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.

Taylor can be reached at 208-848-2268, staylor@lmtribune.com, or on X or Instagram @Sam_C_Taylor.