Coach's day

Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance. ~Ruth E. Renkel

REVERE, Mass.— A handful of former Revere High School baseball players gathered at Tony Conigliaro Field behind the school. Strong sea breezes whipped around the chilly park as temperatures hovered in the low 60s.

Gray-haired players shook hands and soon stories about the late coach Albert Blasi were being traded like valuable baseball cards. Round after round of one-upmanshipabout my dad’s life dominated the conversations as venerable players desperately tried to reel off buried memories of a man who coached the Revere Patriots for 42 years.

Those hidden recollections were buried by the weight of time, but surfaced during Al Blasi Day on a windy Monday afternoon.

Revere High School paid tribute to a man who loved the game and all his players. I am grateful to the school and the people who attended the event.

It is hard looking at the baseline in front of a bench. It doesn’t take much to remember my father, dressed in baggy blue pants and a rumpled blue jacket with Revere stamped on it, pacing up and down with a score book in his hand.

They raised the flag with my dad’s name on it next to the Stars and Stripes. I don’t how my dad would feel about all the hoopla or seeing a flag waving in the breeze with the name,”Blasi” on it. An honor guard saluted as a recording of the national anthem played behind the backstop.

And on that day, the clouds gave way as the sun made a splendid entrance and lit up the field with young athletes who never knew my dad.

But that’s OK with me because change is inevitable as we all fade from the picture.

Just seeing that flag wave in the breeze took the chill out of the air and made me feel proud of my father.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Thank you all for coming. I won’t take the long way around barn and my dad always made it point to get to the point — except when it came to sports.

So please permit me to speak for a few moments.

REVERE, MASS. — Despite a lifetime of passion for America’s pastime, Albert John Blasi believed baseball was more than a game played with a bat and a hard ball.

He saw the sport as way to mold and inspire young men, bring people together and instill pride and devotion in his community.

His values and sense of the greater good were forged by his strong Italian heritage and a community that always had his back. He carried his reverence for humanity whenever he stepped onto the baseball diamond or in a classroom, and his moral compass served him well while he was stationed in Germany with the Big Red One in the1950s.

Now, I know everybody has an Al Blasi moment, and whenever I hear a well-told yarn about my dad from his former players, I perk up with pride.

After all, he coached for 42 years without being run of town. I have to believe his long tenure is due to a supportive community and administration, and I can’t thank this city and residents enough for their support.

I could spend 24 hours regaling all of you with stories about Coach. Every story is priceless. But I won’t do that so breath easy.

Those stories about a teacher and a coach will be retold for decades by the young men and students he met in school or on a baseball field. But today is about a community that comes together to honor a man who shared so much of himself with his students and players who have gone on to do great things.

I can’t imagine the countless lives my dad touched during his tenure as a coach and teacher. He loved the diamond just as he loved being in the classroom. There are several shoe boxes full of black-and-whites of his players still sitting in his closet.

I see many familiar faces here today. You know, whenever a student would shout “Coach” or “Mr. Blasi” from a passing car, a proud smile always filled my father’s face. He loved being remembered by his students and players. Seeing a familiar face never got old for him.

If you really knew Al Blasi, you had to realize my dad didn’t just live for the game. He also lived for his players. He connected with his players just like a batter connects with the ball with a swing of a hardwood bat.

When he asked me to be the bat boy for the team, it was an opportunity of a lifetime to spend those moments in the bright son with my father at wind-blow Curtis Park. Those memories of coach are resurrected every spring whenever I cover a game and watch those young coaches pace up and down the baseline.

When an editor friend of mine heard I was going fishing with my son, Anthony, at one Maine’s numerous lake, he took me aside and told me this: “You know, fishing isn’t always about fishing. It is about the time you spend with your son waiting to reel in the big one.”

My father realized long ago that baseball wasn’t just about baseball. To him, the game was about his players and the community he loved so dearly.

Thank you Revere, players, supportive parents and administration for honoring my father. The Blasi family is grateful for this remarkable tribute.

Essential personnel

"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." 

~Mignon McLaughlin

Dear Terri,

Happy Mother's Day!

I am fortunate that you remain by my side. We have lost so many people the last few impossible years, and we will never get them back.

Anyway, you know I love you, and thanks for seeing me through the darkest moments in my life. Remember, I would stand up for you until I dropped.

You are a special person who has experienced her own journey into the abyss, but I think we found a way out of that deep, awful hole together despite those tumultuous periods in our lives. We have turned out to be wonderful parents who created this extraordinary son.

I am grateful to you for keeping me from falling into this muddy pond of grief. There has been a lot of sorrow the past two years.

Mother's Day will now serve as a day of remembrance for our mothers who both passed away last year. But I will also look upon this special day as a way to honor a special person and remarkable mother.

I am still baffled at how you put up with me. Living with me is like being on board a runaway freight train barreling down the tracks without a conductor. And yet, you found a way to tolerate a man whose passion for life can be quite overwhelming.

I am also impressed with your courage for undergoing life-saving back surgery last year, knowing all along that nothing is guaranteed when you face the surgeon's knife. Those four months, which were filled with uncertainty, foreboding and sadness, put an enormous strain on both of us. Thanks to our steel anchor — Anthony — we discovered a way out of that maze of sorrow and apprehension.

