Chances are, if you spent a lot of time at the Lynn Babe Ruth facility on O’Callaghan Way, you didn’t notice Nick Chakoutis very often.
Nick wasn’t there to be noticed.
When it came to taking bows, Nick was nowhere to be found. But when it came to pitching in and doing the things you need to keep a youth sport program running — and as economically as possible — Nick was your guy.
“He was our Mr. Fixit,” said John Kasian, who retired two years ago as the city’s Manning Bowl-Fraser Field site manager, but who served for several years as president of Lynn Babe Ruth.
“He was the field director down there, and he could fix anything. Jim Beliveau (the current president) would break it, and Nick would fix it.”
“He was the epitome of what it meant to be a volunteer,” said Babe Ruth official Jeff Earp. “If you called him about anything, he came running. He was the opposite of every stereotype people use about youth sports adults and coaches. He was a true servant of the kids.”
As you can probably tell, that Babe Ruth crowd was a pretty tightly-knit group, and Nick was a big part it. You’d go to the Breed Middle School complex, and all of the workers were spread out in various formations, mowing, cutting, lining the fields, lugging cans of soda into the concession stand … this small army of volunteers — Kasian, Beliveau, Jeff Earp, Dave Raymond, Jim Burt, Billy Trahant and so many others — has kept that place running for more than 10 years. Off in the background, usually up to his elbows in a tractor, with his clothes covered with the dirt he’d been digging for the last however many hours, was Nick. In fact, the first time I saw Nick in any other environment than the baseball field, I didn’t know it was him.
Don’t misunderstand. Nick wasn’t a “Pigpen.” But he just lived in the unglamorous domain of youth sports. And he liked it that way.
“He’d just stand behind, and smile, and be happy,” said Kasian. “And he’d give you the shirt off his back.”
The Babe Ruth field crew even took its skills on the road, resodding infields all over Lynn. The last one was the refurbishing of Lynn Shore’s field at Kiley Park.
“We had it down to a science,” said Kasian. “Nick was the cutter. He’d cut out those spots around first and third base. He’d have his ruler, and his rope. And once he started, you got out of his way.”
That started in Pine Hill Little League at the same time Kasian began working with West Lynn American. The two became presidents of their respective leagues, and formed a lasting friendship.
While he was president of Pine Hill, his wife, Dianna, councilor of Ward 5 in Lynn, decided she’d work at the concession stand with her friend, Sue Conti, whose husband, Arn, was also heavily involved with Pine Hill as a coach.
“It was the only way we could see our husbands,” said Dianna, who has known Nick since high school.
“That was his heart and soul,” she said. “That’s what he wanted to do.”
Dianna said that watching the way her husband dedicated his time and service to the community actually gave her the impetus to run for the Lynn City Council.
She said her son, Mike, came up with the idea of burying him in Pine Grove Cemetery, on the hill that overlooks the Little League baseball fields.
“We put his grave as close to the fields as we could,” she said, “so he could watch over them.”
That is a nice tribute to a man who spent his life keeping things running. Hopefully, in time, the folks down at the Babe Ruth complex will put Nick’s name on something as well. He spent enough time down there, and no one deserves it more.
