SAN ANTONIO — It's about time! Said me! Well maybe not entirely if I'm being fair. He just retired in January of last year.
One of our local sporting legends is headed to the hall of fame, the St. Mary's Rattlers Athletics Hall Of Fame to be exact.
Charlie Migl's head coaching career lasted from 1997 through the 2021 season retiring from the game in January 2022. And in that time? Oh nothing. Just 1,246 career wins that puts his inside the all time top forty of the NCAA's winningest coaches.
And that legendary career also included the DII National Championship. Migl is part of the 2023 Rattlers HOF class that will be inducted in early November later this fall.
I had the opportunity to sit down with Coach Migl and talk his baseball life ahead of Rattlers enshirement. 'It is outstanding,' he said. 'When they called me and told me I was going in I told my wife and kids,' he continued. 'It is a really special moment. Everybody is really fired up about it.'
I told Coach Migl early in our interview that we next need to get enshrined into the San Antonio Sports Hall Of Fame and the College Baseball Hall Of Fame. Coach Migl, if anything, is always humble. 'We I don't know. That's for other people to decide. Not me.' But you'd be happy with, right, I asked? 'Oh yah', he said. 'Those are all great honors.'
Coach Migl spent thirty five years in the St. Mary's dugout as the Rattlers Head Coach. 'It is hard to remember some of the years matching up players, but I was blessed with really good players,' he said. 'Thirty five years is a good run.'.
The Rattlers won the 2001 NCAA Division II National Championship under Migl's leadership. That's obviously won of those career milestones that is hard to top. Migl remembers it quite simply. 'When we got that last out,' he said, smiling. 'We got that last strike was the last out.'
Migl said he spent of his adult working life on the STMU campus. He played four years for the Rattlers. He was also an assistant coach with the program for five years becoming head coach. 'I had really good coaches and players who made me look really good,' he said. And that's when I called out coaching for deflecting the success away from himself, but that if we were being honest he deserves legend status. 'You can say that,' he said. 'Hey, I go home and wash the dishes and take out the garbage and do all those sorts of things,' he added. 'I'm just humbled by this entire experience. I think it is really good.'
Migl didn't deny that he's gonna miss the long bus ride and the countless recruiting trips, but that he continues to miss that most important component, the competition. 'I do miss that,' he said. 'I just live for the competition.' Migl agreed that once a coach, always a coach.
Migl has plans to clear with the university, and he's assuming it will be given the green light, to have his two sons, both who played for him at the university, to present him for induction in November on the night of the ceremony. 'That might be emotional,' he said. 'That is going to emotional with them.'
The St. Mary's Hall Of Fame ceremony will take place November 9th at 5pm inside Bill Greehey Arena on campus.