| Date: | Saturday, May 16, 2009 |
| Time: | 3:00pm - 11:00pm |
| Location: | Memorial Field & Lobster Trap Pub |
| City/Town: | Essex, MA |
HOLLIS, N.H. — Joseph M. Hyland, who overcame childhood polio to establish a distinguished career as an award-winning baseball, basketball and football coach and later athletic director in Manchester, Mass., died on Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009 in Manchester, N.H. He was 92.
Born in 1916, one of nine children of Irish immigrants, Mr. Hyland never strayed far from Manchester, Mass. until late in his life.
He was stricken with polio at 6 years old, and his family was advised at the time that he would never be able to walk nor ever lead an active life. Even as a youth, Mr. Hyland took this prophecy as a personal challenge, finding ways to engage in all of the typical sports activities and games despite his disability. He excelled as a catcher in baseball at the high school and town team-levels, to the extent that he was inducted into the Inter-Town League baseball hall of fame.
Known as "Uncle Joe" to generations of Manchester school children, Mr. Hyland was an extraordinary teacher as well as coach, as he dedicated much of his life to the betterment of Manchester children of every age and accomplishment level. He constantly stressed the virtues of teamwork, sportsmanship and fair play to all of the children that he mentored. The teams Hyland coached during his career won in excess of 80 percent of the games they played. In recognition of his outstanding dedication to the scholastic accomplishments of Manchester students, Mr. Hyland was inducted into the Manchester branch of the National Honor Society in 1976.
Mr. Hyland graduated from the George F. Priest School and Story High School, both in Manchester, and began his coaching career in 1937 when he was hired to coach both baseball and basketball at Story High School. Mr. Hyland was a founder and innovative coach of the North Shore six-man football league, which included teams from Manchester (coached by Mr. Hyland), Hamilton, Georgetown, Essex Agricultural School and Topsfield. Mr. Hyland's six-man teams were undefeated at home for eight consecutive years. In addition to his coaching duties, Mr. Hyland was a driving force in starting youth baseball and basketball programs, weekend athletic programs, the Manchester Boosters and the still-continuing summer playground program.
Mr. Hyland became the first Athletic Director in Manchester in 1965, a position he held until his retirement in 1977. Upon his retirement from coaching, Mr. Hyland was inducted into the Massachusetts High School Coaches Baseball Hall of Fame. In lasting recognition of all of his accomplishments to the Manchester athletic program, the Manchester High School football field was named in his honor in 1977 (Note: Hyland Field was home to the ITL Mariners through the 2006 season, the new high school has been constructed on that site). The football field at the newly constructed Manchester-Essex Regional High School will retain the name "Hyland Field". In 1994, Mr. Hyland was awarded the Slade Eaton Citizenship award by the Manchester Elder Brethren, and was recently awarded membership in the newly founded Manchester football boosters association, an honor he cherished.
After his retirement, Mr. Hyland spent his time enjoying his large family, consisting of his wife Virginia (Crosby), five children, 18 grandchildren and three great-children He enjoyed gardening, tinkering, helping others and rooting for the Red Sox.
Mr. Hyland is survived by his beloved wife of 66 years, Virginia (Crosby), sons, Joseph Jr., Peter, and Edward, daughters Sally McDonough and Catherine Roukas; grandchildren Joseph, Sarah, Patrick, Daniel, Brendan, Catherine and Caitlyn Hyland, Karen Knutsen, Michael Hyland, Francis, Joseph and Virginia (Jen) McDonough, Alexander, John, Christos and Joseph Roukas, Dillon and Emilee Hyland; and three great-grandchildren, Connor McDonough-Fresia, and Abigail and Colin Hemeon. He was predeceased by his brothers, Edward, Thomas, William and Maurice, and his sisters Agnes Slade, Mary, Rita, and Helen Richards.
