From 'The Swamp' to 'The Joe': Mac Guscette's Road to Alabama Baseball
“I would think I would just say positivity,” Mac Guscette answered resolutely. “It doesn’t really matter if I’m in the game or not, I just wanna be there for the guys."
Guscette's response to the question of what he would like Alabama baseball fans to know about him didn't seem like something that had just sprung to his mind in an instant.
He could have answered with something more baseball-related. His success at the plate has raised eyebrows of not just Alabama fans, but SEC fans in general. Or he could have brought up his consistency behind home plate — a perfect fielding percentage thus far through six games.
But no, Guscette chose to answer with a personality trait. And not just any trait, but one of selflessness. But to anyone who's had a conversation with him, it's pretty easy to understand why that would be his answer. The journey of Alabama's new catcher and just how he came to Tuscaloosa is a long one, but it's a story well worth telling.
Growing up in Nokomis, Fla., Guscette started playing baseball at a young age — as most boys do nowadays who have aspirations to play college baseball.
“I started really young,” Guscette recalled. “Baseball is the only sport that I’ve ever played. I started playing baseball when I was, like, three or four, probably. [...] I just love it. Ever since I started playing it, it was the only game I ever wanted to play.”
Guscette's upbringing in Venice, Fla., gave him a front-row seat to multiple great sport franchises: the Tampa Bay Rays, Lightning and Buccaneers were his favorite teams growing up and still are to this day. When it came to collegiate athletics, though, his loyalties were a longer than a simple hour drive away.
“Growing up and in middle school I knew a lot of guys on the high school baseball team in Venice and two of them actually ended up going to Florida,” Guscette said. “If you’re in the state of Florida, that’s kind of your number-one school you want to go to. Everyone. Whether it’s academically, athletically — whatever it is.
"I wanted to go to Florida out of high school and it was a big university and I knew a lot of guys that were going there.”
© Gary Cosby Jr. / USA TODAY NETWORK
Guscette turned a lot of college recruiters heads, but when it came time to sign with a school, his decision had been made far before signing day. He signed with the Gators, with his freshman season slated to take place in the spring of 2021. However, prior to Guscette making his way to Gainesville, he would make a new friend that would help alter the course of his collegiate career.
It all began in the summer of 2020, not long after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Florida Gulf Coast League was one of a select few summer baseball leagues that played through the summer of 2020, with safety guidelines put into place to protect the health of players, coaches, umpires and fans. It was that summer that Guscette would first meet right-handed pitcher Garrett McMillan, with the duo playing for the Sarasota Category 5.
McMillan had come to play in Sarasota after COVID-19 cut short his freshman season at Shelton State Community College. While McMillan was primarily a pitcher, he also was a solid batter — making plate performance somewhat of a competition between himself and his catcher, Guscette.
“That’s when he was still hitting, too, so I always make fun of him saying I was a better hitter than him,” Guscette chuckled.
The pair became friends, as pitchers and catchers often do. Not only were the pair friends in the dugout, but also created quite a duo on the mound and behind the plate.
“We’re on the same page thinking the same thing," McMillan said about his time with Guscette and the Cat-5. "It’s always better if the catcher agrees with you at the same time and you just have more confidence in the pitch — especially if it’s somebody who knows the game as well as Mac. It’s always good to be on the same page as your catcher because you just have more confidence out there if they’re putting down exactly what you want to throw every time and then you get in a groove out there and you start trusting each other."
After a summer of baseball the pair parted ways, with McMillan returning to Tuscaloosa, Ala. and Shelton State for his sophomore season and Guscette heading to Gainesville, Fla., for his freshman season with the Florida Gators.
The two kept in touch, despite playing baseball in completely separate leagues — for a time.
Florida Athletics
Following the 2021 season, McMillan transferred to another school across the city from Shelton State: the University of Alabama. With the Crimson Tide, McMillan entered the same conference as Guscette's Gators, with his former catcher even traveling to play against him in Tuscaloosa for a three game series in 2022.
"Last year we came here when I was at Florida and it’s beautiful here," Guscette recalled of his first visit to Tuscaloosa. "You can’t really get much better of a place off the field. Tuscaloosa is just pretty, the campus of Alabama is just unreal. Just playing here — the fan base, the field, everything — it was just awesome.”
