Robin Lund celebrates the Tigers’ 2024 playoff berth in the clubhouse on Sept. 27, 2024, in Detroit.Courtesy photo
Robin and Susie Lund pose for a photo after the Tigers clinched a spot in the 2024 MLB playoffs on Sept. 27, 2024, in Detroit.Courtesy photo
Robin Lund’s 2025 Detroit Tigers team photo.AP
Robin and Susie Lund attend a Lewiston High School dance in this undated photo in Lewiston.Courtesy photo
Robin Lund and his family, from left, sons Brett and Sam, Sam’s girlfriend Cileigh, wife Susie Lund, daughter Abbie and her husband Keaten, pose for a photo on Christmas, 2024, at the Lund family home in Iowa City.Courtesy photo
At 14 years old, Robin Lund moved from Peace River, Alberta, Canada, to Lewiston, Idaho, U.S.A., because he wanted to play baseball.
Lund parlayed his baseball skills into a fascination with kinesiology — a journey that took him from Lewiston to the big leagues as the Detroit Tigers’ assistant pitching coach, where he’s helped his MLB team to multiple playoff runs, worked with Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal and been part of the longest elimination game in Major League Baseball history.
But his journey began with a dream similar to thousands of boys.
He wanted to be a big leaguer.
“That dream died for me when I was 21 years old. Like, that’s it. You’re never going to be a big leaguer, but, you know, here I am — a big leaguer,” Lund said. “Not a player, but I’m a big leaguer. I wear the uniform and … I’m in the trenches every day with those guys. I have to pinch myself literally every day. I don’t get sick of it ever.”
Moving across the continent
Lund’s 1986 migration to Lewiston as a teenager came about thanks to a baseball identification camp hosted by Lewis-Clark State left-handed pitcher Kevin Byers, also a native of Alberta, Canada.
It was Byers, a 2019 LCSC hall of famer, who recommended that he move to Lewiston.
Byers reached out to LCSC baseball coach Ed Cheff, who contacted Lewiston High School baseball coach Dwight Church, who requested a favor from the family of LHS baseball player Mike Murphy.
Lund lived with the Murphys during his freshman year at Lewiston and Church took him to church on Sundays.
Lund said his parents were all for it, knowing that there were few baseball opportunities back home.
“Imagine driving your only child as a 14-year-old 20 hours south to another country,” Lund said. “And dropping them off with a family that you’ve never met.”
He returned to Canada the next year, but moved back to Lewiston for his junior year with his mother and grandmother, until his mother’s health issues prompted her to move back home. Lund lived by himself for a while and then moved in with teammate Chad Richardson, one of his best friends to this day.
“He always made the right choices,” Richardson said of Lund. “What that did for me is it brought me right along with him. It didn’t hurt that he was a straight-A student. The guy was just smart as a whip.”
To Lund, it’s no mystery why Lewiston is a baseball mecca. The lives and legacies of Cheff and Church helped launch his unique career as they did for so many others.
Cheff won 16 NAIA national championships while coaching at LC State. Church led the Lewiston Bengals to great heights and practically served as a feeder for the Warriors.
“People stay there and there’s a thread — it’s like (the pop culture quip) ‘seven degrees to Kevin Bacon,’” Lund said. “That’s seven degrees to Ed Cheff and Dwight Church. And I just think that people are proud. I wasn’t good enough to play for the Warriors, but I played for the (Lewis-Clark) Twins (in American Legion baseball). I played for the Bengals. I think if you’ve done any of those three things, you’re proud of that.”
Life partners
Every girl at Lewiston High had a crush on the kid from Canada, as far as Susie Lund remembers it.
Susie was not one of those girls at first, she said, though she remembers being jealous when one of her friends received letters from Robin when he was back in Canada.
Then Robin returned to Lewiston for his junior year.
“I saw him in the cafeteria at Lewiston High,” Susie said. “I felt like I’ve loved him my whole life.”
The two began dating during their senior year. Robin played baseball at Spokane Falls Community College and then at Whitworth before earning his master’s degree in exercise science from Eastern Washington University.
Susie, meanwhile, earned her teaching credentials and then began working in Athol, Idaho. The two married in May 1995 at Lewiston’s Congregational Presbyterian Church, across the street from LCSC, right after undergrad.
Robin said he had the opportunity to join Gonzaga’s coaching staff as he was considering doctorate programs.
Then, the couple’s lives took a joyful turn.