ARRANGEMENTS: A funeral Mass will be celebrated at Sacred Heart Church, Manchester-by-the-Sea on Tuesday at 10 a.m. Relatives and friends are invited to attend. Visiting hours at the Campbell - Lee, Moody, Russell Funeral Home, 525 Cabot St., Beverly (North Beverly Location) on Monday from 4 to 7 p.m.. Burial in Pleasant Grove Cemetery, Manchester-by-the-Sea. Donations may be made in his memory to the Manchester Essex Boosters Club, C/O Manchester Essex Regional High School, Lincoln St., Manchester by the Sea, MA 01944. Information, directions, condolences at www.campbellfuneral.com.
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This is the Essex Base Ball Club, a team that has brought the perfect combination of sport and history to the North Shore for seven years. The game is old, with some of the earliest rules - 1861 is the chosen set for this team, although others use rules that are later or even as early as 1850. The men who play are volunteers of all ages, and they certainly aren't professionals. But they share an enthusiastic, infectious love of the game and its provenance with their fans, and they are more than willing to talk about their love. That makes spending a day with this up-close and personal team playing ball about as good at it gets.
The Essex team is comprised of players from all over the North Shore. It is a member of the North Shore Vintage Base Ball Association and plays with teams from all over the area. From May to September, the team plays or practices nearly every weekend and travels rather extensively to help promote their version of America's national pastime. Most of their games are free to the public.
Brian 'Cappy' Sheehy, the team's captain, is a history teacher in North Andover. But he found the team in a way that had nothing to do with his background.
"I saw an ad in the paper," he says, "and liked the idea of something other than men's softball, or even regular men's baseball. This is unique, more competitive."
The historical aspect of the game was also appealing.
"It's accessible and approachable to everyone. Its history without the history book," he says.
Indeed, while sitting field side, one feels as intrigued by the historical differences as by the game itself. The manner of the ball players is different. They refer to each other as "mister" and "gentlemen." The umpire (there is only one) will ask players to make calls on any play he has not been able to view fully, and players are expected to answer truthfully.
"I believe I was out, sir."
"Thank you sir. Sir, you are out."
A sport of gentlemen, etiquette at the game is of primary importance for both spectators (cranks) and players (ballists), and so any improper behavior earns the offender a fine of at least 25 cents.
Uniforms are far from the high-tech, low-sweat gear of today's players. There is wool and plenty of it. Baseball was created by firemen and so it is no surprise that the 1861 uniform resembles a fireman's garment with a loose fitting shirt and a button-on patch to mark the team (The Essex players sport a large E.) Coupled with loose, baggy trousers, the men look for the entire world like old ball players and not the teachers, accountants and college students they actually are.
Their game lingo is a tangle of words from then and now, and watching the play alongside the comments works some effective translation. "Striker to the line" and the batter is up. "We need a well-placed daisy cutter Mr. Mac Quarrie" will hopefully result in a ground ball. But if "The hurler is tossing nothing but jimjams," it will be tough to tame the wild pitches into a solid hit (which, by the way, are called strikes.) Hit enough strikes, and "you'll put a dagger in the other team."
And then there are the rules, which changed almost yearly in the early stages of baseball and continued to change as the sport evolved. In 1861 baseball, there are no gloves - all the catching is barehanded. A ball that bounces once and caught is an out. There is no strike zone and a batter may take as many pitches as he likes. The pitches are underhand and are from 45 feet away as opposed to the 60 feet 6 inches of today's game. A fair ball is determined by where it first strikes the ground; if it rolls into foul territory, it is still fair. And there is one handmade ball for each game, which makes the hits more erratic as the ball softens through nine innings of play.
"Can you imagine what playing this game must have been like in the 1860's?" asks A.J. Guanci from Peabody as he waits for a turn at bat. " When I first joined the team, we practiced pre-season in regular clothes and it felt fun, but the day we put on our uniforms and took the field, it was really wonderful. You feel in touch with something from the past."
