IPfF Chapter 4
WHRHS spring training for baseball started in early March when New Jersey weather is often damp and cold. On days of inclement weather we would practice in the gym. Coach Frank Matullo (we called him Mattie) would have us in the gym working our throwing arms and running sprints. That was pretty much all you could do in a gym with windows. We may have played some pepper, but on a hardwood floor, that felt unnatural. When the weather was clear, we would go outside and practice. One day in early March when the weather was clear but cold, Mattie posted a sign on the bulletin board outside the gym: “Put your Woolie Bullies on! We are going outside!” Woolie Bully by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs was one of the hit songs of 1965. Mattie was hip to it.
Taking batting practice in the cold was not a pleasurable experience like it was in warm weather. Cold bats have bees in them. If you don't hit the ball squarely, you get stung.
Coach Matullo was a laid back, soft-spoken man who loved baseball and was grateful he had a paying job in it. His demeanor was unlike Bob O’Neill's: rarely to anger, dispassionate, and fun-loving. O'Neill spoke constantly when he coached, but Mattie was more laconic. He'd give you hints and let you figure it. But the ability to focus on what was needed was the same. Rumor was he had been a young minor league center fielder in the New York Giants farm system. When the time came they needed a center fielder, they didn’t call him up, they called up Willie Mays instead, which turned out to be the right choice. The story is probably apocryphal, since I can find no records that Frank Matullo played minor league ball at all on comprehensive lists of minor league players on the internet. I was able to find records for others like Joe Randazzo, a friend of Matty's who occasionally came and helped him coach us. I found records on Don Kohler who coached the Dreier's team in Plainfield on the internet. Also Chambers Rossi, Frank's uncle, but none for Mattie. You could, however, see Mattie's baseball experience when he threw and swung the fungo bat during warm-ups. People who have played baseball for a long time develop a fluid, easy style. He was a natural athlete. At Panzer College he had played four years each of baseball, basketball and soccer. In his senior year he had been captain of the soccer team.
It didn't seem like Mattie was coaching you at all. He'd offer tips and instruction, but it was always gently recommended. He never got angry or frustrated. If guys were goofing around, unless the situation was extremely tight and demanded intense focus, he'd encourage it. Having fun was part of the game. It made practices enjoyable. We were loose. Any pressure was usually self-generated and your problem.
Frank Matullo
Mattie’s laid-back attitude was shared by his JV coach Bill Griswold, a big unit of a man with an acne-scarred complexion and a passing resemblance to a friendly werewolf. He was roughly 6’-6” and must have weighed 250 lbs. He had a toothy broad smile and a deep belly laugh. He called everyone “Ace,” probably because he couldn’t remember their name. He had been the varsity football coach before Don Schneider was hired in 1963. He coached the nascent teams in the early days when WHRHS was building athletic programs from the ground up. Starting in 1957 they often played short schedules because most of the other teams had previous commitments and as a new team you had to build a schedule. The football program was in its infancy. Coach Griswold brought it up to mediocrity and then signed it over to Don Schneider in 1963. In hindsight, I think that was a mistake.
Bill Griswold died just before his 95th birthday in August of 2025, four months before I am describing him here.. His obituary read:
William Henry Griswold, III, "Bill," beloved husband, father, grandfather, and great grandfather, passed away peacefully, surrounded by his family on August 30, 2025, at the age of 94. Born in Portsmouth, Virginia, on November 9, 1930, he was the son of the late Ruth (Chapman) and William Henry Griswold, Jr. A proud graduate of Cradock High School, Class of 1948, Bill went on to earn his Bachelor of Science in Education from the University of Virginia. He continued his academic journey with a Master of Arts from New Jersey Teachers College in 1958 and later received his Master of Education from Rutgers University in 1964. Bill served his country honorably during the Korean Conflict as a member of the United States Army's 716th Military Police Platoon. For his service, he was awarded the National Defense Service Medal and the Good Conduct Medal. Following his military service, Bill dedicated his life to education. Throughout his distinguished career, he served as a public school teacher and coach, Supervisor of Physical Education for Wilmington Public Schools, Supervisor in the New Castle County School System, and ultimately retired as the Athletic Director at Concord High School. He touched countless lives through his commitment to education and athletics. An avid sports fan and athlete, The Griz played Division I football at UVA and was even drafted by the Baltimore Colts. However, his passion for education and devotion to his family led him to pursue a different path-one that enriched the lives of so many. He was a skilled bowler, an enthusiastic woodworker, and a devoted coach of youth football and baseball in his community. He loved connecting with people and could spark a conversation with anyone about anything. In addition to his parents, Bill was preceded in death by his beloved wife, Elizabeth Brooks Griswold.
