Alive in Memory

With runners on first and third and two outs in the 10th inning of a tied game, senior infielder Rob Wineski stepped to the plate with the chance to earn a win in Harvard’s first baseball game of the year.

Wineski quickly fell behind in the count, 0-2, and it looked as if the game might be headed to an 11th inning.

But when the co-captain slapped the next offering up the middle for a base hit, and sophomore outfielder Brandon Kregel scampered home from third, the Crimson opened its 2013 season with a victory over Bucknell in Charlottesville, Va.

Players bolted out of the Harvard dugout and mobbed Wineski, jumping up and down in pure joy. But, the scene was imperfect.

Absent was the man wearing No. 2 who had been present for moments like this for the last 17 years. His joyful personality, deep affection for others, and on the field presence were missing.

DREAM JOB

Since the unexpected death of coach Joe Walsh on July 31, something has been different about the Harvard baseball program. For years, whenever one thought of Harvard baseball, Walsh was the first thing to come to mind.

The head coach of the Crimson since 1996, Walsh was a fixture at games and practices for 17 years.

He could be found at camps for prospective players and clinics for elementary school kids.

If it had to do with Harvard baseball, you could count on Walsh being there.

“[The job] was everything to him,” says former Harvard recruiting coordinator Tom Lo Ricco, who worked alongside Walsh for eight years. “He absolutely loved it. He put his whole life into the job. Many times he was there late at night and slept in the office. It was just a big part of him.”

Wineski recalls a memory of Walsh after a tough weekend loss to Columbia. As Wineski was walking past O’Donnell Field three or four hours after the game, he saw Walsh still sitting in the dugout in silence.

“It was just his life,” Wineski says. “He lived and died every day on the baseball field. He had so much pride for that program…. I can’t begin to describe how much he loved baseball and how much he loved Harvard.”

Indeed, it seemed that Walsh was destined to end up as Harvard’s coach.

Born in West Roxbury, Mass., Walsh grew up in Boston and spent his entire life in the area. He attended Suffolk University after high school and played baseball for the Rams.

Just four years after his senior season at Suffolk, Walsh became the head coach at the university and collected 218 wins in 15 years at the helm before learning of an opening at Harvard.

In order to demonstrate his eagerness to be hired, Walsh woke up before sunrise, drove to Cambridge, and waited in the athletic complex for then-Harvard Athletic Director Bill Cleary to arrive.

In the early hours of the morning, Walsh did not just tell Cleary that he wanted the job—he showed him, firsthand, his passion and commitment.

“I think I’d say that it was his dream job,” says Kurt Svoboda, a close friend of Walsh and the former Assistant Director of Athletics for Communications at Harvard. “He was a Boston guy. He grew up there, he worked in the city for a number of years at Suffolk in a similar position. And the job came open, and I think for him to coach baseball at the highest level of Division I and to do it in his home city was frankly a dream of his.”

After being hired, Walsh attained considerable success at Harvard. In his 17 years of coaching Ivy League baseball, he racked up 347 wins for the Crimson.

Walsh amassed victories at multiple NCAA regional tournaments, and his Crimson squad bested schools such as UCLA, Tulane, and the University of Miami. In 1998, Walsh led Harvard to a record-breaking season, finishing with a 36-12 record and a No. 24 national ranking.

Twice named the Northeast Region Division I Coach of the Year, Walsh was inducted into the Suffolk Athletic Hall of Fame in 2009.

But, those who knew Walsh would ultimately remember him because of the person he was, how he lived his life, and what he stood for.

“The effect that he had on a broader base within the Harvard community, I think, was remarkable,” Svoboda says. “The wins and the losses, they come and go, but I really think some of the lessons he spoke of and provided to his players and the community are really what people take with them and will continue to remember.”

AN AUTHENTIC PERSONALITY

Those who knew Walsh remember the jovial, outgoing, and contagious personality that he carried with him.

“It’s tough to define someone you feel like you knew your whole life and who you could just tell stories [about] for hours,” former captain Andrew Ferreira says. “He’s someone you could really connect with and feel wanted in a program like Harvard.”

An avid conversationalist, Walsh was always eager to talk, both to hear what other people had to say and to share his own experiences.