"It keeps me young," says Brian Besse of Boxford, one of the oldest players on the team. When I called up the team, I was hoping to coach, but they needed players. I thought to myself, 'Could I play?' I trained over the winter, lost some weight, joined in the spring. That was five years ago."
The team is growing, and not just as a sports club. It recently became a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Sheehy gives talks and teaches students about the history of baseball, and the team uses games as an opportunity to teach by talking to their spectators during the games and inviting kids to come out and give 1861 rules a try with the team at the end of the game.
Next summer, the team hopes to take their game to Ireland to commemorate an 1858 trip by National League players to play exhibition games for the Irish people. In November, Sheehy will visit the Ipswich Historical Society, and a day of vintage ball is in the works to celebrate Ipswich's 375th birthday.
Baseball, played in this way, is a chance to bring the game and its proud history back to the people without corporate complication or slick, shiny expense. By keeping it simple and reaching out to those who come to watch, Sheehy and his teammates not only play the game, they keep its true spirit alive.
The Essex Base Ball Club will play a triple-header Saturday, Sept. 6, from 11 a.m.-4 p.m., at the Spencer Peirce Little Farm, 5 Little's Lane, Newbury. Free to Historic New England members, $3 per person for non-members. Grass field seating: Bring blankets and lawn chairs. Weather permitting. For information, call 978-462-2634.
The arrival of wooden bats in the Rockport men's softball league in 2004 meant different things for different players.
For Everett Jylkka, now 67, it meant no more back-peddling after he threw a pitch to get a head-start on a potential laser shot off an aluminum bat.
For Bill Budrow, a 19-year player in the league, it meant the chance to play in a decisive championship game with the final score of 1-0.
And for Jeff D'Antonio, 30, wooden bats meant the end of his home run trot.
The league switched from aluminum to wood because players and managers complained about exorbitant scores and the potential for serious injury with grown men hitting with metal 40-plus feet away from fielders.
"It was mostly because of the danger and the games just getting ridiculous," said Lenny Brousseau, the league commissioner both then and now. "There was at least one game a week where a team got 15-run ruled (where a game is called if a team leads by 15 in the fifth), and it wasn't fun. Now, everyone's a part of the game, and it's a little safer out there."
Gloucester city officials banned the use of metal bats in the Cape Ann Industrial Softball League at their main venue, Burnham's Field, where balls sail through residents' windows almost as often as they do over the fences in the downtown neighborhood.
The league could keep aluminum bats and move to another venue, such as Fuller School, but it seems all but likely it will go to wood at Burnham's.
Rockport players and coaches -- after five years with wood -- say go for it. The use of wooden bats makes the game more competitive and comparable to baseball, where pitching and defense usually supersede the power game.
Brock Currier, who manages and plays for J&D Transportation, admitted he was one of the coaches vehemently opposed to wooden bats when the discussion began around 2002, But since then, he's grown to love them, citing more league parity and the fact that only real home run hitters hit the ball out of the park now.
"My prediction is the same thing will happen in Gloucester that happened in Rockport -- the league will get better, and at the same time the guys that could not hit a softball without a juiced up aluminum bat will find another league to play in," Currier said. "It can't be fun, even for a team like (Gloucester's) Hampden Hill that wins, to have barely any competition."
Currier's brother, Brent, was one of the leaders in home runs in both leagues this year. Currier said he'd rather play in a wooden bat league.
"It's a better game," Currier said. "Just like in baseball, wooden bats puts more emphasis on defense and fundamentals, rather than just hitting home run after home run with the metal bats. Instead of games being 24-20 in Gloucester they are going to be looking at 5-3 games, just like it is in Rockport."
Those lopsided games, common in the Gloucester league, are just not fun,” Budrow said.
"The games were too long, and every guy who flies out now could hit it out," said Budrow, 37, who plays for Doyles in Rockport. "Now with wooden bats, a home run means a lot more, and pitching and defense usually wins. It took a while for players to come around, but the game is a lot more fun and intense."
