Tim Locastro '14

Major League Baseball player Tim Locastro ’14 knows that making progress—and stealing bases—is about biding time and seizing chances.

Tim Locastro high fives a baseball teammate

Tim Locastro (R) celebrates with teammates during an Ithaca Bombers game. Locastro played on the Bombers baseball team as a shortstop from 2011 to 2013.

Position and opportunity, patience, and when the time is right—go! 

Turns out, stealing bases on the ballfield is a pretty good metaphor for life. Tim Locastro knows all about it, since he holds the current record in Major League Baseball for consecutive stolen bases (28!) to start a career. 

When the Toronto Blue Jays drafted Tim in 2013 after his junior year at IC (and let’s not forget, Division III is not your typical pipeline to the Big Leagues), he spent years bouncing around the minor leagues with different clubs, awaiting that moment all players hope for: getting called up. Those years on farm teams offered valuable lessons. 

“If you're not able to adapt to change, it's very hard to make it in baseball,” Tim says. Because change can come in like a high, tight fastball. You can go to bed one night and the next morning find out you’re being sent to the other side of the country to join a team of total strangers. 

It was a hard lesson to learn at first, he admits, but words of wisdom from his father proved invaluable: “Control what you can control.” Tim made the most of all his professional opportunities by focusing on being a good teammate and contributing to the collective effort, regardless of which team he found himself with.   

“Move forward and help. If you help the team win games, you're going to get noticed. I can guarantee that,” Tim says. 

“Move forward and help. If you help the team win games, you're going to get noticed. I can guarantee that.” 

He began what would become his record-breaking streak of steals while pinch running in his second big league game with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2017. While the achievement, which stretched over five seasons and three teams, earned his cleats a display in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, he insists the honor is not exclusively his. He credits his family, teammates, and coaches—including those during his time at Ithaca College—for his success. 

“I was just happy for everybody around me—and the people that were following it so closely—that I was able to do it, not only for myself, but for them, because I felt like we did it together.” 

In fact, he says his IC coaches were more than just sports mentors.  

“I think the coolest thing about it was it wasn't always just about baseball,” says Tim. “I mean, they helped me grow up as an individual and as a man, and I wouldn't be where I am today without any of them.” 

Forewords

A collection of introductions to the Ithaca College story—about those who continue to write it.
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