Guscette fell in love with the Alabama campus despite wearing a blue-and-orange jersey. As it would turn out, it wouldn't be long before he would exchange it for a crimson one.
Over the course of his two seasons at Florida, Guscette played in 57 games with 46 starts. As a sophomore, he started in 30 contests and batted .238 with four doubles, five home runs, 18 RBI and 15 runs. While the numbers aren’t the worst you'll ever see on a scorecard, Guscette wanted not just more playing time, but more opportunities.
“I think I kind of just realized that it was time for not necessarily a fresh start, but just somewhere to start new,” Guscette said. “I knew that this year is a huge year and I thought that if I wanted to achieve my dreams, I needed to have a fresh start and just start over and be confident wherever I was going.”
While both Guscette and McMillan claim it was the other that texted first, the pair agrees that the instant Guscette hit the transfer portal during the summer of 2022, the possibility of him joining the Crimson Tide in Tuscaloosa started to take shape.
“I saw he was in there and I was like, ‘Man, we need a catcher — a good catcher that hits as well,'" McMillan said. "You’re always looking to add good pieces to the team and I shot him a text, I shot Coach [Brad Bohannon] a text and I was like, ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard about this Mac Guscette kid, but I played with him in summer ball and he was a great catcher.’ Shoot, I think he won hitter of that summer ball league, so I knew he was a good hitter as well.
"I don’t think he was getting the playing time he wanted at Florida so I told him he would have a big role here when he came here. I guess the rest is history after that.”
Bohannon took a look at Guscette and liked what he saw. And, like McMillan said, the rest was history.
Guscette transferred to Alabama, arriving last fall. On opening day against Richmond on Feb. 17, Guscette was the starting catcher. While McMillan was out with a shoulder injury that he suffered during spring practice— an injury that has still prevented him from taking to the mound this season — Guscette had managed to bond with the rest of the staff to a level where Bohannon was comfortable enough to start him behind the plate.
Alabama Athletics
So far in 2023, Alabama baseball has started off with a perfect 9-0 record. Guscette has been a key contributor for the Crimson Tide both behind the plate and in the batter's box. In his six starts, Guscette has batted a whopping .563 with nine hits across his 16 at-bats. Three of his hits were for home runs and the junior already has seven runs, eight RBI and an impressive .682 on-base percentage.
Combine those batting numbers with his perfect fielding percentage and 44 putouts, and it's safe to say that Guscette is making the most of his time with his new team.
“He’s off to a hot start, of course, but catching-wise he’s top-notch in the SEC," McMillan said. "I mean, he can really frame it. He steals a lot of strikes. He steals strikes that aren’t even in the TrackMan zone that a lot of the umpires are being taught to go after. He’s getting them in the bottom of the zone, top of the zone — he just real still back there. He snags a lot of pitches for you there.
"As a pitcher it even feels like — it’ll make you mad on the mound sometimes because you feel like you’re not getting calls but he just snags it so good that he kind of fools you, too.”
There's still a lot of college baseball left to be played this year for Alabama, including a three-game road series at Florida to open SEC play on March 16. Guscette joked that his family — who travels to every weekend home series to watch him play despite the long drive — is very happy that the Crimson Tide is making the trip this year rather than the other way around.
With transferring becoming a more and more common occurrence in college athletics due to the transfer portal, a common concern from would-be transfers is that of social anxiety. The doubt of acceptance oftentimes plays a large role in whether or not an athlete will head to a new institution, including players like Guscette.
Fortunately for Alabama's latest addition, the Crimson Tide — including both new faces and familiar ones like McMillan — welcomed him with open arms.
“That honestly was my biggest worry of transferring,” Guscette said. “I’m more of a quiet person that kind of tends more to himself — not in a bad way. I wouldn’t say antisocial, but I’m just very shy. And so that was one of the things that I was worrying about, but no. They couldn’t have been more nice and couldn’t have opened up more to me.
"Everyone tried to be my friend on Day 1 so these guys here are awesome and it’s great to play with them.”
The road to Sewell-Thomas Stadium was far from a short one for Guscette. Despite the path winding and detouring, he ultimately found his way to The Joe thanks to his friend in McMillan and his supporting friends and family. And for the Crimson Tide's rising star, his journey in Tuscaloosa is far from over.
Alabama Athletics
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