D'Antonio, still looking for his first out-of-the-park homer post-wood for J&D Transportation, said he would hit a few per year with aluminum bats. His five-season drought is OK so long as the league is competitive, he said.
"Why would you go out and buy a $500 ridiculous aluminum bat?" he asked. "So a 135-pound kid can hit a missile into the woods (for a home run to left field)? That same kid with a $30 to $60 wood bat will hit a ground ball."
As for softball down Burnham's Field in Gloucester, houses will always be a target for softballs in the thick, residential area. The goal, residents say, is to lighten the load and take the home run away from the players who probably can't hit one without an aluminum bat.
Some Gloucester softball officials said in a new wooden bat league at Mattos Field off Webster Street, many players with regular home run pop with their aluminum bats haven't come close to a home run yet.
"There was a lot of resistance at first, but now even if I beg the guys, they wouldn't go back to aluminum," Brousseau, the Rockport commissioner, said. "You see double-, triple-plays in this league. Last week in the playoffs, we had a series of one-run games. That's good ball. That's what it's all about."
by Jason Brisbois
Cal Grimes spends many nights umpiring baseball games around the North Shore. But for the retired Essex police sergeant, there’s no better night than when he breathes the air coming off the marsh behind the outfield grass at Essex’s Memorial Field.
Any night at Memorial Field is grand for Grimes, the Intertown Twilight Baseball League Hall-of-Famer and all-time home run champion (18) who once dominated the league on that very field for the Shipbuilders.
Today, Grimes’ playing days are over — and so are Essex’s. A rite of passage in town as sacred to many as the fried clam in the 20th century, baseball in Essex has been a rare commodity the last seven years.
The Shipbuilders folded after a 70-year-plus history after the 2000 season because of what ITL officials saw as a lack of leadership and interest of Essex natives to play summer adult baseball.
Baseball is back today — Manchester and Essex merged to form the Mariners — and the team hosted Game 3 of the league finals against Hamilton Wednesday night at Memorial Field.
“It was devastating to me at the time,” Grimes said of the team’s collapse eight years ago. “Especially when we were among the strongest organizations in the league. It just didn’t work. They just didn’t have the roots in town any more.”
Neither Grimes nor top league officials have any romanticized notions of seeing the Shipbuilders return any time soon. The days when hundreds of natives stood on the grassy hill down the right-field line in front of Town Hall may be gone forever, in fact.
Today, the team wears Manchester navy blue and white, though Grimes says “that’s gonna change,” and is leading the charge for a return to Shipbuilders’ red and gold.
A revival seems even less likely considering the roster consists of two Essex natives — player/manager Bryan Lafata and Ty Haskell. The rest are mostly Gloucester and Manchester residents.
Even though some longtime fans may yearn for it, the parades on fire trucks through town and Shipbuilders bumper stickers may not return.
“With the merger of the two towns in the school system, I don’t see us splitting them in the ITL,” said Terry Poste, the league’s president. “When guys are used to playing with certain people, they tend to want to stay on the same team, which would cause roster problems all over again.”
But this is August. And there are balls flying out to the marsh for home runs, foul balls skipping near the police station behind home plate, and nine local guys taking the field on, “the pit,” or what Grimes said they once called, “the place.”
That is quite enough for Lafata, who grew up on Pickering Street and as a kid rode his bike down to Memorial Field to watch the Shipbuilders. The 32-year-old joined the team when he was 14.
“It’s a great place to play, and the town has done a great job with the field,” Lafata said. “And in the past two weeks, it’s been the most people I’ve seen at games. I would say 200 people came to recent playoff games. You definitely see more of an interest in town.”
As much as Lafata would like to see Essex return as its own town team, he is not spearheading a charge to get it done. Right now, he has a solid championship team of young players mixed with key veterans, like himself and Nate Bertolino. And they had a 2-0 lead Wednesday night in the best-of-five series with Hamilton after they knocked off Rockport in the semi-finals and prevented the Townies from reaching their 11th straight championship series.
