NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Maggie Corbin sits in the Hawkins Field seat — Section G, Row 2, Seat 1 — she has occupied at Vanderbilt baseball games since 2003.
A hot May 18 day is starting to cool. She has gone through a pregame routine that includes watching the Commodores take batting practice, not watching the opposing Arkansas Razorbacks do the same, talking to a lot of people and sharing a quick look and nod with her husband, Tim, Vanderbilt’s head coach of 20 years. He finds her before every game, home or away.
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Now she sits with her scoring book, prepared to chart every batter as usual, and looks out from behind home plate at Vanderbilt junior pitcher Patrick Reilly. “His stuff is as good as anyone’s in the SEC,” she says. “He just wants to help this team so badly.”
Two early errors behind Reilly appear to rattle him, though, and his command isn’t sharp. The Razorbacks score four in the top of the first inning. Two Arkansas fans a few seats to Maggie’s left are enjoying it loudly. The Commodores, ranked in the top five for much of the season, are staring at a fourth consecutive loss. A national seed in the NCAA Tournament — and hosting privileges for a postseason run at the College World Series in Omaha, Neb. — is starting to look less than assured.
Maggie’s concern is body language. This team has done much to rejuvenate Tim, 61, and Maggie, 62, after a 2022 offseason of serious conversations about the future. It has been a fun team. It’s not having a lot of fun at the moment. Neither is Maggie, but that’s to be expected.
“The games are my least favorite part of it all,” she says. “I could really do without them. Even when we win.”
Wins are just bursts of relief, avoidances of misery. The joy is in everything else about a program that has two national championships, five College World Series appearances and a nation-best 17th consecutive NCAA Tournament berth that starts Friday at Hawkins against Eastern Illinois.
The games represent a tiny slice of the time put into Vanderbilt baseball each year, and it’s the only time Maggie is relegated to observing.
She’s an active participant in every other aspect, from meetings to recruiting trips to the “Vanderbilt Classroom,” a concept that means something to those who have been part of the program and separates it from others.
The Corbin era of Vanderbilt baseball is not a coach and his supportive wife. It’s an equal partnership at the top.
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“She does everything in this program,” Vanderbilt pitching coach Scott Brown says of Maggie.
“If Corbin is the engine, Maggie’s the oil,” former Vanderbilt star and 2014 national champ Rhett Wiseman says.
“Corbs is an amazing coach,” former Vanderbilt and Major League Baseball star Pedro Alvarez says, using the nickname for the coach that most of his players favor, “but I truly believe Maggie is just as important to the program as Corbs.”
Maggie Hastings grew up in the village of Vicksburg, Mich., about 15 miles south of Kalamazoo, where she started working at age 12 at her father’s A&W Root Beer stand. She was a gifted athlete, too, and her parents supported that, just as they did with her older brother.
When she entered Vicksburg High School in the fall of 1974, Thomas Hastings told school administrators Maggie would be playing on the boys tennis team. It was funded, well-coached and a better opportunity than the fledgling girls team. She would be one of its top players.
No, she would not play on the boys team, he was told. Yes, she would, he insisted, citing Title IX, part of the Education Amendments of 1972.
“He was a very forward-thinking man for that time,” Maggie says of her late father, and she was a standout for four years in boys tennis, then recruited by Michigan State, Michigan and others to play collegiately.
She chose College of Charleston and coach Joan Cronan, who had previously coached the women’s basketball team at the University of Tennessee (then a club sport) and would later be UT women’s athletic director and forge a transformative partnership with Pat Summitt. Maggie was an All-American and national champion at College of Charleston.
She was an individual tennis coach for the next 25 years, while marrying basketball coach Greg Blatt and raising daughters Molly and Hannah.
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After a divorce and several years as a single mom, Maggie began dating Tim while he was an assistant coach at Clemson. They had become friends years earlier at Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C.
