He was a Notre Dame walk-on, but he was not ushered in to the chants of “Rooney, Rooney.”

At 5-feet-9-inches, he was a scrappy fellow, but the underdog story he tells has bigger implications.

Mike Rooney, the newly named director of special projects and external affairs for ASU baseball, a jack-of-all-trades sort, was part of an Irish uprising led by now-ASU coach Pat Murphy.

While Rooney will now be manning the radio booth as the color commentator for baseball broadcasts, he was once the main man off the bench for the Fighting Irish baseball team in its neophyte stage.

“One thing you have to know about Notre Dame baseball at the time was that we were all ‘Rudy’,” Rooney said.

One of Rooney’s most illustrative moments came as a crew member on former Irish coach Murphy’s remarkable rubble-to-Vatican construction project.

“[Murphy] took a program, not in lukewarm weather but in frigid cold weather, that had a high school field, [had] no scholarships and played at a below mid major conference at the time. He just rolled up his sleeves and got after it. He built that program from scratch,” Rooney said.

Rooney was a utility player for the Irish from 1988 to 1992. Murphy was hired the year before Rooney’s arrival, taking over a program that was well below .500 and not fully-funded.

With the help of Rooney and players like future major leaguer Craig Counsell, the Irish went on to average 46 wins during Rooney’s career, and came one game shy of the College World Series in 1992.

With the help of the turnaround under Murphy, Notre Dame now has a new baseball stadium and is one of the top programs in the nation.

Rooney was there to soak it all in.

In addition to Murphy, Rooney said he has been surrounded by great coaches his whole life, including his father in cross-country and Gamp Pellegrini, his high-school football coach who has the most wins in Philadelphia history.

“All three of those people demanded you carry yourself as a champion. All three of those guys did a really good job of keeping things simple. You can’t cookie-cutter the kids,” Rooney said.

Rooney went on to stamp his life’s blood at different programs across the country. After graduating from Notre Dame, Rooney went back near his stomping grounds to head the Malvern Prep baseball team in Pennsylvania.

After setting the single-season school record for victories and developing Major League draft picks Ben Davis, Josh McKinley and Glenn Davis, Rooney was ready for his next challenge.

“I was going to work for Cal State Fullerton as a graduate assistant. I was driving from Philly to [Los Angeles], and I got to Chicago, and I got a message from Murph that said ‘Hey, my volunteer Mark O’Brien is going to go to Stanford and be a paid coach, so you can be a volunteer here,” Rooney recalled.

Rooney headed west to sheriff the infield.

“I just got really lucky, to be honest with you, to be able to come back here,” Rooney said.

As an assistant from 1998 to 2004, Murphy oversaw the development of future Major League standouts Dustin Pedroia, Willie Bloomquist, Andre Ethier, Travis Buck and Ian Kinsler.

He turned ASU’s defense into one of the best in college baseball and aided in the Sun Devils numerous Pac-10 titles and tournament berths.

“He gets that immediate buy-in. He has such a tremendous personality, and everyone that is around him likes him,” said Graham Rossini, former director of operations for ASU baseball and now the director of fan services for the Arizona Diamondbacks. “He had great rapport with every single player.”

After leaving ASU, Rooney took over as coach at Phoenix College. Drawing from his time with the Irish, Rooney’s tenure paralleled that of his mentor Murphy. Rooney took a team mired in sub mediocre conditions and built them into a top-16 team.

“The [junior college] league is really strong here and Phoenix College doesn’t have the resources other schools have,” Rooney said.

Rooney won Phoenix College’s Male Coach of the Year award twice and led the Bears to their first winning season in more than 15 years. He saw 14 of his players move onto Division I.

All of those accomplishments, though, could pale in comparison to Rooney’s next undertaking: filling the shoes of a legend. This past year, ASU tragically lost local sports expert and icon, baseball color commentator Bob Eger to a heart attack.

“It is just going to be a very strange thing to go through a baseball season without [Eger],” ASU’s play-by-play announcer Tim Healey said.

Rooney has some limited experience in the booth for television broadcasts and was previously a sideline radio reporter for ASU during his stint as a coach.

Though the void could never be filled, Rooney brings a background and charisma equal to the challenge.

“I think Mike Rooney doing the games for us will be about as seamless a transition as you could hope for,” Healey said.

Reach the reporter at nick.ruland@asu.edu.