The league as a whole is strong and competitive as ever. Six teams battled for playoff spots, and last-place Topsfield did not exactly roll over for teams (it beat Hamilton in the final regular season game, knocking the Generals from second to fourth).
“It just makes sense with the two towns combining for Little League and schools,” Lafata said. “This coincides with that. But I know for the real baseball purists who know the league, they want to see a true town team. This hurts.”
But that will take recruiting more players, getting town support and finding a leader for the team that doesn’t have Lafata at the helm.
“It all comes from leadership,” Grimes said, “and Bryan has done a great job bringing the team back together. It helps they’re in the championship fold. Everyone wants to be part of a winner.”
A revival? Or is the partnership with Manchester too strong for a return of the Essex Shipbuilders, whose fate may be frozen in time in black-and-white images in old newspaper clippings?
For Grimes, smelling the breeze off the marsh only gives him more strength to try. The first step is getting back the red and gold of old Essex.
Said Grimes, “We’re trying to make it a revival of sorts in Essex.”
The current best streak in the Intertown Baseball League for reaching the finals is two by Hamilton.
Just eight more to go, and they'll catch Rockport. And only 14 more, and they'll be in the same company as Manchester.
Rockport's streak of 10 straight finals appearances was snapped this season by Manchester/Essex, which won the championship by sweeping Hamilton, 3-0, in the best-of-five series last week.
Before Rockport began its string, it was Manchester, which saw its championship appearance streak snapped at 16 in 2002.
The names changed through the years. In Manchester, it went from Atwater and Brown to Mitchell and McCarthy. In Rockport, from Emerson and Parisi to Spittle and Currier.
No matter the names, the championship was owned by the two town teams once separated by a scenic drive on Route 127.
Players and managers in the league say it takes a number of components to be as successful as Rockport and Manchester -- from a core group of natives to a solid recruiting process outside of town. It also takes good old-fashioned chemistry, a departure from the 15 guys, 15 cabs mentality.
"Playing against those two teams you would see the core of the team stay intact," said Bryan Lafata, who coaches and plays for the current ITL champions and is a 17-year ITL member. "A winning tradition was passed on through the various generations, and the young players learned the ropes and have carried on the tradition. They were always consistent, day in and day out. Guys also understood their roles on the team; it wasn’t as if there were only 10 guys showing up. They would have full rosters and guys would understand what their roles were for the team."
Another player/manager who tried for years to crack the Rockport-Manchester stranglehold is Hamilton's Tom Jones. The Generals have made the finals the past two years, losing to Rockport and Manchester/Essex (the latter team is a combination of the defunct Essex Shipbuilders and Manchester Mariners leftovers).
Jones mentioned "consistency" in both programs' rosters. He also cited some players' loyalty to their towns.
"The towns have a lot to do with the team's makeup," Jones said. "I think every player in the ITL takes pride in playing for their particular town. That kind of loyalty and bond makes them want to stay, and it makes it seem like there is more at stake every year. It is easier to make the commitment of the season when you are tied to the team. Such a bond doesn't exist in other similar leagues, making the player turnover high every year."
Darin Dagle knows all about loyalty. The retired Rockport Townie and former Division 2 collegiate All-American was part of the team's championship runs from 1998 through the early part of the 21st Century.
He credits most of the Townies' success to their inspirational leader, the late Jade Donaldson. The Rockport mainstay was a player and coach who remained on the sidelines and in the stands until his final days last year after a long battle with cancer.
"To me, the underlying reason for what the Townies are and were all goes back to Jade and everything he put into that team," Dagle said. "Jade cultivated the whole atmosphere about how baseball is serious and fun, and he took advantage of the out-of-town rule by 'recruiting' guys who could play -- like Mike Sutera, the Lindsays (Dave and Jay), Dom Nicastro, the Bouchies, Eddie Morais and the list goes on and on -- but more importantly would fit in with the type of guys the team already had. He made the Townies a brand, and got people to come out to the games. As good as the players have been, I think any conversation that about a potential dynasty that we had begins and ends with 'Jado.'"
