Gavin Newsom omits key college baseball facts in new book

In a 2004 home opener, the San Francisco Giants invited Gavin Newsom, then the city’s newly minted mayor, to throw out the first pitch, though it grounded and hit a photographer.

As he took the mound, the announcer stated that Newsom had “played first base for the University of Santa Clara and was drafted by the Texas Rangers.”

Newsom was never drafted by any professional team – and saying he played on the Santa Clara baseball team in college is also a stretch, considering he never participated in an official game at the junior varsity or varsity level and was only on the team at the very most for a few months.

But that hasn’t stopped Newsom for repeatedly waxing nostalgic about his “baseball career.”

For more than a decade, Newsom has repeatedly credited “baseball” for getting him into college and making him who he is today.

“I don’t just like sports—I love sports. It’s the reason we’re having this conversation. It’s the reason I’m governor of California,” Newsom told The Lead podcast in 2019.

On the liberal podcast Pod Save America, he once again said there was no way he could have gained admission to Santa Clara University if it weren’t for a call from the college’s baseball coaches.

“It was literally the ticket to a four-year university,” he said. “It changed my life, my trajectory.”

Yet, despite repeated mentions in the New Yorker and other publications that Newsom was drafted by the Texas Rangers, Newsom never corrected the record until journalists tried to clear it up when he began prepping for a presidential run in 2024. 

Newsom had plenty of opportunities to set the record straight in his often-preening memoir, Boy in a Hurry, which he will officially launch Tuesday. Instead, he once again leaves out several glaring and contradictory facts about his nearly nonexistent college baseball career. 

In Chapter 5 of the book, a copy of which the California Post attained, Newsom admits that Santa Clara University had “no business” admitting him because of his “lousy” SAT score and high-school grades that were “all over the place.” In carefully worded prose, he attributes his poor high school academic performance to a dyslexia diagnosis and credits his baseball prowess with granting him admission to the well-regarded Jesuit college. 

“And yet here was the head coach of the Broncos baseball team, in the late spring of 1985, sitting in the living room across from me and my beaming mother,” he writes. 

“Gavin, it’s late in the process, so we can only offer you a partial scholarship at this point,” he quotes the now deceased head coach John Oldham telling him, adding that he was “nothing but grateful” because he was expecting to attend a local community college. 

Once in college, Newsom states that he was “straining to hold up academics and baseball” until an ulnar nerve injury prompted surgery and that’s how his “freshman season ended.” 

In reality, the surgery came just a few months into his freshmen year and before he played one official game for any Broncos baseball team – junior varsity or varsity. That’s why many some members of the team only remember him playing in the fall for a few weeks or have a difficult time remembering him playing at all, according to interviews with more than six players and the assistant Broncos baseball coach at the time. 

Newsom’s assertions that baseball skills got him into college also breaks down considering key facts: Newsom had multiple influential recommendations to Santa Clara University, including one from former Gov. Jerry Brown, whose father also served as governor and appointed Newsom’s father, William Newsom, to a judgeship, and another from John Mallen, an attorney friend of his father and a member of the Santa Clara University Board of Regents at the time.

William Newsom also served on the university’s board of regents in 1985, although it’s unclear whether he became a board member before or after Newsom gained admission, according to a California Appellate Court Legacy Project biography of William Newsom.

A university spokeswoman confirmed that William Newsom served on the board of regents from 1985 to 1989, but said she couldn’t determine when his tenure started in 1985, the same year Gavin Newsom was admitted to the school and began his freshmen year. 

Another friend of his father’s, William Connolly, who played for Santa Clara Broncos baseball team in the mid-1960s and went on to become a wealthy San Francisco investment banker and a big donor to the college’s athletic department, pressed his alma mater’s coaches to take a look at Newsom, according to an interview with Mike Cummins, Newsom’s assistant baseball coach at the time who now serves as the head baseball coach at California State University, East Bay. 

Cummins has openly criticized Newsom over inflating his college baseball experience, noting that “he never played a varsity game, though he might have played in some scrimmages.”

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Newsom curiously received a partial $500 baseball scholarship, though he never played varsity, and many varsity players never received any scholarship to play. Connolly and Stephen Schott, former owner of the Oakland Athletics, were donors that helped build a new baseball stadium, for the college in 2007.

In college, Newsom was far better known for driving around in a Porsche, sporting a Rolodex, and a Burberry scarf, than for playing baseball. 

After a baseball workout, a Bronco player, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said his only baseball-related memory of Newsom was when he lost his Rolex and was rummaging around through the dugout and looking around on the path.” 

The player said Newsom, who often showed seen on campus wearing a Burberry scarf, had lost his Rolex and asked if he would help try to find it. 

“I had no idea what that was — Rolex, TimeX,” the player said. “At the time, I didn’t know the difference.”

Newsom has suggested there’s more to the story of his departure from the team, that the rigor of college sports “took my love of baseball away.” 

“It was work…it became a job almost,” he said. 

New information, exclusively confirmed by the California Post, demonstrates the lengths Newsom went to perpetuate his baseball career myth. One of Newsom’s best friends, NFL agent Doug Hendrickson, also embellished Newsom’s short-lived college baseball experience. 

Hendrickson played at San Jose State University, 10 miles down the road from Santa Clara University, but several years separated the pair’s time playing baseball at their respective schools.

In 2013, Hendrickson recalled Newsom’s 2008 bachelor party, before he married Jennifer Siebel. It was held at the San Francisco Giants’ AT&T Park, after Giants President Larry Baer offered it. 

“We were going at it like we were at San Jose State and Santa Clara back in the day,” Hendrickson told Yahoo Sports. The article describes Hendrickson as a former San Jose State pitcher who competed against Newsom in college.

Yet Hendrickson’s first year playing baseball for San Jose State was 1989, according to a university spokesman who cited college records. Newsom’s brief brush with college baseball began and ended in the fall of 1985. 

In 2019, Hendrickson said the two played at their respective colleges “at the same time” and waxed nostalgic about Newsom’s baseball prowess. He compared his friend to Will Clark, the legendary San Francisco Giants’ first baseman from 1986-199 who went on to work in the Giants’ front office. 

“He was very smooth, had power, could hit for average…very, very gifted swing,” Hendrickson remarked. 

The friendship and loyalty paid off for Hendrickson. In 2021, Newsom appointed his longtime friend to the State Athletic Commission. Hendrickson’s wife, Shyla, has managed Newsom’s business assets through a blind trust, after he became governor. 

Hendrickson didn’t respond to inquiries seeking comment.

Newsom spokesman Izzy Gardon ignored specific questions about Newsom’s previous reflections about his college baseball experience, noting only that the governor “always accurately described his experience.”

“He attended Santa Clara on a partial baseball scholarship, played JV, suffered an ulnar nerve injury that ended his career, and attempted to return before ultimately stopping,” Gardon said in a statement.

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics’ national political reporter and the author of “Fool’s Gold: The Radicals, Con-Artists, and Traitors Who Killed the California Dream and Now Threat Us All.”