“My wife got pregnant with our first, my daughter Abbie, and something hit me,” Robin said. “I flipped the switch, and I basically was like, ‘Well, if I take the coaching route, I won’t be able to coach my kids.’ So right then and there, my wife and I decided that what made the most sense for our family at the time was to pursue the Ph.D.”
Robin began pursuing his doctorate at the University of Idaho in Moscow and returned to Lewiston to assist Cheff as the LCSC baseball team’s strength coach.
The couple had a second child during Lund’s second year at Idaho.
Through it all, Robin and Susie made sacrifices for each other, with Susie pausing her teaching career to raise their family and wait tables and Robin earning his degree rather than plunging right into baseball.
“We’ve always done it together, and he’s always been so supportive of my career. He’s always told me that he’s my biggest champion,” Susie said. “He’s just an amazing person. I am just so grateful (for him).”
Robin took a job at University of Northern Iowa in 2002, where he taught for the next 17 years. He reached out to UNI’s baseball coach, Rich Heller, early in his tenure, and helped out the program where he could.
Susie served as the special ed administrator in both Waterloo, Iowa and Iowa City and was a school principal before working for ASK Resource Center, which serves Iowa families of children with disabilities.
Now, the Lunds are empty nesters. Their daughter, Abbie, got married in November and is a University of Iowa medical student, their son Brett is in the Air Force and their youngest son, Sam, is a junior cinematography major at Iowa.
“She’s just an incredible role model for our kids,” Robin said of Susie. “She’s fiercely loyal and protective over her family and everything that’s that she holds dear and (she’s) just an incredible life partner.”
Back to baseball
Almost every day, without fail, during the baseball season, Richardson and his sons receive a video from a family friend.
“Every time he shows up to a field, he sends a snap to us,” Richardson said. “This is true Robin. He’s the first one there, last one to leave. Nobody’s in the stadium. Robin is there, and he videos the stadium and shows us where he’s at.”
Lund made the leap from teaching to coaching thanks to a call from Heller, who had moved 90 minutes east to coach at Iowa, and the encouragement of his wife, Susie Lund.
After one year on staff, Lund filled a need as the Hawkeyes’ pitching coach.
Then the pandemic hit and Susie said that Robin spent his lockdown on Zoom calls with various pitching experts, learning as much as he could about his new role.
Lund helped the Hawkeyes’ Trenton Wallace earn 2021 Big Ten Pitcher of the Year honors. Then, a number of MLB teams offered him a job.
However, the Lunds decided to wait until their youngest child graduated and then, in 2023, Robin joined the Detroit Tigers’ pitching staff.
For Lund, his role with the Tigers is a perfect marriage of what he spent 20 years studying and teaching and the game he has loved his whole life.
“Every pitch that’s thrown, every swing that’s taken, we’re collecting full-on three-dimensional biomechanical data on every repetition,” Lund said. “And so my job is to sort through that on the pitching side and make sure our guys are moving well, make sure that things aren’t changing. If they are, just kind of keeping tabs on it, keeping track of their pitch grips and their pitch shapes and velocity. So I basically spend all my time obsessing over the 13 pitchers that are on our roster.”
Lund has worked directly with two-time Cy Young Award winner and Detroit ace Skubal, whom Lund and numerous pundits proudly call “the best pitcher on the planet.”
Susie said that the players Robin coaches from Iowa to Detroit stay in touch with him even after they leave the organization.
“(Robin) operates from a place of total joy and love, and he loves those boys,” Susie said. “They’re young men, they’re big leaguers. They make bazillions, but they still look up to him in that way.”
Detroit was the best team in baseball this summer before a second-half slide lost them the AL Central division to Cleveland.
But the Tigers got their revenge in the Wild Card round, beating the Guardians to punch their ticket to Seattle.
The Tigers and Mariners fought through a five-game American League Divisional Series that culminated with a 15-inning Mariners’ walk-off victory in Seattle, which lasted nearly five hours.
During the 12th inning of what is the longest elimination game in baseball history, Lund looked over at Tigers manager AJ Hinch and the two took a moment to realize how absurd an experience they were having.
Oddly enough, Lund said that during his teaching career, he missed the privilege of losing in competitive sports.
It was gut-wrenching, of course, but a privilege, nonetheless.
“Losing a game like we lost against Seattle in Game 5, to be eliminated and not move on to the ALCS,” Lund said, “that’s the cost of being able to get to do this job.”
It’s a job that Lund had no idea would even be possible for him when he moved 20 hours across the continent to Lewiston. At 53 years old, Lund is a big leaguer.
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