For Johns Hopkins Baseball Head Coach Nate Mulberg, there are three things his life has been centered around ever since he was young. Loved ones, of course, come first. Besides that, it’s always been his Jewish faith and baseball.

“Outside of family and friends, the two most important components of my life are my faith in Judaism and baseball,” Mulberg said. “That’s always been the case, ever since I was a little kid.”

For Mulberg, that journey meant being constantly busy maximizing his potential as a player and his identity as a Jew. He said he rarely ever missed Hebrew school for baseball and didn’t play on the High Holidays. Still, that didn’t set him back — Mulberg was a four-year starter at shortstop at University of Rochester, leading the team with a .468 on-base percentage during his senior year in 2014.

As a coach, Mulberg just concluded his first season at Hopkins, an incredibly successful one in which the Blue Jays went 38-12, won the Centennial Conference and appeared in the Division III College World Series. For Mulberg, who spent nearly a decade at Division I University of Richmond, transitioning to DIII was by no means a step down, considering Hopkins’ athletic department and historical success on the diamond.

“Hopkins has always been one of a few jobs that I’ve really had my eye on. I wanted to be at the very top as a head coach. I’m very competitive. I want to be in an environment where people care about winning for selfless reasons,” he said. “I think that speaks to everything Hopkins stands for. We have a lot of successful athletic programs across the department, and I’ve been very impressed with the innate desire that I’ve witnessed with our players to just win collectively as a team … It’s been a really, really great experience.”

While leading one of the country’s premier Division III programs is a major accomplishment, Mulberg’s greatest on-field accolade may be his involvement with Team Israel Baseball. Since 2019, Mulberg has been an assistant coach with the team, helping lead them in World Baseball Classics and the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

With the Israeli national team, Mulberg worked with players like All-Star and World Series Champion Ian Kinsler and Danny Valencia, whose MLB career spanned nine years. He credits those experiences as helping shape the coach he is today.

“As I look back on my progression and my growth as a human and a coach, I really attribute the experience I have with Team Israel, for a lot of the experience that I needed to have success here at Hopkins this year, because working with the guys on Team Israel, it taught me so much,” Mulberg said. “I mean, I’m around guys who have performed and excelled at the highest levels of baseball, and these were individuals and caliber players I never worked with before. It was my first real foray into professional baseball coaching.”

Mulberg is still on the Team Israel coaching staff, and his time with the organization has been a full-circle moment for him as a Jew. The organization is special, he said, not just because it puts Israel on the field against some of the greatest baseball players on Earth, but because it is hopefully going to be a catalyst for increased popularity of the sport in the country itself.

“I think there’s a really collective belief that the key to growing the game in Israel comes from a grassroots effort of improving coaching and instruction to the highest level. So, I know these are a lot of the initiatives we’re working on, which is of course getting more kids to play over there, but also working to educate not just the players, but also the coaches over there who are working with these kids day to day to help make sure they know all the most up-to-date tactics and strategies to get the most of those players. So, I think there’s great potential,” Mulberg said.

Even though the season is over, the job moves fast — less than a week after Hopkins’ last game, Mulberg hit the road to recruit and reload a roster that has high hopes for another College World Series appearance.

While Mulberg and his family have not yet figured out which synagogue they will join, it’s certainly on the to-do list. Still, Baltimore is home now, and Mulberg could not be happier about that.

“I get goosebumps, because the reality is it’s a really special place for Jewish life,” he said.

“We always longed for kosher restaurants when we were in Richmond. Coming to Baltimore, it’s been really, really incredible to see how deeply rooted the Jewish community is all across the many areas of Baltimore. We’ve been really impressed with the breadth and depth of this amazing Jewish community.”

aguckes@midatlanticmedia.com