After nearly 30 years at Coastal Carolina, what will Gary Gilmore do after baseball? (2024)

CONWAY —Gary Gilmore shuts his office door, takes three steps and then sinks into a black, Coastal Carolina-branded arm chair. Its leather squishes as he props his right foot onto the coffee table in front of him before twisting toward you.

“So, what’s going on?” CCU’s baseball coach says with a smile.

He beat you to it.

That’s the question that brought you to this corner office above Springs Brooks Stadium’s left-field foul line, a room filled with trophies and baseball gear and cardboard boxes. The way things are situated all about indicates somebody’s moving in, moving out or moving on. All three apply.

It’s not news that Gilmore is retiring after 35 seasons as a head coach, the last 29 at his alma mater. He made that bombshell announcement a year ago and said veteran assistant coach Kevin Schnall would take over. And then Gilmore (with a career record of 1,368-695-5) went about preparing for this season as he would any other.

But the prospect of change has actually loomed over this place since 2020. That’s when Gilmore found out he had Stage 4 pancreatic cancer and, later, also liver cancer.

He’s been as aggressive as doctors will allow with fighting it, making regular trips to the world-renowned MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, for treatments and testing. Meanwhile, he’s attacked his diets and workouts to the point he looks younger than age 66.

“Oh, he’s a fighter now,” veteran umpire Joe Marion said. “He’s just like his teams. They were telling him it doesn’t look good and all that kind of stuff. I was talking with a partner of mine and I couldn’t even get the words ‘Gary Gilmore’ out of my mouth before he stopped me. He said, ‘If anybody can beat cancer, he can.’ And that’s what I thought, too. That sucker’s a go-getter.”

That’s the consensus among the folks you spoke with in the days leading up to your trip to Conway.

Sure enough, you’d never know that a sizable tumor is permanently fixed to his insides, especially since he’s “missed hardly any work.” Gilmore has continued to go about the business of college baseball— a year-round job even before the days of the transfer portal and NIL deals— as his final postseason as a coach approaches.

The Field Rat

The succession plan is in place, continuity will reign, CCU baseball will move on. Still, it’s undeniable that things will be different and what’s next— not so much for the program, but particularly the coach— has minds wandering.

Only 19 men have won more college baseball games than the one sitting casually near you. The bulk of those (1,115 victories) were amassed while guiding CCU, the rest during a six-year stint at USC Aiken.

He could add to that total during this week’s Sun Belt Conference tournament and move up a spot or two on that all-time wins list. A loss in the May 21 opener against 10-seed Georgia State, however, would be the end — not just of the seventh-seeded Chanticleers’ (33-21, 16-14 Sun Belt) season, but of his career.

It’s a wild proposition. Gilmore is as much a part of CCU baseball as the color teal and the ubiquitous Chanticleers mascot that’s plastered all around the stadium.

That stadium underwent a major renovation a decade ago that modernized it as much as any college ballpark. Millions of dollars were pumped into the project, though it wasn’t complete until christened by Gilmore. The coach threw out the first pitch on Feb. 13, 2015, and kissed home plate before CCU shut out Old Dominion, 4-0.

Gilmore used words such as “dreamed” and “blessed” that day to describe the moment. And he wasn’t motivated by the spruced-up facility receiving more seating along with larger locker rooms and a state-of-the-art video board. It’s because few things in this world are more important than baseball to him.

His priority list is topped by folks who either have his last name, share his bloodline or have worn the same jersey he dons on gamedays. Just about everything after that trails baseball, baseball, baseball.

But now— decades after pivoting from professional scouting to college coaching and even longer since he roamed center field for CCU in 1979-80— things have begun shifting at a breakneck pace.

“(After) 39 years of this, I want to spend time with my own children,” Gilmore said.

“As much as they love me, I missed a lot of things. And they know. When they put my tombstone out there one day, they’ll go ‘Dad, we love you, but there were times you chose baseball over us.’ I don’t want my grandkids to do that.”

There’s deep remorse in his voice. He reconciles it by saying his career allowed him to provide for his family in ways most couldn’t; that few can have it both ways; and his path was cemented long ago even if he occasionally flirted with going in a different direction.

