Mueller attended
Stillwater High School in
upstate New York, where he played baseball and basketball. Mueller won a state basketball championship in his senior season, 1988. He was offered a basketball scholarship at
Siena, but chose instead to attend
Eckerd. He played both basketball and baseball at the Florida college as a freshman and sophomore but focused exclusively on baseball as a junior and senior. He graduated in 1992. After getting his
master's degree from
Saint Rose in 1994, Mueller began a seven-year professional baseball career spent entirely in
independent leagues. From 1994 to 1995, he played for the Marshall Mallards and
Will County Claws in the short-lived North Central League. Partway through the 1995 season, he returned to upstate New York, where he played for the
Adirondack Lumberjacks from 1995 to 1996 and the
Albany-Colonie Diamond Dogs from 1997 to 2000. Primarily a
first baseman and an
outfielder, Mueller had a career .286
batting average and hit 76
home runs. ==Coaching career==