On May 3, Cal Poly baseball beat CSU Bakersfield by a score of 9-5. In the thick of a playoff race, it was a crucial conference win for the team. The win had more significance than just a conference win in May: it marked win number 700 for Mustang head coach Larry Lee.
This win placed Lee 38th among active Division I coaches and was also the 30th win of the season for the Mustangs, the 13th time Lee had eclipsed that mark, including nine 35-win seasons.
Lee has been consistently successful for over two decades at Cal Poly, reflected in all of the milestones the skipper has garnered.
Lee has been around the area long enough to form deep ties with the community and the people working alongside him. Few people have been alongside Lee for as long as Eric Burdick.
“Coach Lee is a very organized person with excellent time management skills and knows how to coach his players. He is a very hands-on type of coach,” Burdick said. “… He is with his players on the field during every minute of practice, working with them on bettering their skills and preparing them for what lies ahead. The relationship he has with his players is second to none.”
Lee was named head coach of Cal Poly baseball in July 2002, coming over from nearby Cuesta College.
At Cuesta, Lee tallied 460 wins in 16 seasons and led the Cougars to the state community college playoffs 11 times, including four berths in the Final Four. With the prolonged success at Cuesta, a move to Cal Poly was a logical next step.
Under Lee, the Mustangs have averaged 32 victories per season, aside from the 2020 pandemic-shortened campaign. This long-term consistency has established Cal Poly as one of the top-tier programs in the country, especially in the Big West conference.
The Mustangs have been a force in the Big West since Lee took over, with two Big West titles, four second-place finishes, and four NCAA regional berths.
Lee was born in San Luis Obispo (SLO) and attended San Luis Obispo High School, where he played football and basketball.
Burdick, who worked as a Cal Poly Sports Information Director (SID) for 22 years, has been around Lee since Lee was a Babe Ruth League all-star in 1973. Lee’s father, Tom, was one of Burdick’s instructors in the Physical Education Department at Cal Poly.
Burdick also worked for the SLO Tribune for 21 years, covering Lee’s high school playing and Cuesta coaching days.
“I never had a better working relationship with a coach than I had with Coach Lee,” Burdick told Mustang News through email. “It continues to this day, right down to baseball trivia questions on the bus rides to road games.”
Burdick was serving as the SID when Lee was inducted as the new head coach of the Mustangs. Burdick claims that Lee pulled him aside and said, “Burd, I’m going to need a lot of help from you.”
Lee never did need much help, though, Burdick claims.
Lee has held this relationship with hundreds of players throughout his time at Cal Poly, but one player stands out among the crowd.
Brooks Lee, infielder for the Minnesota Twins, played under his father from 2020 to 2022 after a stellar high school career at Larry’s alma mater, San Luis Obispo High School.
Brooks was selected No. 8 overall in the 2022 MLB Draft by the Twins and made his MLB Debut in 2024.
Brooks initially was looking to get out of his hometown, but ultimately decided to commit to Cal Poly as a way to repay his father for helping him get to the place he was.
“I committed my sophomore year in September so that was kind of when I realized my dad has really put a lot of dedication and time into me as a person as a player and I would probably benefit a lot by going to play for him and I’m sure he would benefit too,” Brooks Lee said.
Brooks’ decision to play under Larry was a good one. Lessons that he learned in SLO are applicable at the Major League level, as baseball remains the same game from level to level. Larry remains his son’s coach, even with dealing with responsibilities from the Cal Poly team.
“It’s inevitable to fail, you know you’re gonna fail more times than not,” Brooks Lee said. “Yesterday, I struck out three times and then in my last at-bat, hit the game-winning hit, and you know my dad sends me a text saying ‘Lesson of the day: learn from the past, don’t dwell on it, it has nothing to do with the next pitch.’ He’s still my head coach.”
Larry sent that text while practicing with his team at CSU Northridge, making sure to never miss one of Brooks’ at-bats. Although it’s his son, the level of care that Larry possesses has made him such a successful coach and mentor.
“I will run into players or coaches, past and present, who tell me that they came to Cal Poly because they wanted to play for Coach Lee or coach with him,” Burdick said. “He is very well known throughout the West region because of the way he coaches, his knowledge of the game of baseball, the respect he has for the sport, and the way he treats his players with the same kind of respect.”
It’s not just players that Larry has an impact on. Seth Moir, Cal Poly’s pitching coach, has been with the program since 2022 after stints with UCLA and San Jose State, and does not take working with such a legendary manager for granted.
“He’s a mentor to me. He’s a mentor to the players. [He’s] a Hall of Fame coach,” Moir said. “…It’s his life.”
Moir understands that to reach a milestone such as 700 wins, a repeatable system needs to be put in place, one that Larry has perfected.
“Anytime you’re that successful and you’ve won that many games, that means that there’s a good blueprint in place,” Moir said. “I mean, that’s years and years of focus and dedication and commitment.”
On the field, Larry has a vast bank of knowledge accumulated through a lifetime of baseball experience. The Mustang manager preaches precise decision-making and simplifying the game as much as possible.
“Whenever someone asks me about him, I always say that you know he’s the smartest coach I’ve ever been around, and I think that’s true,” Brooks Lee said. “It has nothing to do with me being his son, [I’ve] never met a coach that’s been brighter on the hitting and pitching side, and just the knowledge of the game.”
Quantified by the 700-win mark, it’s easy to see that Coach Lee is a winner. Despite not getting the most talented recruiting classes in the country, Larry’s teams always perform at a high level, a testament to the kind of coach he is.
“He’s competitive and he knows how to bring the best out of players, he brought the best out of me,” Brooks Lee said. “…You’ll have guys that aren’t as talented, but during the season and at certain times they overachieve, and they do better than you know the reality of what their skills allow them to do.”
The ability to utilize players to get the most production possible is a skill that very few coaches have. For as long as Larry has been at Cal Poly and the success that his teams have endured, 700 wins makes sense. Yet, a figure that large is still hard to comprehend.
Brooks remembers his dad hitting the 400-win mark when he was growing up, and as each milestone passes, the sense of awe never fades.
Larry himself takes a different approach to celebrating achievements.
“It’s the same reaction every time… ‘I’ve had a lot of losses,’ that’s what he always says,” Brooks Lee said. “He doesn’t care, I don’t think…It’s really cool to see that you know he can get to a point like that; it’s unbelievable. That’s a very large [number] of wins.”
Evidently, it’s not about the wins for Coach Larry Lee. Building relationships with those surrounding him daily while being able to develop players and teach what he loves, baseball, are the true reasons that Lee returns to Baggett Stadium every season.
700 wins is a number that should be celebrated and cherished, but it is only one way to measure Larry Lee’s impact on both Cal Poly baseball and the greater San Luis Obispo community.