And so what’s past is past, he reckons. A life with baseball literally and metaphorically packed away in one of those cardboard boxes awaits, cancer be damned.

For the rest of us, however, that’s part of what makes this stage of his life’s journey so foggy.

Gilmore is a self-described field rat, a guy who’s always hanging around a ballfield hitting fungos or pitching batting practice or chalking baselines. His energy is palpable the moment you enter the baseball offices. Everyone you encounter buzzes around on fuel provided by the man in charge.

That passion still amazes Randy Warrick, USC Aiken’s longtime athletics director and former baseball coach. It’s been 35 years since he promoted Gilmore to take over the baseball program after serving four seasons as an assistant coach. Yet the traits Warrick identified in the late-1980s remain evident to him today.

“If you know Gary, then you know his drive to win and his passion for winning,” Warrick, who retired in 2016, said. “And I’ve never seen anybody that loved to work with players as much as he did. He’d spend every day on the field if he could working with players. He's just a winner.”

The winner

The winning part is omnipresent. First, in the way he’s kept two forms of cancer at bay with no indications he’s giving up ground.

And then, obviously, the scores of victories, conference championships and trips to the College World Series that litter Gilmore’s resume. The centerpiece is the 2016 national championship that elevated a school, a region and mid-major teams everywhere that have dreamed of capturing baseball’s ultimate prize.

“That championship transformed me,” Gilmore says, “from being a person that in college baseball circles was a grinder and an overachiever and this and that to ‘Oh, wow, this guy is looked at as one of the all-time good coaches here.’ And that opens doors. It gives you credibility. Not that people thought I was a bad coach, but it opens doors that otherwise a guy at Coastal Carolina can’t open.”

Gilmore is being either modest or oblivious, or perhaps both.

Yes, it validated the countless hours Gilmore and his staff invested into the program since he returned here in 1995. But folks in the know realized CCU’s place on the baseball food chain— nationally and in South Carolina— long before the Chanticleers hoisted the College World Series trophy.

That championship mainly enhanced the perception of the program for casual-at-best fans or folks outside of the state. And along the way it delivered reams of inspiration across every level of the sport.

“The mid-majors look at it and now say it can be done,” said Fred Jordan, former head coach at The Citadel. His 831 career wins are the most in school history and the most ever in the Southern Conference. “Gilly implemented his program, the university bought in, the community bought in and it went to another level. They might be mid-major in size, but as far as what they expect to accomplish, it is and has been at a national level.”

It’s obvious in those top-notch facilities, as well as the rosters that have featured players from every corner of America. The lure of not only baseball at the beach, but championship baseball is a powerful tool to lure alpha-male athletes.

Yet is winning the end result? Only partly.

That much was evident when hundreds of former players, assistants and even rival coaches gathered on May 11 for Gary Gilmore Day at the stadium. Gilmore was presented some gifts, his No. 14 jersey was retired and the Chanticleers beat Georgia State, 17-13— all in all a banner day in Gilmore’s world.

And the party lasted hours after the final out. The coach wanted to acknowledge everyone that could make it back to town on his behalf. It’s the kind of culture he’s strove to cultivate since taking that first coaching job at USC Aiken back in 1990.

It was a solid turnout, though it represented only a fraction of the guys who’ve been on his rosters. The rest were there either in spirit or Zoom or whatever modern amenity provided access. And they all have Gary Gilmore stories, though few have little to actually do with baseball, most instead reflecting on that aforementioned culture.

Consider the testimony of Bobby Holmes, a right-handed pitcher who was a sophom*ore on the 2016 title team.

He attended the festivities, making the 241-mile trip from his home in Greenville to CCU. Like many, his first thoughts when asked about his coach have nothing to do with anything between the white lines.

Holmes lost his dad to a heart attack when he was 11 and his mom divorced his stepdad around the time he was transitioning from high school to college. So he was already in a precarious state moving from the Athens, Ga., area to the Grand Strand.

But the shock was softened and some stability was provided through Gilmore. At one point, Holmes— at a lanky 6-foot-2— needed to gain weight in order to endure the rigors of pitching at the Division I level. When asked, he told Gilmore he was good to go with buying the food he needed to pack on some pounds when, in fact, he “couldn’t at all.”

