NEWS

Photo and Story by Paul Ofria

 

Chris Strahowski was going to pitch in the summer of 1994, that much he knew. 

 

The Central Connecticut State University junior was a year removed from Tommy John surgery, had an offer from Bourne Braves of the Cape Cod League and knew there would be plenty of twilight league innings available. 

 

But there was a new game in town. 

 

The New England Collegiate Baseball League was in the embryotic stage and had yet to play an actual game, but Strahowski sensed something good in the making. The league’s inaugural season offered a franchise in his hometown of Bristol, Connecticut, which helped make the decision an easy one.

 

“I could have been the 12th guy on a Cape team, or be here and be more of an impact type of player,” said Strahowski, who was a member of the team that represented Bristol at the 1984 Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA.

 

Strahowski made an immediate impact in the infant league and was able to unleash his breaking pitches for the first time since former Boston Red Sox surgeon Dr. Arthur Pappas gave his left arm new life. The 6’1” port sider was 1/3 of an inning shy of claiming the league’s first ERA title and was the winning pitcher in both of Bristol victories in the championship series.

 

“I mostly relieved,” Strahowski said on a gray November day behind his desk at Howell-Cheney Technical School in Manchester, CT, where he teaches math. “I was a bridge guy for a little while and closed at the end of the season.”

 

Strahowski threw 39.2 innings (40 was the qualifier) for Bristol that summer, which was unusually high for a back-end of the bullpen staffer. 

 

“If I would come into a game to close, it was only a nine or ten man staff, so I might have to come into a one-run game in the eighth or the seventh and roll it out, two, change,” Strahowski explained.

 

Numbers-wise, Straw, as he is known throughout the baseball underground, was coming off his least impressive season at Central in the spring of ’94. He threw fastballs and changeups exclusively as part of his rehab program and took his share of lumps. He needed the summer to work on his curve and trademark slider, which he can still drop on your shoe top on a minute’s notice.

 

“I needed it because my junior year was my first full season after my TJ surgery,” Strahowski said of his NECBL summer with the Bristol Nighthawks. “I was a curveball, slider guy and they didn’t want me to throw any breaking stuff that first season. Going to the summer, that’s when I finally got cleared to throw breaking stuff, so I went to Bristol to throw all four pitches.”

 

Strahowski left CCSU in 1995 ranked in the top-10 all-time in strikeouts, complete games and appearances and finished in the top-10 for single-season strikeouts twice. He went on to pitch five seasons of Independent ball (Adirondak, Elmira, Waterbury, Evansville, Newburgh and Albany) and spent the winter of 1996-97, pitching for Indios De Cartegna in the Colombian Professional League.

 

The NECBL called again in 1999 just as Strahowski’s pro career was winding down and he returned to the league as a coach with the Middletown Giants. 

 

“I was able to apply for the pitching coach job with Leo Veleas from Berlin who has a zillion wins,” Strahowski said. “Great guy, great coach. And it was a great situation for me to make that step into the college game where at first; I was only 26, 27 and just finishing my professional career at the time. Leo was a minor league ball player himself and kind of knew what I was going through and guided me into the coaching aspect.”

 

Strahowski was able to parlay his NECBL experience as a player and coach into the head coaching job at Manchester Community College, where his teams won four consecutive Region 21 (New England) Championships (2008-11), followed by four trips to the National Junior College Division III World Series. Manchester CC dropped the baseball program for budgetary reasons on July 13, 2011.

Unless the school brings the program back, Strahowski’s school record 215 coaching victories will not be broken.

 

The Middletown Giants won its third of three consecutive NECBL championships 1999 in Strahowski’s first of four seasons with Veleas, and Strahowski had the unusual experience of celebrating two championships in the same month when he was called away for one last go-around in the pro ranks.

 

 “I was released out of camp (spring of ’99) and got a call from Albany, ‘Can you be here tomorrow?’ um, yes, sure,” Strahowski recalled. “It was great because we won the NECBL championship that year, but then we won our professional championship (Albany-Colonie Diamond Dogs/Northern League), so in my last season I got to be part of a professional championship too.”

Strahowski looks back fondly at his year in the NECBL as a player and was struck by its growth during the five seasons he was away from it pitching professionally.

 

“The League changed quite a bit,” Strahowski said when asked to compare the inaugural season to his four seasons in Middletown. “They had gotten up to Keene, up to Concord, up to Torrington…lost Bristol, lost Fairfield. You either needed to have a legitimate college stadium with lights or a professional stadium in order to have a team.

 

“It got the guys more of a feel of what professional baseball was going to be like. Because of budgetary reasons we weren’t able to stay over – it wasn’t three game sets against anybody, but it got them used to what a three hour bus ride is. Roll off and play that night. That’s what the minor leagues are.”

 

Strahowski credits his time with Veleas in Middletown as vital to his development as a coach at the college level. The Giants made the playoffs in each of Straw’s four seasons with the franchise and he was fortunate to work with staffs that included Major Leaguers Craig Breslow and Jesse Carlson, along with former UConn star and Red Sox farmhand Mike James.

 

“That experience helped with getting part of the program off the ground,” said Strahowski of the nationally recognized junior college program he built in Manchester over 12 seasons. “Being in the dugout playing and being in the dugout with Leo coaching kind of tied both ends together - how to go about the game stuff. With college coaching you had the extra stuff where it was kind of trial by fire with recruiting and with building relationships with the high school coaches. That part took a long time.”

 

The Giants were sold and moved to Holyoke, MA in 2004, a year after the league accomplished its dream of having franchises in all six New England states. The Nighthawks franchise went dormant after the 1995 season and was resurrected in Mystic in 2010.

 

“We just had good, solid kids,” Strahowski said of the Veleas era Giants. “Good character kids. I don’t know how much of it was pure chance. Sometimes in summer ball you get kids who might not want to be there or they’re homesick. (Former Giants owner) Buzzy (Levin) did a really good job having the majority of the team be local, interspersed with a couple of kids who might have needed host families. He did a really good job putting the teams together.”

 

The NECBL had wide eyes in the early years. The New England portion of the moniker could have been viewed as presumptuous since all five original franchises were based in Connecticut. 

 

“I don’ think they envisioned in ‘94 the big thing it is now, spanning all of New England with a dozen teams,” reflected Strahowski. “But I think they had a pretty good vision in place.”

 

Paul Ofria is the Sports Information Director at Manchester Community College and was a staff writer with the Manchester Silkworms for all of ten of its NECBL seasons (2000-2009).