Krause: Remembering Champa and Connery’s glory days

The last time the Connery Post 6 American Legion team made the playoffs was in 1998 – which was also the last year that Dick Champa managed the team.We hear a lot about Nipper Clancy – and rightfully so. The man was a true baseball coaching legend in Lynn. We also hear a lot about Frank Carey, and again, rightfully so. He is also a coaching legend, a worthy successor to Clancy in every way as the dean of Lynn baseball coaches.We don’t often hear about Champa, and that’s a shame. He kind of gets lost in the shuffle when it comes to the great coaches in Lynn history.Champa was a quiet guy in many ways. Coaches can very easily be one-man advertisements for themselves. But that was not Champa’s way. Oh, he had plenty of say ? it’s just that he said it quietly so as to not show you up.I can remember as a young umpire being asked to do a scrimmage game between his Legion team and the Lynn 15-year-old Babe Ruth team, which was preparing for the state tournament. I don’t remember much about it anymore, except that current Classical coach Mike Zukowski was playing first base for Connery (I did the bases) and Champa picked the scrimmage to try out a very inventive pickoff move that either was or was not a balk (I didn’t think it was, but it was so cleverly conceived that I couldn’t be sure; and I suspect that had it been a real game, and not a scrimmage, we’d all still be arguing about it).Champa was not Mr. Chips in a baseball cap. He could be difficult sometimes. He was very old-school, and he had some unbending ways about him. I remember watching one game in which a player hit a popup and stared at it as it was coming down. As luck would have it, the fielder dropped the popup, and the Connery player just barely made it to first.I was sitting with someone and I said to him, “Watch how fast (the player) gets yanked from the game.” Sure enough, and with zero fanfare, Champa sent in a pinch-runner on the spot.But running a tight ship isn’t exactly detrimental to running a winning program, and Dick Champa ran a very tight ship.One of the best things about Connery in those days was the total family aspect of the program. Champa’s team back then included – in one capacity or another – himself, Tommy Byrne, Mickey Wladkowski, Steve Brown, Charlie Rowe, Butch Durant, and, of course Ray Sharples. These weren’t just games to these coaches and their wives. They were social events. It was nice to see.That family took a huge hit when Champa died, rather suddenly. And then it took another hit. It wasn’t even a year later, when Mickey Wladkowski’s wife, Patsy, died of cancer (Mickey took over the program after Champa died).People can say what they want about the reasons the Connery program went into a tailspin, but I’ll always see those two events as very connected. They tore the hearts right out of everybody.It’s been a tough 10 years for Post 6 as it bid adieu to its tight-knit group of coaches. The program struggled to find a similar combination, and the glue that held it together, Ray Sharples, became too sick to carry on. He just died two weeks ago.These days, Tim Fila, Joel Karakadeos and Doug Surette – three Post 6 alumni – are running the program and it’s nice to see the Sixers back in the hunt. To me, there was always something special about Connery (not to take anything away from Shoemaker, Post 291 and Gautreau, all of which have had their moments in the sun). Connery was the team I first started following, and all my baseball friends growing up played for the Sixers. So, of course, did Tony Conigliaro, whom I used to watch with my father and Godfather Uncle Henry when they took me to games.So, good for Connery Post 6 for making it all the way back. The Sixers begin their quest for a state championship Saturday.It’s just like old times.Steve Krause is sports editor of The Item.