Coach Griswold played on the 1951 University of Virginia team that was ranked the best Southern independent college team out of 19 teams. They won 8 games and lost one. Given that Coach Griswold was drafted by the Baltimore Colts after that season, we can assume he played an important role on that winning team. Of interest to me was that the one loss the Cavaliers suffered was to Washington and Lee University. When I played for Centre College in the late 1960s, we beat Washington and Lee in football three times in four tries.
Playing for Coach Griswold on the JV baseball team for two years was a pleasure. The first year, he nurtured his four freshman: Frank Rossi, Joey Ezro, Irv Zander and me. A few of the upper classmen on the team were not as accepting of us as they could have been. In those days freshman were subjected to orientation throughout the year, also known as “hazing” which, ironically, could be disorienting. Coach Griswold made sure we freshman were treated fairly. I remember I was mocked by teammates repeatedly for having made All-County Chorus in my freshman year. The Griz, as he was known, thought it was great that I was a singer.
Bill Griswold
Coaches Kovonuk, Matullo and Griswold were all hired when WHRHS opened in 1957 although Kovonuk was initially part-time at WHRHS and another school in Bound Brook. By 1965 they had weathered all the formative years in athletic competition and had built a solid foundation in the three major sports: football, basketball and baseball. It was not unlike coaching an expansion team in professional sports. You build from the ground up. Except for my senior year in football (when Don Schneider was the coach), I played on a winning team in football, basketball and baseball in all four years due to their efforts to build successful programs. Eleven out of twelve seasons. Going through the early WHRHS yearbooks, 1958-60, you can see the three helped each other by working as assistant coaches. Matullo helped in football and basketball, Griswold helped in baseball and wrestling and Kovonuk helped in football and baseball. The team pictures in yearbooks from those years tell the story. One story they told was that there was not even a baseball team pictured in the 1958 yearbook. A team photograph didn't show up until the 1959 yearbook. In it, Coach Matullo had a lot more hair and three future WHRHS Hall of Famers, Fred Rossi, Pete Falzarano and Jerry Mobus, appear.
It was a pleasure playing for Frank Matullo, who not only taught and coached at the regional high school but was the Director of Recreation and ran the summer recreation program for children in the Borough of Watchung where he moved in 1958, He lived off Hillcrest Road less than half a mile from my house. I worked as an assistant in the rec program for him in the summers after my junior and senior years in 1965 and '66. I was paid $30 a week.
Because I had attended the summer recreation program throughout grade school, Matullo knew me well. Even in those years I suspect he was grooming me for high school baseball. He made sure we played a lot of baseball in the summer sun while he was in the gym at Watchung Borough School supervising the smaller children. We played a version of "one old cat" when we didn't have enough players for a full game. We pronounced it "one-a-cat." It's a game as few as three children can play.
When I did arrive in high school, Mattie placed me not on the freshman baseball team, but on the junior varsity team with Frank Rossi, Joey Ezro and Irv Zander. I was lucky enough as a boy and then a teenager to have coaches (including my father) who would put players with potential in a situation that would accelerate their development If you were playing with older players you learned to play at their level.
After my freshman year Mattie had me play JV again as a sophomore. He had a competent shortstop in senior David Baker and a deft second baseman in Doc Ferraro on the varsity. They were co-captains of the 1964 team and played a major role in the team winning the Somerset County championship. In his senior year, Doc (one of Fred and Frank Rossi's cousins) was recognized and lauded by Matullo at the annual spring sports dinner for handling 70 chances at second base that season without an error.
