Nearly every morning for four years, Pat Mason discovered exactly what it took just to have his dream job. It wasn't always pretty.
As a first-time college baseball assistant coach at Boston College in 1998, Mason worked under Pete Hughes, the guy that recruited him to play at Northeastern University and with whom he'd remain connected for the next 15 years. Last month, Mason took over the Virginia Tech program he and Hughes helped start to get turned around, when Hughes left to become the coach at Oklahoma.
Yet, in '98, Mason might as well have been invisible in the coaching profession. He was as far from his first head coaching role as one could possibly get. He had an annual assistant coach's paycheck of less than $5,000 and a living space in a tiny spare bedroom at his older sister Elizabeth's house an hour from BC to prove it.
"Now that I've got this Virginia Tech job, maybe she'll start sending me some back bills," said Mason, who signed a five-year contract at the end of June that will pay him $185,800 in his first season as Hughes' replacement. "I'm not sure what the statute of limitations is on that stuff. I'll have to look back at that before I get a grocery bill and an electric bill from her for whatever electricity I used."
When leaving his hometown and his sister's place in Franklin, Mass., every morning during those early days of the BC job, Mason's first stop on the way to work was eight minutes away in Millis. That's where Hughes lived, and there was more than just a "teacher's pet" intention behind Mason's diligent fetching of the head coach.
"I think part of my motivation for picking him up in the morning was that he'd pay for my gas," Mason said. "If I didn't get up and get my butt out of bed, then I'd be driving myself and I'd be on the hook for filling up my tank. I'd have to scrape my nickels together."
Mason, 37, has clearly come a long way since those days when penny pinching was a necessity. When he coaches his first game next season, he'll do so after spending three seasons as Hughes' pitching coach at Tech, five seasons as an assistant coach at Northeastern, a year as an assistant at Framingham State in Framingham, Mass., and those four years at BC.
?Let me put it this way,? said Hughes, who compiled a record of 222-174 and reached two NCAA tournaments in seven seasons at Tech. ?Pat has never paid for a meal or a tank of gas when he?s been in my company ? and that includes our time at Virginia Tech. He?s going to start paying now. I?d like to think I had something to do with his increase in salary over the years.
?No, those were hard times in the early days at Boston College. He?s such a loyal guy. He jumped on board back then and did a lot for me for nothing in return. You like to see good people and hard workers like him rewarded.?
Clam chowder is less New England than Mason. The region is in his blood.
The son of an accountant father who spent time in the Navy, and a mother who raised eight kids ? of which Mason is the youngest ? he grew up in the framework of steady work ethic. It was an average middle-class lifestyle in Franklin, if average is growing up in a four bedroom house with a family of 10.
"My parents weren't caught up in keeping up with the Joneses," said Mason, who added he stays in close contact with his four brothers, three sisters, dad, Fred, and mother, Josephine. "We learned to do a lot with a little."
For Mason, who served as Tech's pitching coach, recruiting coordinator and associate head coach under Hughes, the feeling of doing "a lot with a little" is similar to what he has going on at Tech. When Hughes left June 26, Tech athletic director Jim Weaver and associate director of athletics for administration Jon Jaudon wasted no time in interviewing Mason for the job and offering it to him the same day.
"To be very honest with you, we've got to be able to compete with some of the upper echelon teams in our league, and we've gotten some commitments that we feel like will allow us to do that," Weaver said. "We want to keep that momentum in place. Pat can help us keep that momentum."
Tech, which went 40-22 last season and hosted an NCAA tournament regional for the first time in school history, had seven commitments from high school seniors and three from juniors when Mason was promoted. Mason said he's been able to keep all of those recruits in the fold since Hughes' departure.
"I think one of the big factors for why they wanted to keep me as coach is because we understand how that campus is wired," Mason said. "It's a blue collar, hard-working student-athlete. (Tech football) coach (Frank) Beamer showed that with his success. That's what wins at Virginia Tech. That's who we are in the recruiting market. That's the kind of player we get. It takes a coach to embrace it.
"We're probably not the sexiest school on the market, and we may not have some of the bells and whistles, and we don't try to have them. We embrace that."
Though Tech came out of last season having made some progress, it'll have to continue making those steps forward under Mason with a few new faces in bigger roles.
Poquoson High graduate and All-Atlantic Coast Conference shortstop/third baseman Chad Pinder, outfielders Tyler Horan and Andrew Rash and pitchers Joe Mantiply (6-1 last season with a 2.85 earned run average), Clark Labitan (11 saves), Devin Burke (11-3, 3.11), Jake Joyce (7-1, 4.16) and Eddie Campbell (2-5, 5.40) are all gone.
Mason was able to craft a staff in three seasons as Tech's pitching coach that didn't have an ERA of more than 4.57 in any single season (4.22 this past season, 4.16 in 2012 and 4.57 in the '11 season). Prior to the '11 season, only one Tech team in the previous 15 seasons had an ERA better than 4.57 (4.50 in '03).
Now, Mason is confident Tech can do it again with returning pitchers like Brad Markey (5-4, 4.93 last season), Sean Keselica (2-1, 4.55), Tanner McIntyre (3-0, 3.81) and Brendon Hayden (2-0, 3.00).
Mason convinced assistant coach and 32-year-old fellow ace recruiter Mike Kunigonis to remain in Blacksburg and turn down a chance to follow Hughes to Norman, Okla. Mason added another young cog to his coaching staff by hiring 28-year-old Robert Woodard, who was the pitching coach at UNC Wilmington.
"If you're not young, you need to be young at heart," Mason said. "Kids are raised differently in this generation, and from when they were in the generation before. You need to be able to relate to them. I think we can do that."
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