TAMPA, Fla. – Sebastian Greico got in the car and made the drive from his family’s Tampa home to USF. He arrived at the baseball office and told the receptionist he wanted to speak with coach Mitch Hannahs. Hannahs, though, was not eager to roll out the red carpet for the hometown kid.
“I cold-shouldered him,” said the first-year USF coach, who spent the previous 11 seasons as the skipper at his alma mater, Indiana State. “Obviously, it’s comfortable to come back home. I wanted to see how bad he wanted to be here, so I gave him the cold shoulder early. I was hard on him early in spring practice. He is a young guy who has not reached his potential. He is a good player, but can be better than a good player.”
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There has been nothing cold about Greico’s bat. He heads into this weekend’s series against visiting Maryland leading the team with six homers and 20 RBI in 13 games.
“I always wanted to play at USF,” said the sixth-year player, who transferred from Florida A&M, where he received his undergraduate degree in interdisciplinary studies. “It has always been my dream to play here and when that opportunity came up, I jumped right on it.”
Grieco’s only offer out of Gaither was from Coastal Alabama Community College, where he hit .436 in 55 at-bats as a freshman in pandemic-shortened 2020. An injury prevented him from playing all but a couple of games in 2021, but he still got on the radar of Division-I programs.
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“The only offer out of high school I had was from Coastal, but playing there paid off with D-I opportunities,” said the lefthanded hitter.
It was off to Eastern Kentucky, where Greico had only 47 at-bats in 2022. He then returned to the Sunshine State for a pair of outstanding seasons at FAMU, including a 2023 campaign in which he set a Rattlers single-season mark with 17 home runs. In his two seasons in Tallahassee, Greico hit .299 with 28 homers in 100 games.
Since returning to Tampa, Grieco has been enjoying home cooking, literally and figuratively. He loves sleeping in his own bed as well as his mother’s cuisine, not necessarily in that order. The bonus, one that puts a big smile on his face when talking about it, is that his parents and grandfather attend every game. Sure, it was a journey before returning to a familiar area code, though he is grateful about how much he learned about himself as a person and a baseball player each step of the way.
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“A lot of it is persistence,” said Greico, a big fan of the Yankees’ Cody Bellinger, a fellow power lefty batsman. “Starting at the junior college level, it was really about learning what makes me successful. I feel like I have learned a little bit from each stop. It has been a long journey, but I have been able to put together some of the many things I learned from each coach. Now, I have been able to put it all together to where everything is clicking.”
There may be no red carpet, though Hannahs approves of what he has seen from the 6-foot-3, 210-pound Greico.
“He knows what he does well, what pitches he struggles with, and does a really good job of getting a pitch (to hit) each at-bat,” he said. “When he gets a pitch to hit, he doesn’t miss it. He has carried us.”
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