RON DESANTIS

FROM COLLEGE BASEBALL STAR TO GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA, RON DESANTIS REACHES THE HEIGHTS OF U.S. POLITICS THROUGH INTELLIGENCE AND RELENTLESS DRIVE

Before he became a twiceelected governor of Florida and a potential candidate for President, Ron DeSantis, Phi Yale 2001, learned about hard work by playing baseball.

DeSantis’ father, also named Ron DeSantis, a retired salesman in Florida, recalls coaching his son in Little League. “Early on, Ron read ‘The Science of Hitting,’ by Ted Williams,” the senior DeSantis told the New Yorker. “When he was growing up, Ron was stubborn. If he set his mind to something, you couldn’t shake him.”

Young Ron followed Ted Williams’ advice about waiting for the right pitch to hit. “I must have thrown a half million pitches to Ron, and I think he swung at about five hundred of them,” his dad said. “I wish he’d never read that darned book.” In 1991, when DeSantis was 12, his Dunedin, Fla., team advanced to the Little League World Series. The team reached the quarter finals before being eliminated.

When he was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, DeSantis shared a message with the West Boynton youth baseball team from Florida that was about to compete in the Little League World Series.

Voted team captain on Yale’s baseball team during his senior year, DeSantis batted an impressive .336. A history major, he graduated in 2001 with high honors.

“You’re having the time of your life, enjoy it,” DeSantis wrote. “You’ll make friends that you’re going to have forever. Play hard, work hard … just feel lucky that you’re doing it. And be sure to thank your parents.”

At Dunedin High School, DeSantis led his team to the state championship semifinals against a powerful Port St. Lucie team led by future major league pitcher and batting star Rick Ankiel.

He brought a 13-0 record and an earned run average of 0.10 into the game, but DeSantis and two of his teammates combined for eight hits and drove in four runs off Ankiel, who lost for the first time.

A tireless worker in school, DeSantis scored in the ninety-ninth percentile of his SAT and was accepted to Yale. Former Bulldog teammates remember him as intensely focused on his studies and on the baseball diamond. The New Yorker profile quoted a former teammate as saying, “He was incredibly smart and so creative. In his classwork, he would take some angle, and everyone knew there was only one person who could have done that.” But he always made it work.

Voted team captain on Yale’s baseball team during his senior year, DeSantis batted an impressive .336. A history major, he graduated in 2001 with high honors. DeSantis taught history for a year at Darlington School, a private institution in Rome, Ga., before enrolling in law school at Harvard. Following graduation, again with top marks, DeSantis became a judge advocate general in the U.S. Navy. For a time he was posted at Guantanamo, where he dealt with detainees. A colleague who served with DeSantis told the New Yorker, “Ron was a voracious worker, and he worked at phenomenal speed. Even then, his ambition seemed all consuming.”

In 2007, DeSantis deployed to Iraq as a lawyer for SEAL Team One, which was conducting operations in Ramadi. “The SEALs have a reputation for being secretive and insular, but Ron enjoyed their company,” his father said. “He often worked out with them. Ron told us he was just in one place, in Ramadi, but afterwards we found out that he’d been moving all around the area. From city to city with the SEALs. His mother was not at all pleased about that.”

Back in Florida when his hitch ended, DeSantis began dating Casey Black, a television news reporter in Jacksonville. They married in 2010, and not long afterward, a seat opened up in the Sixth Congressional District, south of Jacksonville Beach. Two years later, he ran for the seat and won. He would be reelected twice more by large margins. Today, Ron and Casey are the parents of three children.

During the height of the pandemic he consulted with experts from out of state, who saw the virus as essentially controllable. Constituents on the right would praise DeSantis for his handling of the pandemic while voters on the left severely criticized him.

In 2018, DeSantis, then 35, decided to run for governor of Florida. Starting from behind his opponent Andrew Gillum, the popular Democratic mayor of Tallahassee, DeSantis worked tirelessly day and night. When the dust cleared on election day, DeSantis had won by less than half a percent of the ballots cast.

During the height of the pandemic, his aides said DeSantis was intent on his own research, poring over scientific data and medical journals. He consulted with experts from out of state, who saw the virus as essentially controllable. Constituents on the right would praise DeSantis for his handling of the pandemic, while voters on the left severely criticized him.

But when he ran for reelection in 2022 against former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, DeSantis won overwhelmingly. Almost immediately, Republican backers began urging him to run for president in 2024.

In many speeches delivered in Florida, DeSantis often refers to the “great fault line that is between those who believe we are in a cold civil war, fighting for our lives, and those who do not.” Many of his backers say they appreciate that DeSantis is always clear about where he stands.

Incidentally, DeSantis isn’t the only politician and DKE brother who captained Yale’s baseball team. George W. Bush, who went on to become the 41st President of the United States, played first base and led the Bulldogs to the first two College World Series appearances in 1947 and ’48. Yale placed second both years, but DeSantis supporters say that if he runs in 2024, a second-place finish is out of the question.