Ed Pinnance made history for Michigan State baseball as the first Spartan (the school was called State Agricultural College at the time with the nickname Aggies) to advance to the
major leagues, appearing in 1903 for the
Philadelphia Athletics, and was also among the first full-blooded
Native Americans to play in MLB.
Tom Yewcic was named the
College World Series Most Outstanding Player of the
1954 College World Series despite his team not reaching the championship game and would have a brief professional career with the
Detroit Tigers. Yewcic was a two-sport star at Michigan State, leading the
1953 football team to a Rose Bowl win.
Earl Morrall was a teammates of Yewcic on the 1954 College World Series team, led the
1955 football team to a
Rose Bowl victory, and chose a career in the
National Football League where he won 4
Super Bowls and an
NFL MVP trophy in a 21-year career.
Dick Radatz earned first-time All Big Ten honors in 1959, going 10–1, 1.12 ERA, and was a two-time MLB All-Star with the
Boston Red Sox in 7-year pro career. A teammate of Radatz,
Ron Perranoski would leave a stellar collegiate career in East Lansing for an MLB career, twice leading the league in saves, and twice helping his team win the World Series in his 13-year stint in the majors. The
Major League Baseball draft began in 1965 and the Spartans would be represented in the first year when
Dick Billings was drafted in the 25th round by the
Washington Senators as the first Michigan State player ever drafted. Billings would go on to an 8-year MLB career.
Steve Garvey was a two-sport athlete at Michigan State, earning a letter as a
defensive back for the football team, and would earn All Big Ten and All American honors in 1968 on his way to the majors where he would earn a
World Series ring with the
Los Angeles Dodgers as a 10-time MLB All-Star.
Rick Miller was a
Sporting News First Team All-American in 1969 for Michigan State and then won a
Gold Glove for the
California Angels in 1978 in his 15-year MLB career as a defensive standout. In 1974, Spartan coach
Danny Litwhiler pioneered the use of radar to measure pitching velocity. Litwiler said, “One day in 1974 while I was the coach at Michigan State, I read an article in the student paper that said ‘Don’t Speed on Campus’ and there was a photo of an MSU policeman who had just received a new radar gun. That got me thinking—could we use it to check the velocity of the baseball? So I found out that the cops’ radar guns were powered by the cigarette lighters in their police cars. So, we got an MSU police car to drive out on the field to time the pitches and the readouts were accurate within one mph each time. Within one week, I had the prototype of the JUGS gun in my hands and today that same prototype is in the Hall of Fame." Litwhiler also invented 'Diamond Grit' to help dry out fields after rain. Following the two-sport tradition,
Kirk Gibson would lead the
1978 Michigan State Spartans football team to a co-Big Ten championship. At the suggestion of Spartan football coach
Darryl Rogers, Gibson also played collegiate baseball. Gibson played only one year of college baseball, hitting .390 with 16 homers and 52 RBIs in 48 games. He was drafted by both his hometown
Detroit Tigers baseball team (
first round) and the
St. Louis Cardinals football team (
seventh round). He chose baseball and won two World Series titles (1984 with Detroit, 1988 with the Los Angeles Dodgers) and the 1988 National League MVP award in his 17-year career.
Mark Mulder would earn All Big Ten honors twice for the Spartans (1997, 1998) on his way to a professional career with two MLB All-Star appearances and a 21–8 2001 season for the
Oakland Athletics which was captured in the book and film
Moneyball. Bob Malek (2002) and Jeff Holm (2011) both were named the
Big Ten Conference Baseball Player of the Year, the only two Spartans honored since the award was created in 1982. Malek finished his career as one of the most decorated Spartans ever with several national awards and is only the second Spartan in history to be a two-time member (2001-2002) of the .400 club (.400 or better batting average), joining Don Fleser, who did so in 1925-1926. Kurt Wunderlich was the
Big Ten Pitcher of the Year in 2011, and Joseph Dzierwa won the award in 2025, the only two Spartan hurlers to be so recognized since the award was created in 1994.
Second baseman Ryan Jones was named to the All-Big Ten team three consecutive seasons (2010–2012) and had a 33-game hitting streak, a Spartan record. Recognizing the combination of athletic and academic performance, a number of Spartan baseball players have won the prestigious
Big Ten Medal of Honor, including
Ty Willingham (1977), who would go on to a successful college football coaching career at
Notre Dame and
Stanford. Other winners from Spartan baseball are Mike Davidson (1988), Stuart Hirschman (1992), Brandon Eckerle (2011) and Bryce Kelley (2021). Five Spartan players (Roberts, Garvey, Yewcic, Gibson, Mulder) and two coaches (
John Kobs and Danny Litwhiler), have their numbers retired in East Lansing. In addition, the stadium is named after
Drayton McLane, a Michigan State alumnus and former owner of the
Houston Astros. McLane and his wife Elizabeth donated funds to begin renovations of the stadium, located at the historic
Old College Field, and the updated facility quickly made history when, on April 4, 2009, the first official game in the new stadium was played, and Spartan pitcher Nolan Moody threw a no-hitter against
Northwestern. McLane donated funds for the building of the football facility at
Baylor University, also named
McLane Stadium. The baseball field was named for Spartan coach
John Kobs in 1969. ==Year-by-year results==