That led to marriage and step-fatherhood for Tim — “We were super mean to him at first,” Hannah says — and the Corbins didn’t heed the warnings of those who told them Vanderbilt was a hopeless job. The Commodores had suffered 22 consecutive SEC losing seasons and hadn’t made an NCAA Tournament in two decades.
The Corbins saw programs such as Stanford, Notre Dame and Duke that excelled in both academics and athletics as aspirational. Tim’s well-documented attention to detail and relentlessness flipped things quickly. Then-freshman Warner Jones told The Athletic a “’Junction Boys’ attitude” ruled the early days. In his debut season of 2003, the Commodores qualified for the SEC tournament for the first time since 1996, then won 45 games and reached a Super Regional in his second season.
Maggie was involved with the program even then and was instrumental in the early recruiting efforts to land Alvarez and David Price. But she still had Hannah at home and was coaching her and others in tennis. Around the time Hannah graduated from high school in 2006, on her way to play tennis for Vanderbilt, two conversations happened that made Vanderbilt baseball what it is today.
One, Maggie told Tim she should probably put her master’s in business administration to work and get a job. Tim responded: “Would you do this with me instead? I think it can be really fulfilling.”
Two, Maggie told Tim something had to change. He took every loss so hard back then, he would sleep at the office rather than subject everyone else to his foul mood. And the season-ending loss would linger for weeks.
“What else do you need?” Maggie asked Tim. “You just want to die miserable? How can we make this more of a journey so that everything isn’t all or nothing?”
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A classroom — built beyond left field at Hawkins by Vanderbilt in the wake of Auburn trying to hire Tim away — was the vehicle for change.
Tim gathered his team together regularly from the start, and lessons on life and leadership were mixed in with the baseball scouting reports. But once he had an actual facility with desks, the Classroom became a pillar of the program. For about 30 to 45 minutes every day during the school year, the Corbins and players and coaches pause the outside world to dig in on something.
“Absolutely nothing is off the table – the more uncomfortable, the better,” says Maggie, who sits with the players and takes notes, participates when discussions open up and helps Tim brainstorm ideas during the couple’s dinners out that complete each day.
Alvarez remembers when the Classroom became a thing during his sophomore season of 2007. One day, the topic was proper tipping when dining out. Another day, a “flossing expert” came in, he said, to lead a discussion on oral hygiene.
That’s an annual staple, and Vanderbilt senior pitcher Sam Hliboki said Tim actually came in this year with a bowl of water and supplies and did the entire routine in front of the team.
“That got a good chuckle out of us,” Hliboki says. “I will say, it inspired some of us to get water picks.”
Vanderbilt junior center fielder Enrique Bradfield’s favorite day was when a “very unfiltered” UFC president Dana White came in to tell his story. The guest list has included coaches from all over the sports world and Navy SEALs. The team has watched “Band of Brothers” over several sessions and gone deep on the history of segregation and race relations.
“I learned more in that classroom than in all my years of schooling,” Wiseman says. “That’s where boys become men. … There are some shocking things that you hear in there. But we were safe, because everyone in that room gave a sh–, everyone cared. You could be open and emotionally vulnerable in that room, more so than anywhere else.”
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Notebooks are filled and kept. Wiseman and Harrison Ray, second baseman on the 2019 national championship team, both say they look back at theirs from time to time, to reminisce but also to remind themselves of important lessons.
That 2007 season in which the Classroom debuted saw Vanderbilt join the nationally elite, winning the SEC for the first time in 27 years and entering the NCAA Tournament as the No. 1 seed. The Commodores were upset by Michigan in the regional, but the elements for sustained success were in place.
Those included college sports standards such as recruiting momentum and investment and facilities – a training facility and locker room just for former players in the pros has been key. Tim was driven to find every coaching edge he could. His confidants include Bill Belichick and Tom Crean.
After watching Bruce Brown speak to the American Baseball Coaches Association in 2010 about developing character, Tim called him for more discussion. Brown, a longtime coach in the Seattle area who has written several books on leadership, eventually became Tim’s mentor, Maggie says.
