Head UNM baseball coach Ray Birmingham said he will chew the ears off the competition on the field.
And in interviews, he will talk the ears off reporters about two things — New Mexico and baseball.
“I have been coaching a long time in this state, the greatest state in the union,” Birmingham said. “And I want to make this program bring pride to the whole state of New Mexico.”
So far, he has kept his word.
Birmingham led the last two Lobo teams to two second-place finishes in the Mountain West Conference, tallying 71 combined wins over the past two seasons.
Not bad considering those two teams were picked to finish in fifth and fourth, respectively, in the MWC preseason polls.
The Lobos’ over-performance isn’t difficult to explain, Birmingham said.
“We have a feisty attitude,” he said. “We are going to get beat. It is going to happen. But you know what? We are still going to come back and try to whip your tail the next day. We don’t care. You can knock us down. You can kick us, and we are going to come back and chew your ear off the next day.”
That feistiness has paid well in wins, and now if only it would pay in dollars, Birmingham said.
“Look at that,” he said, pointing around the Lobos baseball field. “Look at that right there. That is where we are at. Are there high schools with better stuff than that? A guy asked me on the radio today, ‘Is it hard to get pitchers here because of the altitude?’ No! It is because of that.”
But Birmingham knew the facilities were less than stellar when he took the job, and his goal has always been to restore New Mexico baseball and put it back where it belongs, he said.
“I’m not going to B.S.,” Birmingham said. “I have got plenty of passion for the state of New Mexico, and I took this job and took what would have been a major pay cut, because I had a great job out of baseball making five times more than I make here. I came here for one reason — and that is to make this baseball program to the level it deserves to be.”
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Consider this a step in the right direction: In the preseason poll, the Lobos found themselves in a familiar position — No. 2 in the MWC. But this time it didn’t take a season to work their way up,a sign to Birmingham that the Lobos garner well-deserved respect.
But how can the Lobos make that leap to the front, surpassing juggernaut TCU, which sits atop the MWC? More feistiness? Sure. A positive attitude? Done.
Oh, and one more thing, Birmingham said.
“I need a nice ball park here, because, one, I can have a place for the Lobos to play. Two, I can have a place for (Albuquerque Public Schools) to play their games without having to beg (Isotopes Park) and pay them $5,000 a day,” he said. “Then, I got to get it where I can play tournaments here every weekend. The players will come here to play. Once you see Albuquerque, you fall in love with it in the summer.”
Even without a new park, one senior third-baseman, Adam Courcha, found New Mexico all the way from Australia.
He has bought into Birmingham’s system and said the whole MWC is starting to do the same.
“Over the last couple years, under Coach Birmingham, he has earned a lot of respect in the conference just because of what he has done,” Courcha said. “And that has shown in this preseason poll.”
But Courcha said the team still has room to improve.
“At the end of the day, we are still not the front-runner,” Courcha said. “TCU has got the tiger on their back, and we have been chasing them for years now. We need to make that change and get up there.”
Courcha, who has played nearly every position in the infield, said he’ll put trust in his coach to take them there.
“I know my role,” Courcha said. “I am not the (Ryan) Honeycutt, the (Rafael) Neda or the big guys. Whatever Coach Birmingham needs me to do, I’m there for him.”
