Bowling Green State University Athletics
Photo by: Daniel Carlson, BGSU Athletics
BGSU baseball alum Jim Joyce returns to campus as First Pitch Dinner speaker
January 26, 2026 | Baseball
The Bowling Green State University baseball team hosted its third annual First Pitch Dinner on Saturday, highlighted by 1977 BGSU baseball alum and former Major League Baseball umpire Jim Joyce returning as the keynote speaker.
With nearly 40 years of umpiring, Joyce has decades of experience. From the Minor Leagues to the World Series, he has called it all. During his career, Joyce umpired three different World Series: 1999, 2001 and 2013.
Joyce contemplated his ideas for the speech in the weeks leading up to the event, ending with him being most hopeful that his experiences could shine a light on how spectacular the baseball world is.
"I met and umpired a lot of people who were really great people, and baseball is what brought them to the forefront, their perseverance, their perception, their integrity, and their adversity," Joyce said. " I hope it's interesting enough that people will think it was worth bringing me in."
The Falcons and head coach Kyle Hallock were thrilled to have Joyce around the clubhouse for the weekend, knowing his experiences and stories are inspirational.
"It's a big deal because we talk a lot about our alumni." Hallock said, "When you look at Jim Joyce having a 30-year career at the highest level, it is where all of our guys eventually want to be as a player or possibly as an umpire. When we bring back an A-lister like Jim Joyce, and you have Jay Crawford as an MC, it elevates your program, and it really gets things off on the right foot heading into week one."
One of the biggest points that Hallock has continued to emphasize throughout his time at BGSU is how important the alumni and history of the baseball program are.
"We're very internally focused as a program. When we're talking about where we want to be, it's within our record books. We want to put years on the outfield wall with championships to let people know that we were here. And we have the opportunity to really write our place in the history books."
Hallock hopes the team will take the message Joyce gave to help them not only for the 2026 season, but also for their time after college.
"I definitely want them to understand that Bowling Green State University puts people in primetime. Jim is a perfect example of what you can become in this program as a player and what you can do with a career in baseball after it," Hallock said. "It was really cool to put him in the locker room and listen to some of those stories and get a taste of what the big leagues are like. And I think our guys are motivated to go out there and perform accordingly."
The BGSU baseball team starts its season in less than a month, as they travel to a consensus top-five program in Georgia Tech on Feb. 13 at 4 p.m.
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With nearly 40 years of umpiring, Joyce has decades of experience. From the Minor Leagues to the World Series, he has called it all. During his career, Joyce umpired three different World Series: 1999, 2001 and 2013.
Joyce contemplated his ideas for the speech in the weeks leading up to the event, ending with him being most hopeful that his experiences could shine a light on how spectacular the baseball world is.
"I met and umpired a lot of people who were really great people, and baseball is what brought them to the forefront, their perseverance, their perception, their integrity, and their adversity," Joyce said. " I hope it's interesting enough that people will think it was worth bringing me in."
The Falcons and head coach Kyle Hallock were thrilled to have Joyce around the clubhouse for the weekend, knowing his experiences and stories are inspirational.
"It's a big deal because we talk a lot about our alumni." Hallock said, "When you look at Jim Joyce having a 30-year career at the highest level, it is where all of our guys eventually want to be as a player or possibly as an umpire. When we bring back an A-lister like Jim Joyce, and you have Jay Crawford as an MC, it elevates your program, and it really gets things off on the right foot heading into week one."
One of the biggest points that Hallock has continued to emphasize throughout his time at BGSU is how important the alumni and history of the baseball program are.
"We're very internally focused as a program. When we're talking about where we want to be, it's within our record books. We want to put years on the outfield wall with championships to let people know that we were here. And we have the opportunity to really write our place in the history books."
Hallock hopes the team will take the message Joyce gave to help them not only for the 2026 season, but also for their time after college.
"I definitely want them to understand that Bowling Green State University puts people in primetime. Jim is a perfect example of what you can become in this program as a player and what you can do with a career in baseball after it," Hallock said. "It was really cool to put him in the locker room and listen to some of those stories and get a taste of what the big leagues are like. And I think our guys are motivated to go out there and perform accordingly."
The BGSU baseball team starts its season in less than a month, as they travel to a consensus top-five program in Georgia Tech on Feb. 13 at 4 p.m.
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