Brown’s 10th book is in the works and will be titled “Coaching For Significance.” It will feature four coaches whom he believes embody the best of the profession – Dick Vermeil, Washington softball coach Heather Tarr, Corbin and the late, great Summitt. He interviewed several former players of each to explain why.
“Every player I interviewed for Tim, without me prompting, brought up Maggie,” Brown says. “Every single one of them. She’s the glue that holds everything together. She’s not just a motherly figure for those players, she’s a coach. The first time I met her I said, ‘Oh, OK, she’s the voice of reason.’”
Or VOR, as he calls her in texts and emails. Her elements for sustained success at Vanderbilt include team trips to go whitewater rafting or visit Smithsonian museums; the annual Christmas party at the Corbin residence featuring her homemade macaroni and cheese and chocolate sheet cake; and a personal involvement with each player that respects boundaries but is meant to last long after playing days end.
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“That’s the paycheck,” she says. “And it’s a wonderful life. Problem is, I suffer empty nest syndrome every damn summer.”
(Courtesy of Vanderbilt Athletics)Things are not going well for Vanderbilt in the first of three against Arkansas. Reilly has been knocked out of the game. The Razorbacks lead 7-1. Maggie’s son-in-law, Kyle Belcher, Molly’s husband and father to the Corbins’ 1-year-old grandson, Price, has vacated his seat. He wasn’t happy that a Vanderbilt season-ticket holder sold tickets to the Arkansas fans who are enjoying the rout a few feet away.
Vanderbilt second baseman R.J. Austin makes his second error of the game, a strange sight for a freshman having a terrific season. But tightness seems contagious right now. “He’s such a neat kid,” Maggie says of Austin. “He’ll be fine.”
Bradfield, the team’s emotional leader and projected first-round pick, steps to the plate in the bottom of the fifth. “I love this kid,” Maggie says. “He feels like he’s carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders right now, and I wish he wouldn’t feel that way. But it’s that time of year.”
Bradfield rips a single to center to score a run and make it 7-2. Maggie likes how the Commodores are clawing back. As the night unfolds, she has insight on every player who takes the field. There’s R.J. Schreck, who gets Tim’s sarcastic humor better than anyone. There’s Parker Noland, who had ups and downs in his career but hit two grand slams in a game this season. “I’m just so proud of him,” Maggie says.
They all know how she feels because she writes to them. Maggie makes cupcakes for every player on his birthday and delivers them with a handwritten note. Some of the notes are long; all of them are personal. There’s something about writing words down that makes them more impactful, she says.
Former Vandy pitcher Mike Minor saved his and had them in his Atlanta Braves locker. “I remember all four of mine,” says Kyle Smith, a Vanderbilt pitcher from 2013-16, in particular the one his sophomore year that indicated she could see him struggling to get back from a concussion, could see the pressure he was putting on himself and reminded him there’s more to life than baseball.
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In these communications, Maggie focuses on what people need, not want, to hear.
“If you don’t want the truth, don’t go to Maggie,” Wiseman says.
“She keeps it real,” Tim says. “And that’s been great for me, too. My modifications and progressions as a coach have a lot to do with the feedback I get from her – whether I want to hear it or not.”
Most of this is fun. Great players and championship teams make that more likely. So do genuine relationships that last much longer than playing careers. Maggie and Tim have so many former players getting married and having children, she has running accounts at two Nashville stores to keep up with the gift demands.
“I mean, these kids are reproducing at a rapid rate,” she says. “And I just love it.”
From Maggie helping Alvarez pick out his first two suits to the Corbins dominating in a fall pickleball challenge, the stories about Maggie mostly reflect good times.
Some are difficult. Vanderbilt was set up for a prime chance to repeat as national champion in 2020 when COVID-19 wiped out the season. The opportunity lost didn’t hurt nearly as much as the Vandy careers that ended abruptly.
