To put it mildly, Marc “Bubba” Snider is an extremely busy man.
Most know him as co-host of one of Pittsburgh’s most popular radio shows, but he also owns and operates three restaurants and is even a professional wrestler, a champion one at that.
“I’ve never seen someone work like him. There are no words,” said Tracy Snider, Bubba’s wife of 28 years.
But Bubba is also bonkers for baseball. A former college player and a coach for more than three decades, Snider is a head coach at the high school level for the first time this spring.
“I’m a nerd for baseball,” said Snider, 55. “I study baseball. I love baseball. I think I’m a better baseball coach than I am anything else I do in my life. That doesn’t mean I’m bad at the other things I do. I just have a knack for baseball.”
And in his debut season, Bubba has guided South Fayette to the WPIAL playoffs.
After finishing as the runner-up in Section 2, South Fayette will take aim at its first playoff win since 2023 when the No. 10-seeded Lions (11-9) take on No. 7 Franklin Regional (13-6) in a Class 5A first-round game Tuesday at West Mifflin.
Leading a team to the WPIAL playoffs may be new to Snider, but coaching at South Fayette is not. A South Fayette resident, Bubba had been an assistant for the Lions since 2018, a run that saw him coach his son, Eli, for three seasons. Eli went on to play at Seton Hill, and, as one of his father’s assistants, is now in his first year coaching.
“It’s pretty cool. Pretty surreal,” Eli said. “I think it’s a great way to enter the coaching world — beneath my dad.”
The Sniders are a baseball-crazed family, following the sport closely at the professional, college and high school levels. While Bubba and Eli are instructing players from the dugout, Tracy is a regular spectator at games. Bubba and Tracy have four kids in all — twins Michaela and Brianna, 26; Eli, 24; and Aleia, 22.
Outside of childhood friends, pretty much everyone knows Marc Snider as Bubba.
“I even call him Bubba. Unless I’m mad at him, and then I call him Marc,” Tracy said with a laugh.
His players at South Fayette call him “Coach Bubba” and “Coach Bub.” That includes Cody Bungert, who said Snider has been a big hit as coach.
“I really like him,” said Bungert, one of eight seniors on the team. “He takes a lot of advice from the players. He listens to us a lot as far as what we think we need, what we think needs to happen. He preaches maximum effort, which is a big thing for us.”
When it comes to maximum effort, good luck finding many people as energetic, driven and productive as Snider, a highly-personable guy who rose to fame in the mid-’90s as part of the iconic John-Dave-Bubba-Shelley morning team on B94. These days, Snider is co-host — alongside pal Melanie Taylor — of “The Bubba Show,” which airs weekday mornings from 5 to 10 on 100.7-FM.
What’s funny is, while the show gets excellent ratings, Bubba’s wife is not a regular listener.
“I feel like I hear Bubba all day long,” Tracy chuckled. “I know what’s going on. I know what he’s saying.”
As if having a radio show and being a baseball head coach isn’t time consuming enough, Bubba finds time to do 300 push-ups each day — he said he feels better than ever after losing 50 pounds in recent years — and also runs three restaurants — Bubba’s Gourmet Burghers & Beer, with locations at Southpointe and Triadelphia, W.Va., and Bubba’s Bar Kitchen in Rostraver.
Oh, and then there’s professional wrestling. Snider, whose first match came at McKeesport High School 30 years ago, is a veteran on the independent circuit and is heavily involved with the International Wrestling Cartel (IWC). Known as Bubba the Bulldog, Snider and partner Bulk Nasty are tag team champions of the world. Two days after coaching a WPIAL playoff game, Bubba will hit the ring for an IWC event Thursday at Enclave in the South Side.
Snider, who calls himself “a Greenfield kid through and through,” played baseball at Allderdice, from which he graduated in 1988. He then spent three seasons as a pitcher at Bethany.
While most college players see their baseball days end when they graduate, that wasn’t the case for Bubba, who quickly launched a career in coaching. He coached his son for many years, spent two stints as an assistant coach at Allderdice, has been a coach with Pittsburgh Hardball Academy since 2020, and is now in his ninth season overall at South Fayette.
“I love coaching baseball,” he said. “I really think it’s important to use baseball as a tool to turn young athletes into good adults. Because baseball is a game of failure and adversity where the greatest baseball players in the world still sometimes fail 70% of the time. And if we can create resilience and overcoming adversity and dealing with failure, I think as you use those lessons in life and in baseball, that collectively those things can make for growth”
Like most teams, South Fayette has faced its fair share of adversity this spring. That includes trying to shake off a shaky end to the regular season which saw the Lions go 2-5 after beginning the season 9-4. But the Lions enter the playoffs on a high note after twice rallying from two runs down to defeat Allderdice, 7-6, in a nonsection game last Thursday. A sacrifice fly in the sixth inning by senior Bo Stover proved to be the difference.
That game was played at Fairview Park in what was South Fayette youth/community night, a festive event that included food trucks, games and celebrity appearances.
“The whole community came out, even on a cold Thursday night, and supported us. There were hundreds of people there. It was a blast,” said Snider, who said one of his goals is to make South Fayette baseball “a much more integrated part of the community.”
This South Fayette team has been driven by an offense that scores 6.7 runs per game. The top hitters include Bungert, Stover and junior RJ Borgesi, who is batting a team-best .500 and is 8 for 9 in the last three games. The pitching staff includes junior Trey Skeen and sophomore Evan Mizia.
“I think we have everything we need — pitching, hitting, defense, everything. It’s all there,” Bungert said.
Add coaching to the list, too, as Snider and a group of assistants helped South Fayette successfully navigate a difficult section that includes Moon, Bethel Park, Peters Township and Upper St. Clair.
“I am absolutely loving it,” Bubba said. “The players have really bought into the program. We are a program that is gritty. We are a program that is tough. Our minimum standard is maximum effort. That’s our motto. We want to be the team that never quits, and that has proven itself over the course of the year.”
Bubba and Eli first coached with one another last summer at Pittsburgh Hardball Academy, a partnership that has continued this spring.
“I get super excited. I love it. I just love watching them,” mom said.
For this fanatical baseball family, the coaching tandem of father and son has been special, one they hope will continue to collect wins this postseason.
“It’s time well spent for sure,” Eli said, “especially around the sport we both love.”