In the meantime I had started playing a lot of tennis during summer vacation after my freshman year. I grew to love it. At one point before the baseball season of my sophomore year, I went to Mattie and told him I was thinking of trying out for the tennis team, which would mean I wouldn’t be playing baseball. He said firmly, “No, you don’t want to do that. This year you will be the JV shortstop again, and next year you will be the varsity shortstop. In your senior year, you will be the varsity shortstop, the captain of the team and will make All-County at your position.” And that was that.
*****
My first year in varsity baseball at WHRHS began when I was a junior in the spring of 1965. Several senior starters including Ronnie Peterson, Jimmy Higgins, Jim Goulding, Doc Ferraro, Dale Throneberry, Ken Spisso and David Baker had graduated. In fact, the entire infield had to be replaced. We needed a catcher and a centerfielder. The two starters who were returning were, however, as good as it gets: Norm Hewitt, a pitcher/outfielder, and Frank Rossi, my classmate, who had played right field on the 1964 championship team as a sophomore. The good news was that Norm was the best hitter on that '64 team and Frank was arguably the second best along with Jimmy Higgins, who ended up playing football at Rutgers in the fall of 1964. First baseman Dale Throneberry also made a strong offensive contribution. The team won the Somerset County title with a 10-2 record in 1964, two games ahead of Bridgewater-Raritan. Their overall record was 13-4.
Norm Hewitt was so good in 1964 as a junior he was the subject of a full column by Courier News sports columnist Hugh Delano. The headline of the column was “Stormin’ Norman On A Rampage.” It was midway through the season and Hewitt was batting .500 with 14 hits in 28 at bats. He also had a 4-0 pitching record. He was a power pitcher with an excellent breaking ball.
The 1965 Watchung Hills Warriors had a completely revamped line-up. The only full-time starter returning to his original position was Hewitt. Frank Rossi had played right field in '64, but was now to be our regular catcher. Junior Billy Beyer was our second baseman, senior John Dilzell our third baseman, senior Jim Dolan our first baseman and I would play shortstop. Juniors Fred Ahlers, Glenn Rossi, Irv Zander and seniors Alan Welch, Tony Romeo, and Hewitt when he was not pitching would man the outfield. Juniors Jeff Mogey and Rob Lang were backup utility men. Pete Scott and Tony Szalacha filled out the pitching staff.
The 1965 season began well. We won our first four games against Bridgewater-Raritan, Franklin Township, Metuchen and North Plainfield. Against Bridgewater, Norm struck out 14 and hit a two-run homer to seal a 2-0 victory. He threw a two-hitter against Franklin and hit a two-run double as we won 6-2. Against North Plainfield he threw a four-hitter in an 8-1 victory.
But then we ran into Somerset County powerhouses Somerville and Bound Brook. We lost 1-0 and 7-4 respectively. Somerville would beat us twice that year by the score of 1-0.
Mattie had me batting eighth in the lineup for the first two games. In the third game against Metuchen he moved me up to fifth behind Frank. In the 10th game of the season he moved me up to second in the order and put Fred Ahlers, our fleet center fielder, in the lead-off position replacing Billy Beyer who was dropped down to 8th. Mattie was gaining confidence in me. I was hitting in front of Hewitt and Rossi, which meant I would see better pitches.
The team did not hit well during the 1965 season. There were a lot of formidable pitchers in the Plainfield area in 1965, Norm being just one of them. I remember I was struck out by Tommy Utzinger of North Plainfield three times in the final game of the season. We normally handled North Plainfield easily, but with Utzinger on the mound, they were nearly invincible and beat us 3-1. Norm was the only one who could hit him, gathering two of our four hits. I think Frank struck out three times also, if I recall correctly. I remember us commiserating together after the game. Utzinger struck out a whopping 16 of us in seven innings that day, which means only five of his outs were not strike outs. In the 1965 season, I only got 8 hits in 47 at bats and Frank didn't do much better with 10 in 47. Norm led the team with 14 hits in 53 at bats. Of course, Frank and Norm probably had a much higher OPS (on base percentage plus slugging) than I did. Both were formidable power hitters who drove in and scored a lot of runs. Norm did amazing things during the season. He struck out 14 hitters three times in 7 inning games against Bridgewater, Metuchen and Manville. Against Ridge High School, he picked off three runners in one game. In that game, Frank drove in both our runs in a 2-0 victory.
