The Wizard is Safe at Home
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – Ron Fraser came to the University of Miami in 1962 and forever changed the trajectory of Hurricanes and NCAA baseball.
Known as “The Wizard of College Baseball,” Fraser transformed the Canes from a program that was nearly contracted to a national powerhouse that won over 1,200 games, made 20 consecutive NCAA Regional trips, played in 12 College World Series and won two national championships in his 30 years at the helm of the program.
Fraser passed away on Jan. 20, 2013 at the age of 79. But the legendary coach was forever immortalized on the ground he made sacred. In recognition of his lifetime accomplishments and a distinguished legacy of helping others, the University of Miami created the Ron Fraser Wizard Fund to honor the Hall of Fame coach with a bronze statue outside Alex Rodriguez Park at Mark Light Field. It was installed on the afternoon of April 24, 2015 – just before Miami was set to begin its annual rivalry series with Florida State.
Five years after the unveiling of the Ron Fraser statue, we look back at the impact he made on Miami baseball, his players, on college baseball and the University of Miami through the eyes of three people who revered The Wizard: his daughter, Liz Fraser Kraut, UM Sports Hall of Famer and 1985 national champion Mike Fiore and former Fraser player and current head coach Gino DiMare.
The University of Miami became a major factor on the national collegiate baseball scene when the school hired Fraser to guide the program in 1962. He was a player at Florida State in the late 1950s and was the mentor of the Dutch National Team for three years before Miami lured him to Coral Gables. Over the span of 30 years, “The Wizard of College Baseball” built what many considered the model collegiate program.
"Miami was everything to him,” Fraser Kraut said. “He was so proud of the University. He was so proud of what he built. He was such an ambassador for the University of Miami. That was his job and he loved it. He loved being able to enjoy all the fans and the community and the people rallying around the team and being with the ballplayers.”
A proud Hurricane, Fraser dedicated himself to building his baseball program into a national powerhouse. But he did much more than win baseball games. Fraser mentored hundreds of student-athletes over his 30-year tenure as Miami’s head coach and that was most important to the College Baseball Hall of Famer.
“It was all about the kids,” Fraser Kraut said. “It was about these players and student-athletes. He realized that most of them are away from their home and he embraced them like his kids.”
“Playing for Coach Fraser was a real honor because, as far as I see it, he sat on top of the Mount Rushmore of college coaches,” Fiore said. “But he was more than just a coach. He was a life mentor. Coach Fraser really looked at the big picture and the development of young men. He taught life through baseball and baseball through life. To me, that was the real genius of who he was.”
DiMare will be entering his third season at the helm in Coral Gables in 2021 and the former standout under Fraser is still using lessons he learned from his former head coach years ago.
“He was a great teacher of life and life lessons,” DiMare said. “The principles that you were going to learn and that he taught, if you listened and learned, you are going to carry for the rest of your life. For me, certainly, it was work ethic, being a good leader, trying to treat people with respect and certainly his competitive fire and his winning ways, all were good traits in terms of being successful. He was a guy that everybody looked up to.”
Fraser had a huge impact on so many people in his time at Miami and many can gush about the incredible man he was. Decades after playing for him, Fiore still lives by the lessons he learned under Fraser’s tutelage.
“Coach Fraser, for me, opened a lot of doors,” Fiore said. “He allowed me to walk through a lot of doors, but he challenged me to always have the attitude, commitment, enthusiasm and service. That was one thing that he always used to say to me. If you have attitude, you’ll have the right approach. If you’re committed, you’ll be a winner. If you have enthusiasm, you’ll be respected. And if you serve others, you will have a glow of success. When you take that acronym, A.C.E.S, aces. Those were his four aces and that was his basis of success.
“I’m a better man for being at the University of Miami, for being around Coach Fraser and the people that were there in that program,” Fiore continued. “It taught me a lot about myself, but it also taught me how to be successful in life.”
A former All-American and the inaugural winner of the Dick Howser Trophy, Fiore went on to help the United States win a gold medal in baseball at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul, Korea. But the UM Sports Hall of Famer rarely talked baseball with his renowned head coach. Instead, Fraser mentored Fiore about life.
“He used to joke with me all the time,” Fiore said. “He’d say, ‘You don’t want to stay in baseball. Go into business, you’re going to be very successful.’ And he used to talk about things outside of baseball all the time, to give perspective about business people that were successful in business and all the other walks in life. And that’s the thing that I take away in that relationship. There were a few times when he and I were actually sitting talking about baseball. We talked about a lot of things philosophically and those are the gifts that he left me with that I will forever be indebted to. Those broad concepts allowed me to live my life and be guided by those things. Ultimately, the success that I have has to do with him and really good baseball people.”
During the early 1970s, Fraser developed a friendship with George Light, which forever changed the face of college baseball. Mark Light Stadium was built in 1973 and was considered the best college stadium in the country, starting a trend in college baseball facilities that would change the game forever.
“That was his sanctuary with his office overlooking the field,” Fraser Kraut said of Mark Light Stadium. “That’s why I think it’s been so great to have the coach there, Jim and then, of course, Gino, being able to look out over the field and that’s priceless.”
Above the first base dugout, Fraser’s office overlooked Mark Light Field much like a king’s throne overlooked his kingdom. That office still sits there today with DiMare working in it like his old coach used to.
“You never supposed to say someone is bigger than the game, but he really was,” DiMare said. “It’s amazing that I’m in the same office that he was in and looking out over the field like he did. It’s amazing that I’m in this position, but I try not to think about it too much because that could be a little overwhelming.”
