COURTESY PHOTO
Pictured is MacDaniel Singleton.
By STEVE FREKER
MALDEN — He was truly a person of whom people would say “he knew everyone” and just as quickly say “everyone knew him.”
MacDaniel Singleton, who died on Tuesday at the age of 74, was known to friends and acquaintances in Malden, Everett — the whole Greater Boston area — as a true gentleman and one of the best and most inspiring men they ever met.
An “Everett kid,” Singleton later moved to Malden and excelled at Malden High School in not one, but three major sports. “Mac” Singleton went on to become one of the most prolific coaches at the collegiate and semi-professional levels in baseball and football, including two stints in Cambridge as the longtime head baseball coach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and previously as an assistant football coach at Harvard University.
He came full circle to work as a physical education teacher at Beebe Junior High School in Malden in the late 1960s and early 1970s, before moving on to a variety of college coaching positions. He had most recently become a fixture at Everett High School as a physical education teacher there as well as a resident of the city.
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Through all of his exploits and accomplishments, Singleton had an impeccable reputation as a straight talker and a caring, expressive man who was focused on helping all who crossed his path, whether they were a potential professional athlete or one of the youngsters he taught the game of tennis every Saturday morning in Malden.
“Mac was one of a kind and one of the nicest individuals and best coaches I have ever met,” said Malden Recreation Director Joe Levine, who has known Singleton for more than 40 years and has worked with him in local youth programs for the past several years. “He just had a knack when dealing with people to bring out the best in them.”
A charter member of the Malden High School Hall of Fame as a member of the Class of 1962, Singleton was a three-sport star for the Golden Tornado football, basketball and baseball teams, playing for a pair of coaches on the Malden High “Mount Rushmore” including Eddie Melanson in football in the late 1950s and early 1960s and Arthur P. Boyle Sr. in the same time frame. He helped win a state Tech Tourney title with Malden in basketball in 1962.
A standout in football and baseball at Western State College in Colorado, graduating in 1966, Singleton was drafted as an outfielder by the Chicago White Sox in 1966. He decided to pursue a teaching and coaching career after a tryout with the Boston Patriots did not work out that same year.
He was head football coach at the former Boston State College in the 1970s and served as an assistant football coach at Harvard for 16 years. He also coached junior varsity baseball there. He had baseball coaching experience in the Boston Park League, in football in the Arena Football League and World League of American Football.
Following his MIT tenure, he served as a spring training coach with the Los Angeles Dodgers for two seasons before returning to Everett and restarting his teaching career.
With his bear of a handshake coupled with a disarming smile and a sometimes gruff, but mostly gentle personality, Singleton will truly be missed.
“We lost a great one…” Levine said.
Many in Malden and Everett would agree.