Jeremy Spittle, this year's Rockport player/coach, said he thinks this year's setback is merely a "bump in the road."
"Learning from and playing with guys like John Parisi, Sutera, Dagle and Scott Bouchie certainly contributed a lot in terms of how you should carry yourself and how you play the game," Spittle said. "The biggest thing after those guys left was that we still had a good, tight-knit core group of guys who led us into a new era. Guys like Brent Currier, Adam Orlando, Chris Bouchie, Marc Bouchie, and Justin Paradis along with myself, were able to continue carrying the torch because of the experience we had gained from playing with guys like Parisi and Sutera."
Rockport always found a way. And so did Manchester. If there ever is to be another dynasty like theirs in the ITL, the league will not know for another decade or two.
"Bottom line is the team has had a great deal of talent through the years and -- just as importantly -- we always got along better than any team I've ever seen," Dagle said. "We were good, we knew it, we had a lot of fun playing and even more fun after the final out, but we always played hard and played right once game time rolled around. I know when I played (and also in knowing a lot of the guys that play now), we were all just ballplayers. Every summer we were completely consumed by playing for the Townies. It was the only thing that mattered those three months. We loved being at the field, and it was never taken for granted that we had another opportunity to play the game."
There was a time that Memorial Field in Essex was once the hottest of baseball hotbeds on the North Shore. The Essex Shipbuilders, one of the very first Intertown Twilight League baseball teams to even exist, were the biggest game in town. Locals would flock to the field down by Town Hall to watch the team every Wednesday night. The crowds were big, the atmosphere was festive and the team was good – the Shipbuilders won three titles in the 1930’s and one more in the 1950’s.
So it must have brought back quite a wave of nostalgia for many of the locals who were on hand to witness the Mariners defeat Hamilton in game three of the ITL’s 2008 championship series, giving the communities of Essex and Manchester bragging rights once again. That, however, wasn’t the only “blast from the past” the communities experienced last week.
“It was amazing to see the support, to see all the faces from around town,” explained Manchester/Essex player/coach Bryan Lafata, an Essex native who watched many a Shipbuilders game growing up. “When I was a kid, that’s what it was like. The families were up on the hill watching. Every Wednesday night was Essex Shipbuilders’ night, and the people go to watch because of the great rivalries. It’s getting to be like that now, where Tuesdays are Mariners nights, and Rockport has their night.”
The large crowds on hand to watch the local team achieve the ultimate victory weren’t the only throwback to a bygone era seen last week. It was always a tradition for the Shipbuilders to hop onto a town fire engine that would take them down the main road, celebrating major victories with sirens blazing and horns honking.
“It’s great to win down there, and it’s funny because I’m the only one on the team, other than Bobby Whynott, maybe, who knew about that,” said Lafata. “My grandmother lived in Essex when they won those titles, and they had the time ride fire engines through part of the town. It’s an old tradition, and people in town knew what it was going on back then. It was good for these guys to get up there – they all looked at me kind of funny, wondering, ‘Why are we getting on this fire engine?’”
While Essex’s ITL baseball history runs fairly deep, Manchester has also fielded teams in the ITL on over the years, most notably making their mark by winning 16 titles in a row from 1986 to 2006. While the two towns merged as a Manchester/Essex unit recently, many of the former Manchester players were just as excited as the former Shipbuilders.
“As far as Manchester, I’ve gotten a lot of emails and calls from former Mariners as well,” said Lafata. “They had some nice stretches in the nineties. Those guys were just as supportive as the Essex guys. The guys who passed it on to me had done a great job building this organization It’s good for both communities, as far as the league and the team, to only see it get better and gain more interest for the future.”
If anything, that had to be the motto of the Intertown Twilight Baseball League for 2008. There was no way to predict, from one game to the next, who would end up on top. Six of the seven teams in the league were in playoff contention up until the final week of regular season play, and even then it was difficult to figure out who was going to be in, be out and who was going to claim the top seed.