Holmes flat-out lied to his coach, instead figuring it out himself to beef up and go 17-7 with a 3.82 across four seasons. He didn’t want to burden a man charged with overseeing a couple of dozen other guys in similar positions, a man who’d already done so much for him.

“Coach Gilmore was far more than just a baseball coach for me,” Holmes said, “and I think it’s true for just about everyone who played there. He did everything in his power to make sure you were fine, that all your needs were being met. And I’m absolutely certain he’d broken every rule in the book if it meant I’d be fed as often as I needed to be. That’s the kind of guy he is.”

But what will his coach do without a game or a season or all the other routine-based things that have preoccupied his entire adult life? After all, as Holmes put it, “we don’t know what the hell he’s gonna do because we don’t know if he’s got any hobbies. All we know is he throws batting practice and comes to the field every single day.”

The retiree

Gilmore does indeed have a plan, just as he had a blueprint for building a baseball program — though he’s initially hesitant to reveal it.

“When I pray, I selfishly ask Him ‘When you’re done with me, you’re done with me — I get it,” Gilmore said. “But until then, I want you to keep me above board because I have some things I want to do.’ Not just personal. But if I can pull them off, they are going to be bigger than winning a College World Series. It’ll touch way more lives and do a lot more good things.”

Curiosity is nipping at you. You press for clarity and Gilmore sits silently for a moment. Then he puts both feet on the floor and leans slightly towards you.

“This is my dream at this point in time,” he says, “to unite all college baseball with having a NCAA Division I, II and III national children’s cancer day. Where we raise money to fight pediatric cancer. Every SC coach I talk to just says ‘Tell me how to help you. I’ll do anything and everything.’ There’s no such a thing and it really surprises me we don’t have something like that in this country.”

His disclosure catches you off guard. You weren’t expecting this.

Of course, his own battles with cancer have given him insight and perspective exclusive to those who’ve been plagued by that vile disease. But he’s also been schooled by his daughter, an occupational therapist in Mooresville, N.C., with a practice geared mainly toward children. He says she told him “Children’s cancer is the least funded, least researched and everything.”

“That blows me away,” Gilmore says. “That’s insane.”

He shakes his head and is alone in his thoughts for a moment.

Gilmore has a hard time rationalizing his goal, only submitting to it. He even leans into divine intervention, posing the possibility that the doors he mentioned being opened by that CWS title were all along meant to boost this life-saving initiative.

One thing’s for certain— his vision gets attention. Some folks are a little shaken, but in a good way, when they hear it.

“Really? I mean, that’s a special thing for him to do,” College of Charleston coach Chad Holbrook said. “And it means more to me because I walked that walk.”

Holbrook’s son, Reece, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at age 2. Given only weeks to live if he didn’t begin immediate treatment, the family underwent a nearly four-year journey that consumed most of their lives. Reece Holbrook made it through and now— despite enduring some eyesight issues because of the chemotherapy treatments he endured as a child— he’s a freshman outfielder at North Carolina.

“It’s cool Gary’s doing that,” Holbrook said. “I mean, really?”

Yes, that’s really the plan, Gilmore says. And he concedes it’s going to take lots of work, but he’s now got the time.

That is, when he’s not on vacation.

Circling back to what he told you earlier, Gilmore laments some of his perceived shortcomings rather that boasting about his quantifiable successes.

He notes that his two kids had one family vacation that wasn’t baseball-driven. It was after his second season at CCU, a trip to Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park that featured lots of hiking, lots of horseback riding and no cell phones.

Gilmore smiles.

It produced what he describes as the best 16 days of his life away from baseball. What if he can recapture that? And not once, but over and over?

Maybe he’ll go with his baseball widow wife, Cathy, to Vancouver Island and then roll down the West Coast, hitting one bed and breakfast after another. Or maybe the whole clan loads up and checks out all the national state parks and all the other sights the country has to offer.

“There are things in this world I want to see,” Gilmore says, “and things I want to do.”

He props his foot back up and continues laying out a must-see list. That’s when the answer to your question— the one Gilmore asked you first— appears.

What’s going on? That's what Gilmore wants to find out for himself.