Friends who played softball with Vanessa Masucci will come together in two weeks to celebrate her life rather than mourn her death.
They will play in a softball tournament and — they hope — rekindle old friendships while keeping an eye on the memory of the girl who played, and who was one of the most feared hitters St. Mary’s had during Colleen Newbury’s first years coaching at the school.
It won’t be easy. If even two people get together, whether Vanessa’s name comes up or not, the horror of Sept. 23, 2017, comes rushing back to the surface. How could it not?
That was the day that the effervescent Vanessa was murdered by her husband.
Vanessa was fun. The team was fun. And the parents and friends bonded together to form a pretty tight rooting contingent.
I got involved because my niece, Lesley (Zaya) Seeley, was on that team. I was sports editor at the time, so I could assign myself to Lesley’s games, and in the process, I got to know Vinnie and Karen Masucci quite well.
This was a little slice of Americana … the way it should have been. They played, we watched and stayed out of the way. We laughed, joked, lived and died for this team for 20 games and the MIAA tournament. Each year, when it ended, it was almost like separation anxiety.
Vinnie and Karen were/are wonderful people. He could become agitated sometimes, but she kept him in line — for the most part. My sister, Jayne often joined us too, and there we’d be, enjoying gorgeous spring days on softball diamonds all over the North Shore.
It was Jayne who called me on a sleepy Sunday morning asking if I’d known what happened with Vanessa Masucci. She died, my sister said, but she did not know how or why.
By then, Vanessa was only 30 and she had become a beloved school teacher in her hometown of Lynn. Everyone who knew her thought she was wonderful.
A few phone calls later, I learned the horrible truth. Not only was Vanessa murdered, her husband was the prime suspect. Good Lord. This was like watching “The First 48,” only this wasn’t TV. It was real life.
Vanessa’s husband, whose name I swear I’ll never mention again, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life without parole. He is where he belongs — in jail.
A year after she died, Vanessa’s friends organized a softball tournament to help perpetuate her name, and her passion. And although there is a scholarship awarded at the end of the tournament, the Masuccis stress that all they want is for the kids who play to have fun.
“My son Joe runs it, and that’s all he keeps saying,” Vinnie said Friday. “We want the kids to enjoy themselves. We don’t want to put pressure on them to give money.”
The tournament is July 23, beginning at 9 a.m. at Breed Middle School on O’Callaghan Way, and there will be an opening ceremony starting at around 11.
There will be a lot of food, with the Beefie Boys serving from noon to 3 p.m. Also, there will be face-painting from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
In addition, there will be a T-Ball hour at the softball field starting at 2 p.m. There will be a concession stand and a raffle as well.
Lord knows this can’t be easy on the family, but they do it mainly because they understand Vanessa’s friends need the outlet. They miss her terribly too, and this is one way for them to bond and perhaps relive some good times.
I really hope they do. It was a wonderful time in my life too, in a much smaller way, and every time I see Vinnie, or even hear his voice, I’m brought back to that Sunday morning in September 2017 with a resounding thud. That was the day all those procedural TV murder shows came to life in the most sickening of ways.
Vanessa had been murdered; a family I really liked and enjoyed was (and is still) hurting; a little girl, who will be 6-years-old next month, was without a mother — and for all intents and purposes, a father; and we were left to ask the same question we’d hear every week on CSI: How could this have happened?
