Legendary Rice coach Wayne Graham (Rice Athletics)
Legendary former Rice head baseball coach Wayne Graham, one of the most decorated coaches in the history of college baseball, passed away at 88 this week.
“Coach Graham was the greatest baseball coach on any level of baseball,” Former Rice assistant and Texas head coach David Pierce told D1Baseball. “He influenced, guided, and encouraged coaches and players to be their absolute best. He was a baseball lifer, and he will be missed.”
Graham, over the course of his career, did one of the best coaching jobs this sport has ever seen. Most fans at the Division I Baseball level know Coach Graham for what he accomplished at Rice. But what he accomplished at San Jacinto (TX) CC in the junior college ranks is also remarkable.
The Yoakum, Texas, native began his coaching career at Scarborough High School in Houston before heading to Spring Branch High School for a season. That year would change the trajectory of his life and career forever. The next year, 1981, he was the head coach at San Jacinto.
It took time for San Jac to gain its footing, but the program finally did so in 1984. Graham’s program proceeded to rattle off seven straight 50-plus win seasons, including five NJCAA national championships in six seasons. Truly remarkable.
That success led one hometown program, Rice, to aim for his services. Before his arrival, it’s safe to say the Owls were not exactly a baseball juggernaut. They played their games at Cameron Field, which, at the time, was a glorified high school stadium and easily the worst facility in the conference. The program also hadn’t made an NCAA tournament appearance and had just seven winning seasons in 78 years. It was the toughest of tough jobs.
Graham didn’t care about the challenges. If you knew Coach Graham at all, that shouldn’t surprise you.
It took Graham some time to get the Owls on a roll. They won 29 games in his first season in 1992, 36 in year two, and 34 in year three- no NCAA tournament appearances, however. But everything changed for the Owls, and Graham, when the program finally made the NCAA tourney in 1995 with a 43-19 overall record.
That campaign would change Rice Baseball for decades, and turn Graham into a legend at the Division I level.
Graham went on to win 1,173 games as the head coach of the Owls, led the program to a whopping 23-straight NCAA tournament appearances, all seven of the program’s College World Series appearances, and reached the pinnacle of our sport in 2003 by beating Stanford in the first-ever College World Series championship series.
That year, Graham had one of the most decorated weekend rotations in the history of the sport with Jeff Niemann, Wade Townsend and Philip Humber not only all first rounders, but also all chosen in the first eight picks of the MLB draft. He also had the consummate spark plug atop the lineup in Chris Kolkhorst.
“Coach Graham was definitely an old school coach, that’s for sure,” Kolkhorst told D1Baseball. “He showed his affection by writing your name in the lineup each day. His will win to win was infectious. He would make you so mad sometimes that you just turned around and took it out on the other team. My appreciation for Coach Graham has grown as I’ve gotten older. I just want to say thank you to Coach Graham. I would always run through a wall for that man.”
Graham had plenty more great memories with the Owls after that 2003 campaign. His tenure with the program went another 15 seasons.
Once his career at Rice was over, Graham moved to Austin to follow the career of one of his long-time assistants at Rice, David Pierce. Graham was a former Texas Longhorns baseball player himself. And with Pierce, his pal, the head man for the Longhorns, he wanted to stay involved in college baseball any way he could — as a sounding board for Pierce, and as a frequent visitor to UT practices and games. You’d often see Coach Graham holding court at UFCU Disch-Falk Field. I last saw Coach Graham during last year’s Orange-White series in Austin. Right on brand, he was dissecting some of the Longhorns’ arms.
“A lot of people influenced me as a player and coach. None more than my dad, father-in-law, and Coach Graham,” Pierce said. “His ultimate goal was to create growth and development with all of his players and coaches. He was a man of integrity and character with a love for baseball, players and winning.
“I loved working for Coach Graham. Trust me, there was never a dull moment and plenty of challenges. But Coach G was truly the best.”
Baseball was life for Coach Graham, and his career, for my money, will go down as one of the best jobs ever done, along with Augie Garrido, Skip Bertman and Pat Casey, among others.
As hard-nosed and demanding as Graham was on the field, he had a much softer exterior off the field.
Graham and his personality are one of several reasons why I thoroughly enjoyed covering college baseball at a younger age. We had a fantastic relationship over the years — so much that when I’d cover a game at Reckling Park back in Rice’s prime, I would block out an extra 30-45 minutes more than usual because I knew Coach Graham would want to talk shop.
Coach Graham loved to tell me about his dad. He also loved telling me how he was so old that he played for Casey Stengel. He told me plenty of Stengel stories, but if I’m being honest, some of them are a little fuzzy at the moment. Perhaps most ironic about our relationship is that after games, we’d seldom talk about the game or his team for a good 20-30 minutes. Instead, he would turn away from me, peruse scores on the D1Baseball scoreboard (which was then owned by Rice graduate Jeremy Mills) on his computer monitor, and, after about five minutes, he’d want my take on the Aggies, Longhorns, and plenty of other teams around college baseball.
Then … we would talk about the Owls. The man truly loved college baseball. Even with his status in the sport, he wanted to soak up any knowledge he possibly could.
Something else I know well about Coach Graham was the love for his wife, Tanya. If the Owls were playing a game, Graham’s best friend and wife Tanya was in the building. One time after Rice had just played Mark Appel and Stanford, Graham and I were thawing out (it was frigid that day) in his office talking about Appel’s fastball and the game, among other topics. An hour or so had passed and Graham got a phone call from his wife. First, she wanted to know where he was. It had been well over an hour. Second, he said they had plans that night.
Graham, looking at me concerned, said: “On that note, I better get home. I’m going to be in trouble.”
I could go all day with Coach Graham stories, but you get an idea of who he was as a coach and person.
Wayne Graham was tough on his players. He was demanding to his coaches. But he knew the formula to win at the highest levels possible in baseball, and deviating from that norm was not in his DNA.
“I’m grateful and in debt to Coach Graham for so much in my life,” UTSA head coach and former Rice assistant Pat Hallmark told D1Baseball. “In terms of making the most out of a ballplayer and team, he is the greatest college baseball coach ever. His competitive will was second to none. It was an honor and a privilege to play and coach for him.”
He was one of the best to ever do it, and I’ll miss seeing him at the ballpark.
His indelible marks on our sport will not be forgotten.