1965: The shortstop swinging away with Hewitt and catcher Rossi on deck. The man standing behind Frank was Mr. Pizzini, whose daughter Michelle was in our class. His house was a short walk through the woods to our home field. He would bring us chewing gum before every game and became known as "Gum Chum." He liked the name and would show up and yell "Gum Chum here!"
Norm's cockiness manifested itself before our second game of two with the powerhouse team Bound Brook in 1965. They were the best team in Somerset County that year. From the Courier News of May 28th:
"Norm Hewitt, a hard-throwing left-hander, is the best pitcher on the Watchung Hills baseball team. He also may be Watchung's answer to Cassius Clay. He pitched the Warriors past Bound Brook,2-1, in a rain-abbreviated game at Warren Township, and had made good his boast to halt Bound Brook's winning streak at 13. 'They won't make it 14,' predicted Norm Tuesday night after Bound Brook's 13th straight victory. 'I'm going to beat them Thursday'"
Norm nailed his prediction-- with a little help from his teammates. We were facing John Budnick, the biggest and probably the hardest throwing pitcher in the County. On this day he struck out eight of the first ten batters he faced. (Norm struck out nine in the game.) Bound Brook took a 1-0 lead in the first inning. In the bottom of the fourth as threatening skies rolled in, I got a fat fastball from Budnik and drove it through the gap in left center for a double. Norm then grounded out, but Frank hit a deep drive through the same gap for a triple to send me home and tie the game. After the second out Alan Welch singled Frank in with what proved to be the winning run.
Norm held Bound Brook scoreless in the top of the fifth and then the rains came in sheets suspending the game. According to the rules, it was a legal victory. Bound Brook's players were incensed that they were deprived of their at-bats in the last two innings. The reporter was correct. Norm proved to be our "answer to Cassius Clay", although Clay had changed his name to Muhammad Ali a year before.
Here is the record of the 1965 WHRHS Warriors baseball team:
There is one error in the scores listed above: Piscataway actually beat us 5 to 4. We did not beat them 11 to 5. We were 10 and 7-- an above average team that lost a couple more than we should have.
In doing this research, I was surprised to learn that both Frank and Norm were moonlighting during the 1965 season at WHRHS. They played at least five games together for Dreier's Sporting Goods in the Plainfield Twilight League. Nearly all the players for Dreier's were playing college baseball or post-college players. Norm and Frank were exceptions.
Norm Hewitt went from Watchung Hills to Salem College, West Virginia. He could have signed a professional contract but his parents insisted he get an education first. I remember fondly his father, Norm Senior, who came regularly to our high school games, even after Norm Jr. had graduated. Norm Sr. was an outdoorsman. We called him "the Lobster" because his face was always red from exposure while hunting and fishing outdoors. In his prime he had played minor league baseball and been a great player in the semi-professional leagues in New Jersey.
After college, Norm Hewitt was spectacularly successful Jr. as a high school and college baseball coach, first at Hillsborough High in 1969 where he was hired as an industrial arts teacher and, like his mentor Frank Matullo, assigned the task of building the baseball program for the new high school that was opening there. He coached at Hillsborough until he was hired by Drew University in 1981. He gave the university its first winning season that year and then went on to become the pitching coach at Rutgers University from 1982-84. From there it was back to coaching high school baseball at Bridgewater-Raritan West from 1987-99 when he returned to Hillsborough High School to coach there again. In 2014 after retiring from teaching, Norm was rehired by Drew University to be an assistant baseball coach. The following is from Drew University's description of Norm after they re-hired him:
Hewitt is a member of the NJBCA Hall of Fame and the WHRHS Hall of Fame. He has been named Coach of the Year nine times, including New Jersey Coach of the Year in 1989 and again in 2005. In 1989 he coached the New Jersey All Stars at Yankee Stadium. Hewitt was also recognized by the NJSIAA as the state's representative for National Coach of the Year in 2005, and has served on the NJSIAA rules committee. Norm has accumulated 631 career wins and has proudly advanced over 200 of his high school players to the collegiate level, among them, 21 All-Americans. Three of his pitchers have been drafted from his high school programs, and nine have gone on to professional baseball.