And with the 2008 ITL semifinals finishing up in just as unpredictable a manner – with number four seed Hamilton sweeping Ipswich to reach the title game and Manchester/Essex defeating the 2007 champion Rockport Townies to advance – it seemed predestined that the championship series would go a full five games, with each game being a nail-biter.
This, too, ended quite unexpectedly.
The Manchester/Essex Mariners swept the Hamilton Generals in the ITL finals, capping off the series with a 2-0 victory last Wednesday. While all three games in the series seemed to be one dogfight after another (which was expected), no one could have guessed Manchester would dispatch of the tough-as-nails Generals so quickly.
“Before the series, every visiting team had won a game, so I didn’t expect someone to go in and sweep either way,” said Manchester/Essex coach Bryan Lafata. “Both teams have such good pitching, you wouldn’t expect a sweep. It’s definitely a great statement reflecting the whole season. By far, in my 17 years of playing, I’ve never seen such balance from top to bottom.”
In the end, it was the balance the Mariners had on their roster that proved to be the difference. The M’s boasted a deep pitching staff, could hit in the clutch and could play defense better than almost anyone.
“Our defense, I’ve been saying it since week one, really amazed,” said Lafata. “I’ve known most of these guys for years, and I’ve coached most of them. Our pitching allowed our defense to make plays, and we were deep at all positions.”
The outfield of Rick Bettencourt, Ian Buckley, Rory Gentile and Joe Orlando was a solid one, with utility players Ty Haskell and Bobby Whynott providing support in a pinch. An infield that featured Nate Bertolino, Mike Cain, Whit Graham, Mike MacFarland and Dylan Maki, along with a deep battery made up of catchers Bryan Goodhue, Kyle Hildebrand and Lafata, was also a big boost to the team throughout the playoffs.
“Dylan Maki was unbelievable at third for the whole playoffs,” said Lafata, referring to Maki, who came on board later in the season. “His number one thing was defense, and he showed up and played like he was playing with us the whole time. We also had as deep a catching staff as our pitching staff.”
It was the pitching staff of Jack Brancaleone, Mike Gibbon, Ryan Marques and Steve Stout that may have been the biggest difference-maker. Few teams in the ITL had as deep a staff as the Mariners.
“When they were asked to get the job done, they did the job,” Lafata said of his pitching staff. “These guys pitched phenomenal as a group altogether. Once in a while, they didn’t have their best stuff, but then someone else comes in to pick them up.”
Of note was the pitching of Brancaleone, who started sparingly at times during the regular season, but looked like a staff ace when called upon to pitch the team to victory in the clinching games against Rockport and Hamilton.
“Jack was unbelievable in those game threes,” said Lafata. “It’s tough with this league, some weeks you have two games a week, so sometimes its two weeks before you can pitch again.”
While the team had plenty of reason to celebrate after clinching game three against Hamilton last week, it did not go unnoticed that a key member of the Mariners was not able to be on hand for the festivities. Jared Knowlton, who served as the third-base coach and pitcher for the Mariners and other ITL teams for 14 years, passed away unexpectedly earlier this summer. That the Mariners reached the pinnacle of their sport during a season that was dedicated to his memory made the 2008 campaign even more special.
“He played 13, 14 years in the league and never won a title,” explained Lafata. “The one year we did win it, he wasn’t with the team. The league did a great job, with all the teams wearing ‘Number 5’ wristbands to remember him. He was a huge member of this league for a long time, and that’s what is special about this title.”
The Mariners played the first inning of every game this season with out a coach at third base, Knowlton’s usual spot during game time, as a way of honoring his memory. Now, his memory will forever be tied to that of his team achieving its ultimate goal. “It was a terrible thing to happen, and it definitely hit all of these guys,” said Lafata. “To win that with Jared in mind was huge.”
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