Fraser led the Hurricanes to their first ever College World Series appearance after going 51-11 in 1974. The Hurricanes had arrived on the national stage and never looked back. The Miami program really began to blossom following that first CWS appearance. Miami was annually among the leaders in attendance and eventually drew a decade-best 1.27 million in the 1980s. 2,000 to 4,000 fans were coming on average 10 years after Miami was lucky to have 100 show up for a game.
“He had plenty of wins and losses and national championships and those things, but he was a real motivator,” Fiore said. “And in a time when college sports were probably not as marquee as pro sports were, he made the Miami Hurricanes a marquee sport and made it available to everybody in the community. I think that’s what his real genius was. If you ask me what it was like for him, it was it was all about preparation. It was about winning, and ultimately about self-understanding. That’s what his greatness was.”
From ESPN covering games in Miami to his “Dinner on the Diamond,” from creating the batgirls with “The Sugarcanes” to developing a mascot, The Miami Maniac, Fraser made Mark Light Stadium the premier family entertainment spot in South Florida.
“I know personally speaking, my first college baseball game was the University of Miami in 1980 against the University of South Carolina,” Fiore said. “There were 6,000 people at Mark Light Stadium and I was mesmerized. As a 14-year-old boy, I was just saying myself, ‘I need to go to school here and I need to play here.’”
DiMare grew up attending games at Mark Light Stadium before he played in them from 1989-92. A life-long Hurricanes fan, he knew he wanted to play for the coach that led his favorite team.
“I always said growing up in Miami as a kid, we had two of the most iconic coaches,” DiMare said. “Number one was Don Shula and, believe it or not, a college baseball coach at the University of Miami, Coach Fraser. We didn’t have professional sports, other than the Dolphins, and then you had the Canes and he was the main figurehead if you went in terms of the head coaches for their sports.”
Fraser, who led the Hurricanes to the 1982 and 1985 College World Series titles, coached Miami from 1963-92, amassing a 1,271-438-9 record and ended his career as the third-winningest coach in NCAA history. He was the NCAA Coach of the Year four times while at the helm at ‘The U’. Fraser’s uniform No. 1 was officially retired on April 24, 1993, at Mark Light Field.
After his retirement, Fraser could frequently be found at “The Light” watching his beloved Hurricanes. In addition to taking in a lot of Miami victories, Fraser loved to be part of the community he helped build surrounding the UM baseball program and catching up with former players who came back to watch their alma mater in action.
“I know that one of the things that really brought him joy and happiness was seeing his ballplayers go on and be productive and get good jobs and start a family,” Fraser Kraut said. “It brought him so much joy when he saw these players bring their children to the ballpark and share with them ‘The Light’ and that whole family. I know that that really made him happy. He got to see a lot of his players coming back. It was important to him to see them succeed and learn life lessons when they were in college, through sport and through life.”
And ever since it was unveiled on April 24, 2015, sculptor Zenos Frudakis’ statue of Fraser has brought joy to his family and friends and the millions of Hurricanes fans across the world.
“That was a big day,” Fraser Kraut said. “We can’t thank the University enough for that. Between Blake James and Donna Shalala and Rick Remmert and everybody that donated and everybody that came out, it was a very emotional day.
“We knew it was going to be beautiful. Zenos did an amazing job. It could have been a sad thing for us. You don’t know if every time we walked by it, was it going to make us sad? Was it going to make us happy? Was it going to bring joy? You don’t know, and it has been amazing. It’s so realistic, it’s so true to life, it’s so him. … He’s real.”
Fraser Kraut and her family are season-ticket holders for Miami baseball. Much like she did for most of her childhood with her sisters, Cynthia and Lynda, she spends most of the spring at ‘The Light’ watching the Canes. And every time she goes to the ballpark, she makes sure to go see ‘Popie.’
“We literally go up and say, ‘Hi’ and hang out. We say, ‘goodbye’ when we’re leaving,” Fraser Kraut said. “What amazes me and I think it would make ‘Popie’ so happy is the kids running up to get their picture taken and all the fans getting their picture taken. It’s not just the kids, but adults, the opposing team, and they’re coming in and getting their picture taken with him. He would have loved that. And then kids going over and actually reading the placard that has the little bio. It’s really nice and it brings us a lot of happiness, a lot of joy. We’re very lucky. It’s a perfect, perfect placement. He’s in front of the gate. That was his place and I really think that he would be very, very happy and very proud.”
The seven-foot tall statue stands right outside the main entrance of Miami’s home stadium, Alex Rodriguez Park at Mark Light Field. Fraser, who is donning a full suit and his national championship rings, is holding a bat over his left shoulder and looking out as if he was greeting every fan that arrives at the ballpark.
“To have the stadium there and to have him at the grounds there is always reassuring to me, no matter how many times I come back,” Fiore said. “And every time I do go back, I go and pay a little respect to him because he opened so many doors for me. It’s truly fitting that he’s there and it’s truly fitting that he’s overlooking the complex there because he’s a pillar. And he was a pillar in the community and he’s a pillar in college baseball and he’s a pillar in international baseball. His statue is a pillar to me and it’s very apropos that it’s there and certainly well deserved. I think any accolades that Ron Fraser has in relation to the University of Miami and college baseball are, not only well deserved, but should be continued in the future.”
DiMare agrees.
“It’s very special and well deserved,” DiMare said. “Of anybody really in any sport at the University of Miami, if there was any coach that deserved one, he certainly did just because of his longevity, how successful he was and what he did to promote our sport. He was ‘The Guy’ in college baseball.”