Norm's winning percentage as a high school coach was among the best ever. He won 631 games and lost 349 for a winning percentage of .644. To put that in perspective, the best winning percentage among all MLB managers in history was achieved by John McCarthy at .615. Norm even exceeded Frank Matullo's winning percentage at WHRHS, which was .609. But Mattie only won 149 games to Norm's 631. Norm coached quite a bit longer than Mattie and his teams played many more games per season during his long career.
It was a pleasure to play the 1965 season with Norm, I got to relive the pleasure when I played with him on the Dreiers team in the Plainfield Twilight League in the summers of 1967 and '68. He was the best left-handed hitter I ever played with --or against.
*******
The summer after the 1965 baseball season at WHRHS, I was player/coach on a team in the Plainfield Elks Junior League. The League was managed and directed by Vic Liske, who coached the Plainfield High School swim team from 1934 to 1966 and was a highly respected citizen of the City of Plainfield. He never had a losing season as a swim coach and is viewed as one of the most successful swimming coaches in New Jersey history. He had coached Olympic athlete Milt Campbell in swimming. Campbell would later win a gold medal in the decathlon at the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, the first black man to do so.
Vic Liske had among other distinctions being father to Pete Liske who quarterbacked for Penn State where he was the MVP at the Hula Bowl in 1963. Pete was drafted into the NFL and had a 12-year professional career in which he played for the New York Jets, Buffalo Bills, Denver Broncos and the Calgary Stampeders in the Canadian Football League. He also played first base on the Penn State baseball team that appeared in the College World Series of 1963. I was well aware of Pete’s career while playing in Vic Liske’s Junior Elks League in the summers of ’64 and ’65. The fact that he was drafted as a pro quarterback made Pete famous in the Plainfield area.
Vic Liske was an elderly gentlemen who devoted his life to serving young people. When I knew him he was approaching retirement age and walked with a pronounced limp. I don’t know what caused it but it made the long walks he had to make from his office to the field difficult. He was fair and diplomatic when it came to mediating disputes among the Elks League’s teams. He umpired many of the games, which could become contentious, but he always handled disagreements masterfully.
The teams in the Plainfield Junior Elks League came from all over the Central Jersey area including Bound Brook, South Plainfield, Dunellen, Scotch Plains, Metuchen and Westfield. They usually consisted of high school baseball players. You had to be 18 or younger to qualify to play but if you had not turned 19 when the season started, you were allowed to play even if you would turn 19 during the season. I coached our team in 1964 and 1965 with Mike Lombardo, a teammate from my freshman and sophomore year on the WHRHS junior varsity baseball team. Mike was two grades ahead of me but was still eligible because he had not turned 19 before the season started in 1965.
I thought up the name Hillsmen for the team, which was appropriate, since we were from the hills above Plainfield, a wealthy city with a population of 45,000 that in the late 19th and early 20th century had become a vacation destination for families from New York City which was 32 miles east of Plainfield. Our players were all students of WHRHS and came from Millington, Stirling, Gillette, Meyersville, Watchung and Warren Township.
I don’t recall how we got an invitation to join the League. It could have been through my brother Chip who would have known Vic Liske because Chip was a champion swimmer for the Plainfield YMCA. We were invited to join the league in 1964 after a team named the Queensmen couldn’t field nine men. (Plainfield was always known as the Queen City.) We inherited their record of 0-2 and assumed their place in the schedule. I know the details about the summer seasons of 1964 and ’65 because because Pete Liske had accounts of all the games and box scores published in the Plainfield Courier News, whose archives I have researched online. I had forgotten almost everything about it. The more I learned, the better the story became.
