SALEM — Mike Giardi has been in sports his whole life, and even now, at age 50, he is still pursuing his passion.
Giardi, a Salem native, manages the Peabody Champions of the North Shore Baseball League, who are on the brink of a title. Giardi and the Champions are in a deadlocked seven-game series final against the Beverly Recs at 2-2.
While managing a championship contender is an accomplishment in itself, Giardi also happens to take the field and play for his team from time to time.
“It is tougher, a little bit now — I am 50 years old now. The day-to-day grind of playing every day — I miss it, do not get me wrong. I was talking with Jon Cahill and Scott Weismann yesterday, and I am like, I would love to be in there every single day, but I know that we have some younger guys — guys that can do a lot of things that I cannot do anymore,” said Giardi.
Manager of the Champions is not the only hat Giardi wears either. He is fully involved at Marblehead High School as a teacher and coach for several teams.
Giardi is the head coach of both the baseball and basketball teams at Marblehead High while also donning the headset as the football team’s offensive coordinator.
One of the main things that drew Giardi to coaching was his father, who coached high school baseball for almost 25 years and was an assistant football coach.
“One of the things that I saw was the grind that he put in for years, and sometimes it was challenging. It was challenging for my mother, it was challenging for my brother and I, seeing my dad commit so much time to that, but I just saw the love and the passion that he had, and that is something I put into a lot of things too,” said Giardi.
“He has been a huge supporter of mine, huge fan, and he is the guy that I call up and ask questions about even to this day,” he added.
Marblehead’s athletes get a ton of guidance from their coach as they can draw on Giardi’s wealth of experience as a successful athlete.
Giardi was a standout athlete in baseball at Salem High and in college at Harvard, where he was inducted into the school’s Hall of Fame. He even played professional baseball in the minor leagues during the mid-90s for the Giants, Yankees, and Expos.
At Harvard, he was also a three-year starter as a quarterback in football and played on some state championship basketball teams in Salem.
Although he can draw on his own experience as a player to help with his coaching, Giardi says he has had a lot of help through the years and stressed that it is not a one-man show.
“One of the big things about being a head coach for basketball and baseball and being an assistant in football — you know Jim Rudloff, I always joke with him, I said you made a great decision making me an assistant because as a head coach in basketball and baseball I found you have to have some great assistants around you and I have had some great ones over the years,” said Giardi.
He mentioned his great friend, the late Steve Gridley, who helped him with both baseball and basketball.
For Giardi, coaching is something he enjoys, especially at the high school level, but he acknowledges it can be challenging.
“It is challenging because as a competitor, you want to win, but you know it is not about you — it is about the kids and giving them every opportunity to win, every opportunity to be successful, and unfortunately, giving that opportunity means sometimes they are going to fail,” said Giardi.
“Instead of being upset with them or mad at them, you have to feel for them because they are kids, and you feel that disappointment, and you have to encourage them and pick them up and get them to move to the next level,” he continued.
Juggling three high school sports, the NSBL, and a teaching career is obviously a large workload, and Giardi has had to make some sacrifices but does so for the love of the game.
“That commitment — that love, I think that’s sometimes the thing that keeps me going — but you just grind through and keep going and going and going,” said Giardi.
With the rest of the NSBL finals ahead and high school sports season approaching, Giardi will look to keep on going with his love of sports and coaching.
