By Mike Pearson
FightingIllini.com

When two busloads of 40 Canadian teenagers arrive in Champaign-Urbana next Monday for an exhibition baseball game against the Fighting Illini, they may not have a clue just how great a collegiate player one of their coaches actually was for the opponent they're about to face.

Let's share some statistics. Your coach—Chris Robinson—was an all-star … a stud! During the three years he wore Orange and Blue from 2003-05, hitting .347, the 14th-best career average ever at Illinois. During the season he helped the Illini win the Big Ten championship (2005), your guy batted .353 with eight home runs and 37 RBI. And, as a defensive performer, he was equally impressive. How about notching seven pick-offs while throwing out nearly half of the players who tried to steal against him?

But the best part of the story about the now 35-year-old coach of the Great Lake Canadians is who he was out of uniform. Allow one of his mentors, Illini head coach Dan Hartleb, to tell you what kind of a young man Chris Robinson was and still is today.

"To this day, Chris is one of the guys who I most respect coming out of our program," said Hartleb. "He's an unbelievable individual. He's a great father and a great husband. There's not one negative thing I can say about him. Except, maybe, he says 'eh' too much."

So how did the young man from Dorchester, Ontario, actually wind up at the University of Illinois? Hartleb and fellow assistant Eric Snider desperately needed a catcher to replace Pat Arlis, an Illini player who would eventually be chosen in the 11th round of the 2002 Major League Baseball Draft. Their boss, then Illini head coach Itch Jones, got a tip from baseball scout Dick Groch who told him about a talented prospect from nearby London, Ontario. Good hitter and good hands, Groch told Itch. The Illini staff was willing to go anywhere to find their new backstop. "Anywhere" turned out to be Melville, Saskatchewan, a city of 4,000 that's located 145 kilometres (90 miles) northeast of the provincial capital of Regina.

"I think we flew into Ottawa, then made that long drive to Saskatchewan," Hartleb said. "I just remember that it was in the middle of nowhere."

Robinson had been voted Ontario Player of the Year and the country's best catching candidate, so it was worth the trip. And, since both dad (Don) and mom (Kathie) were teachers, Chris also was an excellent student. A recruiting trip was quickly arranged for Robinson to visit Champaign-Urbana. First, though, he would follow through with an already arranged visit to Winthrop University in South Carolina.

"At the time, Winthrop was a Top 25 program," Robinson said. "I remember leaving that campus with my dad saying that I thought this was where I was going to school. Then I visited Illinois the following week and said 'No, this is where I'm going to school.' I always wanted to be a part of something where there was always stuff going on. Once I saw what Illinois offered, that's where I wanted to go."

Hartleb remembers his young catcher getting a bit homesick that first year.

"Chris's family drove down nearly every weekend for games," he said. "Chris fought through that homesickness and now some of his best friends are his Illini teammates. Every conversation we've had always comes back to his time here. Regardless of what the topic is, it always comes back to how much he enjoyed and appreciated his experience at Illinois."

The highlight of Robinson's Illini career was the school's Big Ten title in '05. It was a talented squad that included a bevy of all-stars, including first-team All-Big Ten players like Dusty Bensko, Drew Davidson, Ryan Rogowski and Brian Blomquist. But the guy who pulled the team together, Hartleb says, was Robinson.

"Chris was very vocal and had great leadership ability," he said. "He's always had a presence to him. He was very well respected by his teammates because of who he was, but also by the way he went about his business. He was just one of those guys who fit in."

Hartleb recalled a moment during an early-season series at Texas-Arlington that got 2005 headed in a positive direction for the Illini.

"We're in the game with a chance to beat a really good team," Hartleb said. "We had a one- or two-run lead in the last inning, got a couple of quick outs and all of a sudden, they get a walk, infield hit, hit a guy. You could just see that everybody was tight. I ran out to the mound and everybody comes in. I just wanted them to relax and I said, 'Hey, are there any hot girls in the stands?' And they're looking at me like 'Did Coach really just say that?' I'll never forget this. Chris Robinson kind of slaps me on the butt with his glove and as he's running away, he goes 'Coach, it's your wife sitting up there.' Everybody just started dying laughing. Then another pitch or two, it's like, 'boom, game over.' That just showed good leadership. Chris wasn't being disrespectful. This was a moment when he told his teammates, 'Hey, let's go win this game.' He had a great feel for timing and to me that just showed great leadership."

Robinson eventually earned focused attention from the big league scouts and was chosen by the Detroit Tigers in the third round of the 2005 MLB Draft. He traversed the minor league circuits with the Tigers, Cubs, Rangers and Orioles. Robinson also played internationally for the Canadian National Baseball Team, competing in the 2006, '09 and '13 World Baseball Classics as well as the 2015 Pan American Games.

Robinson got his big break late in 2013 when the San Diego Padres called him up to the majors. On September 25, he hit a pinch-hit, three-run home run in the eighth inning against Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Eury De La Rosa to record both his first major league hit and home run. Five days later, he was designated for assignment, retiring shortly afterwards and returning to his family in Canada.

Today, the husband and father of three is Director of Baseball Operations for Centrefield Sports, an indoor training facility located in his hometown of London, built by longtime friend and former big leaguer Adam Stern.

"Adam and I had talked a long time about starting youth teams, so it was a really easy transition for me," he said. "Seven years later, we've gone from two teams to six this year. We've had the opportunity to have kids drafted (ten since 2015) and help almost a hundred get to play college baseball down in the U.S. People know who we are now, so it's a pretty cool thing to know that we've done it in such a short time. It's been a great experience."

On Monday at 4 p.m., Robinson's baseball career comes full circle when his "kids" play an exhibition game at Illinois Field against his alma mater.

"I'm really excited to come back," he said. "It's going to be a pretty proud moment for me to be able to bring our guys and show them where I spent some of the best years of my life."