Those old columns in the Courier News tell the story of how we were a mediocre but winning team in the summer of 1964 but improved enough to get into a best-of-three game championship series in the summer of 1965. In the latter year, Joey Ezro, although he had missed playing on the varsity that spring, played a prominent role in many of our regular season games. The Tigers of South Plainfield were 10-2 during the regular season and we ended up tied for second with the Giants at 8-4. We defeated the Giants in a one-game playoff, 6-1. Russ Harden got the win and Glenn Rossi, another cousin of Frank Rossi, hit a two run homer in the fifth to break a tie that gained us a spot in the three-game championship playoff with the Tigers of South Plainfield.
Because Joey did not play varsity baseball with us at WHRHS during our junior season in 1965, I doubted he would want to play in the Elks League in our second season. When he didn't show for varsity baseball we knew something was not right with him. It was a mystery to all of us on that team. He was so good! Pitching was so easy for him! Why wouldn’t he play?
But he surprised me by agreeing to play in the Elks League. Joey played in 9 of our 16 games that summer. He pitched only one game and played first base in the others. We had four regular pitchers on that team: Ronnie Peterson, Pete Scott, Russell Harden and, to my amazement, me. I had no recollection of pitching ever for the Hillsmen. The three others had been regular starting pitchers at WHRHS and I had not. I was astonished to find in the archives I had pitched in at least five games during our 1965 season and had a won-lost record of 2-1 which tied me for fifth place with Pete Scott in the pitching statistics for the entire league. Russell Harden, a sophomore on the WHRHS varsity that year, had placed second in the Elks League in pitching with a 3-0 record.
Joey played first base in the nine games he played for us. He hit the ball hard and often. In 29 at bats he had 10 hits for an average of ,345. And yet he was not listed in the final statistics Vic Liske compiled, which required that you have at least 28 at bats. I finally solved the mystery. When I totaled up his statistics, I included his at bats and hits from our playoff games. These were not included in the regular season statistics Vic Liske had compiled.
Joey loved to play baseball. It was school that he hated. I suppose that's why he ended up playing for us. He wouldn't have to go to school and he was good friends with all of us so he agreed to play. He may have told Mike and me he didn’t want to pitch, that he only wanted to play first base. I deduce this because if I had anything to do with it I would have had him pitch every other game. As it was, he only pitched in one game-- the deciding game in the 3-game championship series against the Tigers. Those games were to be played on three successive days at the end of the regular season.
The first game of the that series was rained out, which meant we had to play a double-header the next day. Here is the description of the double-header from the The Courier News of August 21, 1965.
In the first contest, the Hillsmen picked up a 4-2 decision behind the four-hit hurling of Doug Eaton and the hitting of Joe Ezro who drove in three runs with a first inning double and singled twice.
Butch Stiglemeyer evened the series with a four-hitter in the nightcap as the Tigers gained a 6-1 victory.
That was a complete surprise to me. I have no recollection at all of pitching that game or any game for the Hillsmen. In fact I had even forgotten it was a three game series. I only had a vague recollection of the final game.
Russ Harden suffered the loss in the second game. The final was scheduled for the following day. The question was, who would pitch for us? Pete Scott must have been out of town. Ronnie Peterson was in the line-up and was the top pitcher in Somerset County at WHRHs in 1963 and 1964 but was suffering from a sore arm. Harden and I were pitched out and only available in relief. In the end it was Joey Ezro, who had gone 4 for 7 in the split double-header the day before, who either volunteered for the job or agreed to do it when asked.
That Joey consented to pitch couldn't have been more fortuitous. We wanted to keep Ronnie at 2nd base, me at shortstop and the fleet Fred Ahlers in center to keep our defense strong up the middle. Glenn Rossi, a solid catcher like his cousin Frank, was behind the plate. No one had seen Joey pitch in over a year, but we knew he was in fairly good shape because he had been playing frequently for us. But was he in condition to pitch 7 innings against the team with the best record in the league?
