Clancy Tournament to end this year

LYNN – This year’s Nipper Clancy Memorial Day baseball tournament will be the last, former mayor Edward “Chip” Clancy said Tuesday.”We’re shutting it down after 30 years,” said Clancy, the oldest son of the man for whom the tournament is named. “Thirty years is a long time. We’ve had a lot of people with us from day one ? guys like Frank Carey and Tim Feeley ? my brother (Jimmy) and his family ? it’s been a long time.”Nipper Clancy coached for both St. Mary’s and Connery Post 6 through the end of the 1960s. Among his players, both at St. Mary’s and for Connery, was Tony Conigliaro, who later became a star for the Boston Red Sox.The tournament was founded by four of Clancy’s former players: Jim Tgettis (then at St. Mary’s), Dick Maag (Classical), Carey (North Reading) and Bart Conlon (Lynn Tech). For a time in the 1990s, five teams were involved when English was added, with teams rotating to sit out a year. After Tech dropped out, the present-day list of teams included Classical, St. Mary’s, English and North Reading.Clancy, an avid runner, likens the tournament’s run to a successful road race that eventually loses its steam.”I’ve been involved with a couple,” he said, “where they’ve gone 10 years in one case, eight in another, and they’ve shut it down. It just gets very hard to keep up.”It’s been a great run,” Clancy said, “but it takes a lot of time, effort, work and money.”You need people,” Clancy said, “but everybody’s got their own lives. Also, we never had an institutional sponsor, like the Agganis basketball tournament has at St. George’s, or the Agganis Classics have with their sponsors. So, you know, it just gets hard.”So,” he said, “we hope we can go out on top, with a good tournament this year. A nice weekend would really help a lot.”Clancy, who also coached legion ball and has remained close to the Lynn baseball scene, said that he has many fond memories of the tournament, but perhaps the thing he remembers most is how dominant the late Leo Estabrook was.”I’ve never seen anyone dominate this tournament over a two-year period the way he did,” Clancy said of Estabrook, who died over the holidays last December. “And not just with pitching either. I think he hit a couple of home runs too.”Leo was just a great kid,” Clancy said, “and he always came back, whenever he was around, too.”This year’s tournament gets under way at Fraser Field at 4 p.m. Sunday with Lynn Classical facing North Reading. St. Mary’s plays English in the nightcap (7). The consolation game is Monday (1) followed by the final at 4.