively. You have to learn how to handle finance and budgets, and there's strategic leadership and organizational management components all across the board.”
At Johns Hopkins, Mulberg feels like he will be leading student-athletes who have a similar academic focus to those at Richmond, and at Bucknell. Richmond finished 33-19 overall, finishing in the middle of the pack in the Atlantic 10 with a 14-16 conference mark, but the level of competition isn’t so far away from Division III. All one has to do is look at Brady O’Brien, who was a grad transfer from Colby to Richmond this past season and led the Spiders with 20 homers and an 1.199 OPS.
The Blue Jays are no strangers to being driven over the years. “ I've been so impressed with their aptitude for wanting to be challenged,” Mulberg said. “That has come up many times. They want to be pushed, they want to be great, and they want to accomplish great things on and off the field. They remind me in so many ways of the young men I've had the privilege to work with at Richmond for nine years.”
Replacing Babb, who was head coach for 46 years, compiled a 1,346-483-16 record, and led his team to seven Division III World Series. He was associated with Johns Hopkins baseball for more than half a century. Almost every living Johns Hopkins baseball alumnus either played for Babb, or with Babb. Regardless of how many degrees one might have earned, you can’t succeed at JHU without Babb’s – let’s say institutional knowledge.
“He was very gracious to reach out and congratulate me after I accepted the job, so that meant the world to me,” Mulberg said of his predecessor. “I also had a very in-depth conversation with him, prior to accepting the position, and it was a very, very meaningful opportunity for me in which I just expressed my interest in learning from him as much as he was willing to help me with during his retirement.
“It was a big part of this whole opportunity for me and I don't take lightly what he has built at Hopkins. It's truthfully a big reason why I wanted the job in the first place is because I was excited about the challenge to continue what he has started and build upon what he has started. It's not going to be an easy task, but it's a challenge I'm excited about.”