Oh sure, he grew up playing baseball in Royal Oak, played for a year at John Carroll University and then started for three at Dayton. But all that time, he knew where his future was headed.

"I didn't want to play pro ball. I didn't want to do anything else," Grewe said. "I just wanted to coach."

It was partly, he says, because "I always looked at myself as a coach on the field." But it also was because, as a player, he was never exposed to the kinds of coaches he admired — the ones he says can "challenge kids and then at the same time be able to put (their) arms around them."

So he read books on famous coaches. And coached a youth team during his college summers. And, as soon as he graduated from Dayton, took a job as an assistant coach at the University of Chicago, then took the same position at Central Michigan two years later.

All the while, he worked at baseball camps and clinics, networking with as many established coaches as he could.

One of them was Paul Mainieri, who had been the head coach at Notre Dame for almost a decade. Grewe stayed in touch with Mainieri after their initial meeting, sending occasional letters in the mail to pick Mainieri's brain.

"He really made quite an impression on me," Mainieri said. "I was always struck by how articulate he was and how conscientious he was about things."

So when Mainieri had a spot open on his staff in 2003, the first person he thought of was Grewe.

For the next three seasons, Grewe worked as Notre Dame's hitting and catching instructor, as well as its recruiting coordinator. During that time, the Irish won 134 games, and Grewe helped attract two top-10 recruiting classes to South Bend. Mainieri called him "my right-hand man."

"I've never seen a guy more thorough and organized," Mainieri said. "He was really serious about developing as a coach and progressing in the profession."

Twenty-nine.

That's how old Grewe was when, on July 13 of last year, he was picked to replace Ted Mahan as MSU's head coach.

He had visited East Lansing twice to interview for the position, and had also spoken with many prominent Spartans on the phone, including former Detroit Tiger Kirk Gibson.

"I knew there was a chance to be successful and to win here," Grewe said.

Considering plenty of people are still working on a degree at age 29, even Grewe admits he didn't expect his rise to a head coaching position would happen so quickly.

"I did, but I didn't," Grewe said. "I did because I thought at the age of 24 I could lead my own program with my own values and my own beliefs and my own style of doing things. But then no, because I've never worried about it. I just went about my job and I was very fortunate throughout the way. "... I never looked into saying, 'I want this job, I want that job.' Jobs just happen. That's just how it is in college athletics."

Zero.

That's about how much the Spartans players said they knew about Grewe when they heard he was hired.

"Not at all," senior third baseman Oliver Wolcott said, smiling, when asked if he knew anything about Grewe when he first heard his name.

So the first task facing Grewe was the one that's most difficult for any new coach — winning over the players. And Grewe had to do it despite the fact that he's still young enough to pass as one of them.

"You can't just see it on paper," Wolcott said. "You have to go out and actually do it on the field. Then you can sit back and say, 'Oh man, Coach is right. He's got a clue as to what he's doing.'"

Immediately, Grewe started making his mark on the program, giving everything — from the way practice is run to the way the programs are printed to the way the lineup is written in the dugout — a makeover.

"He's very detailed in what he does — that's what makes him a real good coach," Wolcott said. "People respect him for it because you know exactly what to expect with him."

And he's demanded more from the players. He's made words like "accountability" and "responsibility" as common around Kobs Field as hot dogs and Cracker Jacks. He's stressed that valuing every game — including the midweek ones that are usually played against weaker nonconference teams — is the only way to turn around a program that hasn't made the NCAA Tournament since 1979.

Some new coaches would get backlash for asking so much so soon. Grewe's gotten exactly what he wanted — a new attitude.

"It's harder work than we used to do," junior pitcher John Dwan said, "but we don't mind it because it's such a positive atmosphere that you want to do well, you want to work hard for him, you want to do things the right way."

For Wolcott, the oldest and most experienced player on the team, hearing a coach talk about treasuring every game, every practice, every swing so much has been a refreshing change of pace.

"Not to harp on the past, but it really wasn't stressed that mid-week games were real important," Wolcott said. "We haven't had that in the past. We've let games slip away. Now, our coaching staff won't let us."

8-8.

That's what the scoreboard read two weeks ago, with MSU at bat in the top of the ninth against Penn State. The Spartans had runners at first and second with one out.

Most coaches in that situation would play it safe, let the hitter swing away and hope for a base hit or two to bring in the runner from second.

Grewe called for a double steal — the baseball equivalent of a Hail Mary on first and 10.

Both runners made it safely. The next batter singled, scoring the runner from third to give MSU the lead.

It wouldn't have happened if not for Grewe's call. It's indicative of the style Grewe's had the Spartans playing all season — a hyper-aggressive, tempo-pushing sprint. And the mere mention of it gets Grewe talking as excitedly as a Little Leaguer showing off his new mitt.

"It's maybe untraditional," he says. "But hey, if you can make a diving catch in the outfield to win the game, make the diving catch. Don't come up passive, saying, 'Well, it might not be the smart thing to do because then a couple runs can score.' You know what? Be aggressive. If you lose being aggressive, if you make an error being aggressive, I can live with that. I just can't live with guys staying back and playing the game passive. You have to attack the game."

Nine.

That's the number of months it's been since Grewe was hired. It's also the number of months he's been living at Kellogg Center.

It's not that he's some slob bachelor, incapable of handling his own place. He's been looking for somewhere that he and his fiancee, Annie Brammer, can move into after they get married in October. But right now, with long afternoons at the office routinely turning into long nights at the office, Grewe just doesn't see a point in finding a place more than a two-minute walk away from Jenison Fieldhouse.

"Instead of me having to rent and work out a lease and all that stupid crap you have to put up with, I just said, 'You know what? I live at hotels half the year anyway, out recruiting and in the summers. It's no big deal for me,'" Grewe said. "I don't have any time I can spend over there. It's not like I'm going home and cooking my own meals and laying on a couch watching TV all night. I don't have time to do all that stuff. All it is is a place for me to go and take a nap."

Mainieri said he wasn't surprised to hear of Grewe's living arrangement, since he often saw Grewe in the office past midnight when he was at Notre Dame.

"I don't know if he could keep that pace up for his career," Marinieri said with a laugh. "I hope he doesn't."

20-18.

That's MSU's record so far this season. It's a marked improvement from last year, when the Spartans went 22-31 and didn't qualify for the six-team Big Ten Tournament.

But while most people would give Grewe a grace period in his first season as coach, he's not satisfied with where the team sits.

"Everybody keeps saying, 'You need time, you need to get your own players,'" Grewe said. "Hey, I've got players. What they've got to do is they need to totally commit themselves to what I'm doing and keep moving in the same direction."

For the program, part of that direction is the New Life for Old College Field campaign, a multi-year, multiprong, multimillion-dollar project that will completely renovate the baseball, softball and soccer fields over the next decade.

Construction will begin as soon as this season is over, when the playing surface at Kobs Field will be torn up and replaced with a new one.

Grewe says updating to a cutting-edge facility like this can be the harbinger of better times to come for a baseball program. He points to Notre Dame, which made similar improvements to its facilities in 1999.

"The next year, they go to a regional," Grewe said. "The year after that, they're No. 1 in the country. The year after that, they go to the College World Series.

"If you build it, it'll come."

"Field of Dreams," anyone?

But Grewe's getting ahead of himself. He knows that success like that doesn't just happen. As he's showed his entire career, it's got to be earned.

"It's going to be so much fun when you're able to dogpile at the end of a game because you just won a regional game or you just won a championship," Grewe said. "It takes a lot of work to get to that point, but you've got to believe in what you're doing."