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Mike Martin legacy looms large with Hart, Grifol joining ranks of college head coaches

On3 imageby: Ira Schoffel05/24/26iraschoffel

Three years after his passing, legendary Florida State baseball coach Mike Martin’s legacy looms large in the college game.

With the promotion this week of longtime assistant Chris Hart to head coach at N.C. State, four of the ACC’s 16 head baseball coaches are now former Mike Martin players.

And on Saturday, another Martin protege, Pedro Grifol, was named head baseball coach at FIU in Miami. That brings the total to seven former Martin players who are now head coaches on the four-year college level.

Hart, who played at Florida State from 1999 to 2003, was an assistant coach at N.C. State for 22 years before getting the nod after Elliott Avent announced his retirement. He joins Link Jarrett, Mike Bell and James Ramsey as ACC head coaches.

Jarrett, of course, is in his fourth season at his alma mater, Florida State. Bell is in his eighth season at Pitt, and Ramsey is in his first season as head coach at Georgia Tech. Not only did all three of them play for Martin at Florida State, they also worked on his staff as young assistant coaches.

Grifol, who has spent most of his coaching years in professional baseball, played under Martin in the late 1980s and early ’90s. After a lengthy run as an assistant coach for the Kansas City Royals, he served as manager of the Chicago White Sox in 2023 and ’24. As the head coach at FIU, he will return to his hometown of Miami.

Two other Martin proteges are head coaches at four-year schools in the state of Florida: Jamey Shouppe at Florida A&M and Jeff Tam and Florida Tech.

Shouppe, who played for Florida State in the early ’80s, was an assistant coach under Martin for more than two decades. He was named head coach FAMU in 2014 and is still leading the Rattlers today. (Tallahassee State College head coach Brian Henry also starred under Martin at FSU, and Martin’s son, Mike Jr., was head coach at Florida State for two seasons before Jarrett.)

Tam played under Martin at FSU in the early ’90s before playing six years in the major leagues. He broke into coaching at the junior college level and has been head coach at Division-II Florida Tech in Melbourne for the past five years.

Several other former Martin players are in the coaching ranks as college assistant coaches, as well as high school and junior college head coaches and assistant coaches. Martin protege Kevin Cash is also manager of MLB’s Tampa Bay Rays and has been since 2015.

Martin retired in 2019 after 40 seasons as the winningest coach in major college baseball history. He posted a career record of 2,029 wins, 736 losses and 4 ties.

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