Hackley Baseball 1956 – 1958

Hackley Review 2010 -- Only feet from the main road rising up from Benedict Avenue, well above the turnoff to the old gym, a cluster of boulders formed this drop off to the dirt trail leading down to our diamond. You paused at the edge and jumped down, sticking one foot into a crevice then sort of leg vaulting over the lower rock, and the momentum hurtled you through the woods for a spell, running a tad harder than anybody really wanted to. After that you still had a pretty good hike left getting to the ball field below.

I don’t even want to think about trucking back up again. It was a chore, especially after a tough loss. Of course, we’d have to be talking about the ’56 or ’57 team there, because Hackley won them all in 1958 -- went undefeated, taking the Ivy League crown with solid pitching and a scrappy ball club that still had to fight for every win it got.

I visited Hackley in Fall 1958 just before flying out to Northwestern for my Freshman year in college, and saw a couple of younger teammates crossing the quad in the grey and black jackets of an undefeated varsity team. Undefeated: this only happened twice in my seven years at the school. Guys who were still around from the 1950 football season were wearing theirs in the Fall of ’51, my first year in Lower School, and each underclassman on that 1958 ball club got one right after I graduated.

At the bottom of the long dirt trail, kids from Glenville were usually out there playing ball on “the big field,” as it was called back then. They’d see us and take off, scurrying down the left field line, then disappearing into the woods, and we’d watch them fleeing the crime scene in obvious panic. I knew them all -- I’d pitched for their Tarrytown Dad’s League team when I was 11 -- so I asked Coach Slader one afternoon if he cared if my guys used the diamond, and he laughed and said he didn’t. It was funny because this had been going on for something like ten years with these kids.

I tried to tell the Glenville kids, but they’d spot us way up the hill through the trees, and split before I could even yell anything out. I guess it really was criminal trespassing or something, but their imagined plight kept me laughing all three seasons I was on that team.

1956 saw Kenny Southern pitching again, a tall, lanky right-hander with serious heat. Two seasons earlier I’d thought that the club would be even better than it was because Pete Spina had joined Ken on the pitching staff when they were both sophomores. A lefty, Pete had all the weapons, and was great fun to watch, putting as much energy into kicking dirt around on the mound as he did getting the ball across the plate. Pete left before ’56, but a kid named Sandy Koufax came up with Brooklyn about that same time, and reminded me a lot of Pete. I always wanted to see film of those two deliveries side by side. It would’ve been hard telling them apart, I figured.

Raul Fuentes, a feisty Cuban boarding student, captained our ’56 club from shortstop. Fidel Castro would overthrow that country’s government three years later, and the havoc wreaked there touched many of us through our friendship with Raul. In ’57 the roster included Bob Duffy, who went on to play basketball in the NBA. But that’s a story for another day.

Hackley was loaded with catching talent back then. Bob Wolfe started behind the plate in ’56, and the two in line behind him were probably the second and third best backstops in the league. Mike Meyers got his shot in ’57, and Stu Nathans a year later. Both would’ve been three year starters anywhere else. I’m told Stu pitched in ’59, and can understand why. The boy had a rocket for an arm. I guess he was able to find the strike zone too.

Coach Slader was a hands-off manager, and ran the club from the bench, letting ballplayers coach the bases. A wonderful idea, in effect, creating two more lettermen on the field, and in twenty years of coaching youth sports myself, I never saw anybody else do that, except, of course, Coach and me.

Middle infielder Herb Allen and I were on the club all three years. Herb was our defensive anchor, at second in ’56 and the last two seasons at short, and you always felt good when you saw the ball getting hit to him. If he ever made an error in the seven years we played together, I sure don’t recall it. He captained the undefeated team.

Of course, in 1958 our infielders weren’t getting all that many chances. Guillermo “Mito” Rivera made sure of that. A major league prospect, Mito entered our pitching rotation from Puerto Rico, striking out two batters an inning, game in and game out. He had thrown in the Puerto Rican League, sharing the field with future Hall-of Famer Orlando Cepeda; he also hit well enough to win two games I can remember with his bat. The Dodgers, who had just that season moved to L.A., sent a scout to every one of Mito’s games. Los Angeles signed our star hurler right off Hackley’s field at our season’s end, and he began playing in their organization the next year.

I got my starts, and worked some relief for Mito when our midseason schedule bunched a slew of games close together, but the big story was all his. Coach did play me on Parent’s Day, and I managed to pull off a drag bunt from the first base side of the plate and a hook slide into third, the high points of my entire life, and in front of hundreds of fans too, including dozens of kids I’d played with in Dad’s League. I didn’t get a chance to tell the Glenville crowd they could use our field though, not with all the excitement in the air that day.

It wouldn’t surprise me if that business was still going on with those guys today.

Rumor had it that Mito Rivera injured his arm a couple seasons into his pro career, but I don’t know about that for sure. His minor league stats are posted on the Internet, and look impressive enough to make me wonder what did happen back then. His Reno squad is considered one of the top 100 minor league ball clubs of all time. In the 70’s I saw Mito step out onto the field at Boston’s Fenway Park during something called Latin American Day, introduced as the Dodger’s Caribbean scout, so he may have stayed on with them in that capacity for a while.

To most of us who were there, the 50’s are remembered as the Golden Age of that marvelous Hackley Glee Club. Warren Hunke, school impresario, produced, directed, and occasionally found himself singing with a truly memorable choral group, featuring his showpiece Octet. In 1958 though, baseball had its moment in the school’s spotlight, and some of us jocks got to bask in the glory of an amazing season long run, still panting on the boulders atop that stupid dirt trail after every home game, with exhaustion like we’d always done, but never in the agony of defeat.

Read all the Tim MacDonald Baseball stories:
Hackley Baseball 1956 – 1958 | 2010 Spring Training | Cinco Ocho Rules! | 2011 Spring Training | 2012 Spring Training