Ronnie Peterson was our best all-around player. He was one of of the best athletes in the WHRHS class of ’64 if not the best. He was second in hitting in the Elk’s League at the end of the 1965 regular season with a .438 batting average. Although he only pitched occasionally in the two years we played together on the Hillsmen, he had a blistering fastball and a sharp-breaking curve ball as a pitcher. He could play solid defense at any infield position.
Ronnie was one of those older guys I worshipped as we grew up. His mother and my father had worked for the same newspaper at one point, so I had met him even before they moved to Watchung. She had divorced his father and married Merrill Morris who became a boating columnist for the Courier News. In researching our games I would occasionally come across a column of his. His mother's name was Norma, and we called her Norm.
In researching this subject I was saddened to learn that Ronnie died in 2017. He was still living in Watchung after all these years. Here is his obituary:
Ronald B. Peterson Watchung father and grandfather, standout in basketball and baseball in his youth, 'a passion for life'
Ronald Peterson, 70, passed away Feb. 10, 2017, at Overlook Medical Center in Summit, N.J. Ron grew up in Watchung, N.J., and lived there at the time of his passing. Prior to his retirement in 2006, Ron was a field manager with Exxon in Linden, N.J. Ron excelled in organized sports. He was best known for his agility and skill on the basketball court in school and municipal leagues, where he had many seasons as high scorer on champion-ship teams. He attended Watchung Hills Regional High School and graduated, with honors, from Valley Forge Military Academy, having received a basketball scholarship. He attended the University of Texas, El Paso. Baseball was also a passion. As a starting pitcher, also in school and municipal leagues, Ron earned several MVP awards and trophies for the most strike-outs. He was drafted into the farm system of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Yankees, where a serious arm injury prevented a career. A true Yankees fan, he was a regular at Yankee Stadium over the years, and more recently, never missed a game on television. He enjoyed coin collecting for many years and was a skilled and successful stock market analyst.
That doesn’t tell the whole story of Ronnie’s accomplishments. He was an All- Somerset County pitcher in 1963 and again in 1964 as a senior. In 1963 his record was 8-2. in 1964, he was 9-2. In one 7-inning game he struck out 12 and walked none. In 1963 he was listed at 5’-8” and weighed 145 lbs. I believe he was at least an inch taller than that in later years and probably weighed 10 lbs more, but was still diminutive for a pitcher. He was one of those who “could throw pills at you,” to quote the lingo of the time. And he was an excellent basketball player, one of the top scorers in his two varsity seasons at WHRHS. At Valley Forge, where he spent a fifth year of high school, in one game he scored 48 points.
For the Hillsmen, he played 2nd base except for when I pitched. Then he would play shortstop. On occasion he would pitch for us. He was two grades ahead of me in school (although only 16 months older). It was a pleasure to play with him.
We Hillsmen were a ragtag bunch. We frequently had trouble getting enough players to field a team. We had a solid starting nine when they all showed up, but there were at least nineteen players whose names appear in the box scores from that season. We would meet “down at Watchung Center”, a row of stores that lined the newly constructed traffic circle. It had a confectionary store, two gas stations, a delicatessen, a liquor store, the police station, the Fire Department, town offices, a library and a furniture store run by Harlan Pratt. The Center was at the confluence of two streams, Blue Brook and Green Brook (which turned into Stony Brook at the Center), and five roads: Somerset Street, Valley Road, Hillcrest Road, Stirling Road and Mountain Boulevard. At the east and west end of the circle were two lakes, Best Lake and Watchung Lake.
The Hillsmen would gather at Watchung Center hours before the game to make sure we had enough players. Several of the players had been sitting on the bridge there for years in their leisure time, which was abundant. Mike Lombardo was their de facto leader. Hanging out was a pastime for them when they were not playing the national pastime or misbehaving in some way. I had been known to mingle with them. Now many of us were on a team competing in the big city of Plainfield. We wanted to show the flatlanders who was boss. The Bridge Sitters as they were called were a fun bunch.