“He always had a story,” Wineski says. “You could bring anything to him, and he would have some, you know, ‘When I was…back in my day.’ You got that thick Boston accent, and you could never stop smiling when you talked to Coach Walsh.”

Walsh was known for his classic Boston accent and his upbeat, animated mannerisms. When he got worked up about something, he became jumpy and exaggerated his gestures even further. As Svoboda puts it, this was Walsh “flying off the handle.”

Not afraid to be honest and tell people what he really thought, Walsh was a willing dispenser of experience and knowledge he had accumulated during his lifetime.

Often, these lessons revolved around the values he held dear and embodied in his daily life: working hard, appreciating others, and enjoying the present.

“[Walsh would say], ‘There’s plenty of time to be sitting in a concrete cave with your tie perfectly done up right to the top of your belt, prim and proper, making money. But this is baseball, this is what you’re here for, and just enjoy that moment.’” Svoboda recalls. “And it always put a huge smile on your face, because it’s absolutely right. We all have our own issues going on in our day-to-day lives, but when you’re here, appreciate that you can be playing baseball with people who you’re going to be lifelong friends with.”

RELATIONSHIPS ARE WHAT TRULY MATTER

Part of what made Walsh unique and charming to many was his appreciation for people—not texts, emails, or phone conversations on his flip cell—but everyday talks with real people.

These interactions held true meaning for Walsh, provided him with genuine enjoyment, and brightened the day of anyone he interacted with.

“To me, the one thing that always sticks out most is, whenever anyone ever came up to him and said, ‘Hey, Joe, how are you?’ he would say, ‘I’m fine, but more importantly, how are you,’” Lo Ricco says. “That’s the one thing he always said. I think he always valued other people more than himself…. He was the definition of a people’s person.”

One of Lo Ricco’s favorite stories about Walsh started with a normal day at the office. Walsh received a phone call that turned out to be a wrong number. At this point, any other person might have hung up and moved on with their day.

But Walsh spent the next five minutes attempting to help the caller and put him in touch with the right person.

Svoboda recalls a number of times when Walsh asked about him and his family. Walsh’s curiosity was not just our of politeness but was rooted in a legitimate interest in the lives of others.

“He took a remarkable interest in my family and my son,” Svoboda says. “It wasn’t just, ‘Hey, how’s the little guy doing?’ He genuinely cared about people.”

Walsh loved people more than anything else. Those who met him would experience the genuine care for others.

“All along, we thought that baseball was the love of his life, but it was really his family, his wife and his four daughters,” says Morgan Brown ’06, who served as a player and an assistant coach within the baseball program. “They meant the world to him, and he was extraordinarily proud of them…. But you would have thought that you were a part of his family, as a player or a coach. He was that sort of person.”

The reverberations of Walsh’s outgoing nature were widespread. Over the course of his life, Walsh had a tangible impact on many people, who both loved his personality and appreciated his fundamental desire to be around people.

Perhaps the place that demonstrated Walsh’s influence was his funeral.

“I’ll never forget driving from the funeral to the burial,” Svoboda says. “It completely shut down Route 93 South. I remember looking back…at just a single line of cars on the highway as far as the eye could see, in front of me, going off the exit, and then behind me into Boston. It really hit me, the impact that he had on people.”

A PLAYER’S COACH

Although his personality extended to influence people who had nothing to do with his job, the group that experienced a more significant impact was the Harvard baseball team itself.

Walsh’s players were around him for a great deal of time in the spring season, and they came to view him as a role model.

“He was always there for you, no matter what,” Wineski says. “He gave me some of the best advice I’ve ever gotten in my life, and you kind of looked up to him as a father figure when you were here at school.”

Brown came to Harvard from a small high school in New Hampshire. Imbued with a love for baseball, Brown tried out for the squad and made it.

In his own words, Brown was the 26th man on a 26-player roster. But Walsh saw something special in the freshman. Brown entered Harvard thinking he might be lucky to play club baseball, but he became a three-year starter at shortstop, a captain, and an All-American.

Brown returned to Harvard and has served as a volunteer assistant coach for the past two years.

“I had an extraordinarily rewarding experience that I otherwise wouldn’t have had if he hadn’t given me a chance,” Brown says. “He supported me the whole time.”

Often, people decide to attend Harvard because of its renowned academics and its vibrant, diverse community. But one of the main aspects that drew baseball players to the school over the past 17 years was the presence of Walsh himself.

