Mark De Luca

Denton, Maryland, United States

mdeluca@smww.com


Mark is a graduate of the US Air Force Academy and Air War College and earned a BS in General Engineering and two Master’s degrees. Known by the call sign Bazooka, he is also an Air Force Command Pilot with over 4400 hours of flying time and has a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Airline Transport Pilot Certificate with Type ratings for B707/720 and Learjet.

Mark has always been a serious student of the game of baseball who harbored the long-term dream of becoming the Manager or General Manager of an MLB team. He played and coached every level of youth baseball, managing his first team, a Major Little League team comprised of 10–12-year-old boys, at the age of 18. Twelve years later, he coached the Kaiserslautern Military Community All-Star team comprised of 16–18-year-old boys to the European Championship and the World Series for the Big League division of Little League Baseball. In game one of that series, six of the nine starters were from the team he had managed during the regular season. He has since become a Gold-level Certified Coach with the National Youth Sports Coaching Association (NYSCA).

In late-October 2021, Mark decided to give his dream a chance and started applying for jobs in professional baseball and enrolling in courses to prepare him for potential opportunities.

Mark is taking several courses with Sports Management Worldwide. He recently completed the Baseball General Manager and Scouting course and the Baseball Analytics course and is enrolled in the Baseball Player Development course. He is also enrolled in the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) Analytics Certification program and recently completed the Level One - Conversational Analytics and Critical Thinking in Baseball course.

Mark is also engaging with major, minor, college and high school teams to enhance his scouting, analytics, player development and general management skills and experience.

Mark is a husband of 32 years and the father of three grown children. He and his wife Sarah live on a 23-acre farm in Denton, Maryland. He’s a retired Air Force officer and pilot who is now the chairman of the board and engineer for a small company supporting Navy acquisition programs.