Tim Corbin at heart of close-knit Vandy Boys brotherhood

This story was excerpted from Kennedi Landry’s Rangers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

On the Vanderbilt Athletics website, it only takes a few clicks to get to the “‘Dores in the Pros” page, which seemingly never ends. Vanderbilt is one of college baseball’s best programs in its toughest conference, consistently churning out big leaguers and putting together College World Series runs.

On Opening Day 2025, the Commodores were the most represented college in Major League Baseball, with 11 alumni making Opening Day rosters league-wide. The program had 18 alumni that appeared on MLB rosters during the 2024 season, most of any program in the country.

There are All-Stars Dansby Swanson and Walker Buehler and Sonny Gray and Bryan Reynolds. There’s JJ Bleday and Mike Yastrzemski. There are Rangers rookies Jack Leiter and Kumar Rocker. The list of current and former players to come out of the program goes on and on and on.

At the center of it all is one man.

Tim Corbin has been the head coach at Vanderbilt since 2003. Since then, he’s transformed the Commodores from a Southeastern Conference bottom dweller to perennial contender. When he arrived, Vanderbilt had been to only three NCAA tournaments in school history.

Since 2004, they have been to all but one. He’s led the Commodores to two national championships, four SEC regular-season titles and four SEC tournament titles. Corbin has coached 20 players who went on to be selected in the first round of the MLB Draft in his time at Vanderbilt, as well as numerous others throughout the Draft.

He’s had an individual impact on each and every one of them.

“I got drafted out of high school, and deep down, I knew I wasn’t ready to play professional baseball,” said Bleday, currently in the A's outfield. “I needed some structure in my life in getting to the next level, and Corbs just does a good job at having structure and pushing guys beyond their limits.

“It’s not easy by any means to be a Vanderbilt Commodore. That’s why it’s a good program and why so many players come out and make it to the big leagues. It’s detail-oriented, and you’re able to get bigger, stronger, faster and get an opportunity to play in the SEC and get drafted.”

Yes, Corbin and the program churn out a seemingly neverending crop of big league talents. But the Vandy Boys have always been more than that. Every college athletics program in the country is going to preach that their program is a family. After all, that’s a big part of what gets parents to send their kids across the country to play a sport.

Whether you’re a recent graduate or an alum from years ago in the Corbin era, the community persists.

“It's a kind of an unspoken brotherhood, in a way,” said Leiter. “We were in L.A. last year, [Angels pitcher] Carson Fulmer came over to me and [Rocker], and it was like we'd gone way back. That was my first time meeting him in person. That's kind of just the way it is. You have that bond even with guys you haven't met yet. You always have a home you can go back to.”

That’s by design for Corbin.

Corbin, speaking via phone interview with MLB.com, recalls a 2006 conversation he had with university chancellor Gordon Gee.

Corbin, just a few years into his tenure at Vandy, requested a list of things when the baseball facility was being remodeled. Among them was an alumni locker room. Gee didn’t understand why that was necessary.

"‘You have a daughter, right?’” Corbin asked Gee. “And he said yes. And I said, ‘She went off to college, right?' And he said, she did. And I said, ‘Did you close her room down?’ And he said, ‘No, it's open -- anytime she wants to come back, she comes back.’ And I said, ‘Exactly, that's why I wanted it.’”

There’s a period of time in every professional baseball player’s life where they just don’t know where they’re going to be, where they’re going to live. They’re bouncing around across the Minors, playing in Winter Leagues in other countries. It’s not the most stable of lifestyles most of the time.

Even for the more established big leaguers, Corbin wants Vanderbilt to be a home for anybody who needs it.

“I always wanted our kids to have a place to come back to to train for what we helped them create,” Corbin said. “I just felt like the most normal thing was to create a place that was never going to leave, it was always going to be there. … Since that day, we've tripled the size of it and we will quadruple the size of it, because so many of them come back.”

Much like any other clubhouse, the Vandy pro locker room has a name plate for each individual player, access to the batting cages and weight rooms and a group of guys all working toward the same thing.

Leiter is just one of many alumni who continue to work out at the Vandy facility in the offseason, splitting his time between Nashville, Tenn., and his hometown in New Jersey.

Swanson, currently the Cubs' shortstop, used to live in Nashville in the offseasons during his first few years of pro ball and spent more than enough time at the facility. Swanson helped bring the program its first national championship in 2014, when he was named the College World Series Most Outstanding Player.

“I try to get back there once an offseason,” said Swanson. “I try my best to stay connected with Corbs, whether it’s through text or phone calls or anything. Just reaching out to guys that are there, just to encourage them in the right ways and build confidence. My line’s always open for them.

“I wish I could do it more, but obviously as you get older, [there’s] a few more responsibilities. It makes it a little bit tougher. But I owe that place and coach Corbin everything.”

Bleday calls it “humbling” to know that they’re always going to take care of you at Vanderbilt, no matter how long you’ve been away from the program. Even if you’re just dropping in for a weekend, a player is more than welcome to pop in a day or two.

“For me, I look at it like a dad when your kids come home from college, and they bring all their friends,” Corbin explained. “You leave them alone, but you can hear their laughter, that's like music to a father's ears. That's what you want. You just want to be able to build a home where people want to be there and they want to enjoy it. When you can get that type of feeling, it becomes very emotional, and there's such great attachment to it. That's all I've ever wanted for these kids, just a place they could call home.”

Quote assists from: Martín Gallegos, Jordan Bastian and John Denton