Gathering a full lineup of nine players was difficult on occasion. Players would go out of town or forget there was a game scheduled. And yet, I think we only forfeited for lack of players once each in 1964 and 1965. Some of the people who were drafted at the last minute to fill in had not played since Little League if at all. Others had only played in grade school or quit after their freshman year in high school. We didn’t have uniforms and on occasion we had to put someone in the lineup under an assumed name wearing street clothes and Bass Weejuns-- someone who thought he had come to the game as a spectator. And yet we had a good core team that was mostly dependable. That is why we won twice as many games as we lost.
If we didn’t have enough players we would get on the payphone at Watchung Center and start calling various prospects, even if they were not on the roster. Our uniforms consisted mostly of sweat pants or jeans and white t-shirts since we never figured out a way to get a sponsor to pay for t-shirts, much less uniforms. We probably could have gone to Bernie Dreier of Dreier's Sporting Goods for help, but never got around to it.
In 1965 the Hillsmen made it to the Elks League finals and on August 20th, we won the title. Joey pitched the final game of the series and we won 8 to 3 in seven innings. The column in the Courier News claims Joey needed “. . . relief help from Doug Eaton in the sixth inning.” I have no memory of that but according to the box score I pitched in relief, went 1 for 3 and scored three of our eight runs. Fred Ahlers, our centerfielder both at Watchung Hills and with the Hillsmen, drove in five runs and iced the game with a three run homer in the top of the 7th.
For sixty years I have frequently thought of Joey with a combination of affection and sadness. After graduation in 1966, which he could not attend because he stopped going to school, I remember seeing him only once in the summer of 1967 after my freshman year in college. My girlfriend from college, Betty Fowlkes had traveled from Nashville up to N. J. She was from an old Texas ranching family that had moved to Franklin, Tennessee. I was having a party at our house to introduce her to my Jersey friends. I remember Joey charmed Betty and that he was drinking a potent mixture of Southern Comfort with beer chasers. He loved her southern accent and teased her about it. I suspect she was the first southern belle he had ever met. He made a little joke about her being my Southern Comfort.
In doing this research, I learned that Joey had several run-ins with the law in the years I knew him. All of us got into a little trouble with the cops on occasion, but Joey was the high scorer in that game also.
From various local newspapers, I learned he had a record: on October 1, 1965 he was fined $20 in municipal court for throwing beer cans out of a car and $15 dollars for "following too close;" on December 30th, 1965 he was fined $30 for careless driving; on June 1st, 1967, he was fined $55 for "malicious injury to property" and given a 30-day suspended sentence; on May 24th, 1968 when he was still 20 years old and underage, he and two others were arrested for possession of alcohol.
On December 30th, 1968, eighteen months after I last saw him in the summer of '67, Joey died in a high speed car crash. One of his friends was driving drunk and hit a telephone pole. The car was a convertible. The front end of the car was crushed up against the passenger seat where Joey was sitting. The driver and another passenger survived. I learned from a mutual friend later that a portion of Joey's skull and brain were shorn off by the convertible top hardware attached to the top of the windshield. He was buried ten days later after I had returned to college. I grieved at his loss. I grieve him still because I'm sure he would matured into a fine person. He had a good heart and an abundance of charisma.
I had a lot of friends at WHRHS including several in the class ahead of us, but Joey and Frank Rossi were my closest friends from the class of ’66 and probably the best athletes in the class, although there were others in sports like Track and Field who did very well in the County and State championships of 1966 including Ray Siegrist in the 880, Ed Nicholas in the shotput and discus and Lou Falzarano in the high and low hurdles, Tony Maglione in the javelin and Paul Ernst in the high jump. Frank and I remained devoted to our sports (as did Irv Zander and Fred Ahlers) while Joey slowly withdrew from school and sports. I often wonder if he had played baseball in our senior year that it might have saved him. We had a state championship-caliber team. We didn’t win it, but I’m convinced we would have if Joey had pitched for us. We had two great underclassmen as pitchers that year in Bob Stapperfenne and Paul Parker, but Joey was bigger, stronger, better and more experienced than they were. We were high achievers, but i can't help but think on what could have been.
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