Beals’ teams won the Big Ten Tournament in 2016 and ‘19 and made the NCAA Regional in ‘16, ‘18 and ‘19. His contract was extended after that 2019 season.
Beals is third in Ohio State baseball coaching wins behind his immediate predecessor, Bob Todd, who went 901-477-2 from 1988-2010, and Marty Karow, who went 479-341-5 from 1951-75.
Beals is a member of the Springfield/Clark County Baseball Hall of Fame. He played collegiately at Kent State then spent three seasons in the New York Mets farm system.
He was an assistant coach at Kent before becoming head coach at Ball State, where he went 243-202 in eight seasons.
He said his high school baseball coach, the legendary Tom Randall, might have prepared him to one day be the Ohio State head coach with one of his favorite quotes.
“The statement he always used to us and the statement he was always quoted with in the paper every time we won a championship was, ‘You win with people,’” Beals recalled in 2019. “It’s an old Woody Hayes quote. It’s in big letters in the athletic department, it’s in my office, so I learned at a young age you win with people. I learned an Ohio State motto from Coach Randall.”
Beals won his 500th game in 2018. A year later, he received a contract extension after the Buckeyes made a surprise run to the Big Ten Tournament title as the No. 7 seed and earned their 22nd NCAA Tournament bid.
“We’re doing it with a young, talented club,” he said before the Buckeyes went 1-2 in regional play at Vanderbilt and saw their season come to an end. “The future is bright. Recruiting is going well. I’m excited for this weekend, but I’m excited about our future as well.
“We need to get (to the regional). We’ve got a bigger vision. The program has been to the national tournament three of the last four years, and the next step is to get ourselves to the super regional. The competitor in me can think of nothing better than a three-game series to see how goes to Omaha.”
Since that season, though, Ohio State is 49-58 overall and 30-34 in the Big Ten.
Beals took over a proud program in decline at the end of Todd’s overall successful tenure. Ohio State won the Big Ten Tournament seven times from 1994-2007 but just twice since.
The Buckeyes were regulars in the NCAA Tournament in the 1990s (seven appearances) and 2000s (six appearances), but they have not advanced to the second weekend of the tournament since 2003.
Ohio State has four College World Series appearances, the last coming in 1967. The year before that, the Buckeyes won it all — their only baseball national championship, and the most recent for a Big Ten team.
The school said a search for his successor will begin immediately.
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