“The first time I met Coach Walsh, I wanted to go to Harvard,” Ferreira says. “He pitched me on Harvard, and he didn’t do it intentionally, but he sold me on him. I just fell in love with the man right away. He was just so engaging.”

Ferreira, who currently plays within the Minnesota Twins organization, remembers how his coach instilled in him a passion for baseball.

“He just had an authentic love for the game that he taught his players,” Ferreira says. “The Ivy League has a stigma in professional baseball that the guys play for one or two years, then they’re going to quit and go work on Wall Street. But all the Harvard guys I know in professional baseball now, they all love the game, and I think that’s something Coach Walsh fostered in each of us.”

To outsiders looking in, Walsh and Harvard baseball were one—Walsh was not just the head coach but the heart and soul of the program as well. Walsh made a concerted effort to ensure that his prospective players embodied the values he stood for.

The players Walsh recruited shared certain traits: a passion for the game and a strong character. For Walsh, the deciding factor for a recruit was often whether or not the player sent him a handwritten note, as opposed to a strict evaluation of his high school stats.

One of the fields on the questionnaire that all recruits filled out was the employment information of his parents. Not satisfied with a perfunctory profile, Walsh also wanted to understand the circumstances in which his player had been raised to achieve a better appreciation of the player’s makeup.

“He recruited a certain type of guy, and that guy loved baseball, was a baseball purist, and brought that same passion everywhere in life,” co-captain and pitcher Jordan Haviland says. “Once you were one of his guys, you were one of his guys for life. He looked out for you in every way he could.”

A NEW ERA, BUT THE OLD LIVES ON

This season, for the first time in 17 years, what seemed to be a fixture in the Harvard baseball program is no longer so. Coach Walsh cannot be found in the dugout.

But the influence of No. 2 lives on with the Crimson and is even felt by the freshmen.

“Coach Walsh is still around in everyone’s hearts and everyone’s minds,” freshman catcher DJ Link says. “He’s still there, and that’s how it’s going to be for a long time to come. I think the fact that so many people were affected speaks to him as a person and shows how much of an impact he had on so many people’s lives.”

Freshmen make up a large portion of this year’s roster, and though they did not know Walsh as well as the rest of the team, older players are making sure they understand that Walsh is still a part of the squad.

“Every once in a while, someone will do their Coach Walsh impersonation with the accent or some of the sayings that he had,” freshman pitcher Sean Poppen says. “The passion is still there; that passion is still on the team. It’s just coming from a different source now.”

Coach Bill Decker, who previously coached at Trinity College, has assumed the helm of the program.

“There is a strong tradition of baseball at this university, and that’s very important to me,” Decker says. “In Joe’s 17 years, Joe was a big part of that history…. We certainly wanted to honor the feelings of not only the current but also the former players in terms of their relationships with Joe and what he stood for and what he brought to the program.”

Indeed, Walsh’s values are central to the team’s conception of its identity. His energetic and compassionate character—what other people will remember most—have not, and likely will not, die out.

“Something Coach Walsh used to always say is he wanted us to play like bulldogs, which is play tough, play with intensity, and play with passion,” Haviland says. “And that’s something that’s still thrown around the team, is go out there and be a bulldog, just like Coach Walsh wanted us.”

***

There is no denying that something was missing on that first day of March, the day when Harvard played its first game of the year and notched its first win.

It seems fitting that it was Wineski, someone who shared his first three years of college with Walsh, who came up with the game-winning hit—a scrappy, two-strike chopper back up the middle—just how Walsh liked it best.

For some of the players, the game seemed to usher in new era for the program—an era laced with elements of the old as well as the new.

“It was definitely a little emotional for us seniors,” pitcher Matt Doyle says. “It was the first time No. 2 wasn’t in the third base box…. After the game, we grabbed the game ball and gave it to Coach Decker and we go, ‘This is the first of many.’ Just knowing with the 2 on our jerseys that we’re not forgetting about what happened in the past, but we’re ready to move forward with the next 20 years of Harvard baseball.”

It may be a new season, there may be a new coach, and there may be new players on the roster. But one constant that will likely never leave the team is the influence of Joe Walsh.

—Staff writer David Steinbach can be reached at dsteinbach@college.harvard.edu.