After 21 years of marriage, I think we both have come to appreciate and truly understand the phrase: "for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health."

Happy Mother's Day, Terri. And thanks for making my life richer and more exciting. I appreciate it.

Your husband Tony

Snow kidding - school's out

AUBURN, Maine — Kids who live in a cold-weather states, where a Nor'easter can shut down dozens of communities and send working parents into a frenzy, know all about the benefits of a treasured Snow Day.

Snow Days are unofficial holidays that interrupt the hectic pace of trudging to school and passing in homework that students didn't complete the night before because their dog ate their textbook, the cat feasted on their gerbil and made them so distraught that they couldn't concentrate on algebra, or they got lost in an in-depth conversation about Justin Bieber's hair on Facebook. Snow Days are free get-out-of-school cards that come and go during Maine's harsh winters. Snow Days are cherished by all red-blooded kids who often call up on Mother Nature to deliver them from the clutches of a demanding teacher.

Snow Days give kids a reason to put those pathetic video games away — for a moment — and actually go outside and breath real air. Sure, it's cold out there, but hours of watching television and YouTube turns brains into slush. Racing down a snow-covered hill on skis, a snowboard or a sled at 90 miles per hour is more exhilarating than texting friends to complain about taking out the garbage, shoveling or listening to their parents warning them to clean up their rooms that resemble the inside of a Porta Potties — or they won't be allowed to watch a mind-numbing reality show featuring stupid people doing stupid things to themselves.

Up here in the hinterlands of nowhere, children put themselves on full alert whenever the weatherman mentions snow. Maine kids don't want to hear about snow measured in inches; they want feet of the white stuff, and they want it during the week. Weekend snowstorms take all the fun out of a blizzard and are looked upon as an annoyance by stressed students who are looking for a way out of class — unless you are a skier who eats and sleeps snow and enjoys being up on the mountain in white-out conditions.

For kids from the Boston area, a Snow Day meant open season on MBTA buses or snowball fights that left welts on their skin from a kid who had the arm of a Major League Baseball pitcher and delivered these icy-projectiles at the speed of sound. Rugged kids would manufacture and stockpile snowballs at a blizzard's pace. They would hide behind bushes waiting to ambush an unsuspecting bus transporting worn-out workers. The kids took cover and waited for the perfect moment to strike. A dozen thuds were heard when they peppered the bus with a massive strike of snowballs as stunned and angry passengers shook their fists behind frosty windows — or offered a middle finger to demonstrate their displeasure after we bushwhacked the bus. The kids laughed and congratulated themselves on their marksmanship. The bus driver gave us all dirty looks as he waved his finger and mouthed an obscenity during his inaudible admonition behind the bus's folding doors. When police cruisers started circling the block to round up the usual suspects, we reluctantly moved on to more exciting pursuits like building intricate snow forts or shoveling out the next neighbor for a few bucks  and head to the nearest five-and-dime store to spend our riches — on junk.

For my son and me, white powder means skiing, sledding and throwing snowballs at targets of opportunity. A wave of snowballs slamming into our picture window often draws the ire of my surprised wife. We have the privilege of spending an entire day with a son who enjoys frolicking in the Great Outdoors and still takes great pleasure in pelting his dad with snowballs. A Snow Day means Noah, our next-door neighbor, will knock on the door with his saucer in tow, hoping to use the small hill in our backyard to do some serious coasting and snowboarding before he gets bored and helps me shovel the driveway.

Snow Days are respites for teachers, who also look to Mother Nature to cut them some slack and give them a break from their students. That's why all Snow Days are heralded by adults and children who believe in the rejuvenating powers of these miracle snowstorms — and a day off from the classroom.

Back in the day

If you get lucky, Snow Days can turn into Snow Weeks. It happened nearly 32 years ago when Boston took it on a chin during the Blizzard of '78 on Feb. 6 — a day that will live in infamy for snow-struck Bostonians. This monster storm parked itself off the coast of Massachusetts for 36 hours and delivered about three feet of snow in just over a day, shutting down the Hub and surrounding communities.

That morning forecasters were predicting six to 12 inches as the storm closed in on helpless New England. But something strange was happening when forecasters started upping their snow totals throughout that quiet and cloudy day. I sat in my cellar as whiteout conditions appeared and listened to alarmed weathermen predicting 12 to 18 inches, then 24 to 30 inches. Neighbors stared at each other from their widows and watched as several homes disappeared in snow drifts on my street.

For students at Revere High, it was another Christmas vacation delivered by Old Man Winter. It was the gift that kept on giving for RHS seniors that snowy February. Driving was forbidden and neighbors were forced to help each other as panicked residents made food run after food run, fearing the end of the world was at hand.

The high school was used a Red Cross shelter for beach residents who were forced to evacuate when the abnormally high tides flooded beaches up and down the Massachusetts coastline. The city was patrolled my Massachusetts National guardsmen who carried M-16s to thwart lowlifes who were pillaging abandoned homes near the inundated beach. A tank rolled through streets buried in 15-foot snowdrifts as military helicopters delivering supplies were landing in the middle of Revere.

It was mayhem on a grand scale, but all of us enjoyed every minute of our impromptu and snow-filled vacation. It was white gold and all of us struck it rich when school was called off for days and days.

It was the ultimate Snow Day for students who witnessed a once-in-a-lifetime snow event in New England.