“It’s done, guys,” is how Ray, then a senior, recalls Tim dropping the news.
“I wouldn’t say I’m a very emotional person, but I just lost it,” Ray says. “I stood there hugging Maggie for probably 10 minutes. That’s probably the best way to sum up our relationship. That’s the last thing I ever did in that facility as a Vanderbilt player.”
In the fall of 2007, Brian Harris was a redshirt sophomore at Vanderbilt and younger brother Andrew was a junior at Nashville’s Montgomery Bell Academy, destined to become a Commodore. They were losing their mother, Cay, to colon cancer. They needed Maggie at the hospital as much as possible – she had a knack for making Cay laugh – and Maggie obliged. When Cay passed, her role increased.
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“I can’t tell you how much she helped me, and still to this day I consider her my second mom,” Brian says, “She’s that important to me.”
“It was the same thing when our dad passed away in 2019, Maggie and Corbs were right there,” Andrew says. “I’m six years out of school, my brother eight years. Doesn’t matter. Still part of that family. Always part of it.”
June 2, 2016, was the worst day, the day freshman pitcher Donny Everett died in a drowning accident after fishing with some teammates. It was a day before the start of a home regional. He was 19.
Amid the devastation of the immediate aftermath, Smith remembers Maggie “just being present” for everyone.
“Just being who she is,” Smith says. “The comforting, compassionate, caring mother figure she’s been for this program for 20 years.”
Donny took a backpack to the lake that day. In it were his laptop, and the birthday note Maggie had written to him.
Tim Corbin celebrates with stepdaughters Molly and Hannah Blatt after Vanderbilt won the College World Series in 2019. (Justin Tafoya / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)Both of Maggie’s daughters live in Charleston, but Hannah is in town tonight for a work function. She’s sitting next to Maggie, who is recounting those early days as Tim blended into their family, eventually winning over his stepdaughters.
“Took him a minute,” Maggie says. “Learning how to love someone else’s children is definitely a good way to learn how to be a coach. It’s what you do every day in this job.”
This job is changing. The industry is, anyway. Tim has expressed more displeasure with the transfer portal and the emphasis on college athletes profiting off their names, images and likenesses than most coaches are willing to publicly. He told The Athletic in December, regarding Vandy’s efforts to establish an NIL collective, that “paying athletes from different streams is still something I have a hard time with.”
“Not because I don’t want to do anything for athletes,” he said then. “It’s that I really don’t want to put more on their plate. More on their plate while taking away responsibilities to themselves academically and to their team.”
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Maggie is more frank, as she sits watching the late stages of an 8-2 Arkansas win.
“It might be the end of us,” she says.
The Corbins hope they can get to the point where their players, who pay the most tuition per person in the SEC, can all get full rides. The Corbins are not totally closed off to the portal – Schreck is a graduate transfer from Duke. But the idea of six-figure bidding wars for players is not appealing to a coach who takes pride in his developmental program.
Questions about where things are going, especially in the competitive SEC, in tandem with a tough 2022 season made for hard conversations last summer. For two relatively new grandparents.
“It made us think, ‘Do we want to keep doing this?’” Maggie says. “But this group has really energized us. I love this team. It’s been such a fun year. When you love so many of them like this year, you want them to have all the things in the postseason.”
Maggie keeps score until the end, but she will not do so tomorrow. She will be back to see the Commodores win the Arkansas series, then win the SEC Tournament in Hoover, Ala., for the third time in the Corbins’ tenure – with Austin as tournament MVP and Reilly providing key innings.
But tonight she is off to Knoxville. She’s on a Nashville doubles team for a USTA 55-and-over state tournament that will happen the next day.
“I still get butterflies about competing,” she says. “It’s a gift.”
She will be the oldest player in the event. And her team will win the championship.
(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletic; photos: stock; Courtesy of Vanderbilt Athletics)
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