Mathews baseball remembers legendary coach
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For over 50 years, there wasn't a day that went by where baseball wasn't on the mind of Dan Kennedy.
The 1953 graduate of Vienna High School traveled all over Trumbull County coaching. While he also coached little league and in the Warren AA League, Kennedy never strayed too far from his roots in Vienna.
To say that Kennedy, who passed away in December at the age of 85, was dedicated to the game of baseball would be an understatement. Even in his later years, on Christmas mornings he wouldn't be opening things like gift cards or shirts.
Kennedy was opening gifts like radar guns, stretch bands and baseball training books. His love for the game came from the similarities between baseball and everyday living. It then grew and continued growing as the years came and he mentored the coming generations.
"He was like your perfect American," Mathews baseball coach Jared Terlecky said. "He loved his family, he loved his community and he loved baseball. One time I asked him, 'Dan, why do you like baseball so much?' He says, 'Baseball is a game of life. There's parallels between life and baseball. Sometimes you’re having a great day, it seems like the ball just bounces your way and everything happens like it’s supposed to, and then other days, it just seems like nothing will happen like it’s supposed to.
"It teaches you all those lessons about being patient, being confident, putting in the work, picking yourself up on a day that doesn’t go too good or not getting too high up when the day goes great because it’ll humble you all the same.'"
The dedication he showed came to the point in 1975 when he helped construct a new field behind Baker Elementary School, where the program still plays to this day. Back in 2010 the field was named in his honor for all he had done for Mathews baseball over the years.
Even after leaving the program to Terlecky, his then-assistant, now-coach, he couldn't stay away for long.
Kennedy was insistent on giving Terlecky a season to run the show, but as year two approached, that itch to get back in the dugout, which never really left, became too much to bear, as he rejoined the Mustangs as an assistant.
"He'd come to the games and I could see him just chomping at the bit to get back in the dugout, but he didn't, because he really wanted me to run the show," Terlecky said. "Then the next year, I asked him 'Well, you coming back? And he tells me, 'Thank goodness, I thought you’d never ask.' I said to him, 'If you’re in a wheelchair, we’ll wheel you in the dugout. We'll get you in here, buddy.'"
With the pair manning the dugout, no matter the odds, no matter who was in the opposing dugout, there was no doubt in Kennedy's mind that his team was going to win. That belief was infectious as the Mustangs racked up 130 wins with Kennedy as the head coach of the team and plenty more over the last decade as Terlecky's right hand man.
"He talked those kids into winning," Terlecky said. "He always thought we were going to win. That can be infectious too. You know that can really carry over to the kids. And we will certainly miss that."
It wasn’t just confidence though, it was positivity.
Matt Weymer, a 2005 Mathews graduate, described himself as a “glass half empty kind of guy”, but even he wasn’t immune to Kennedy's positivity.
“Coach Kennedy was relentlessly positive,” Weymer said. “There was never a game or a team that we weren’t going to beat. No matter how long the odds are, how grim it looked, or how bad you felt that you might have played, coach Kennedy was just one of those guys that could always make you want to come back the next day and made you feel like you were going to be even better than you’d ever had been before.”
His confidence came with superstition however. But only with certain things.
Jersey numbers are a common superstition, but not for Kennedy. While every player got to choose their own jersey number – even to the point where Kennedy would spend some seasons in a jersey multiple sizes too large – it was the little things that would cause superstition.
Sometimes, those little things weren't little in size though. In fact, sometimes it took a village to keep up with those superstitions.
"When I was in Little League, he was our coach in an all-star tournament over in Brookfield, and we came from behind by like 10 runs to win this game," Terlecky said. "He was like sitting there the whole game next to this big rock. This rock was this big old rock, I bet it weighed 50 pounds. Next thing you know, he called it our lucky rock. So he and the other coaches kept bringing it to all of our games in that tournament.
"I asked him a couple years ago and he's still got that rock. In the flower beds. I’d look at his flower bed and there were like eight different rocks from different teams where that was the lucky rock for that year that they used to bring to the games and stuff. So his wife’s flower bed had all these various rocks from different seasons and stuff like that. I think he even had a couple of rocks in the house too."
If something was going well, don't expect there to be a change anywhere. Even down to pencils in the scorebook. If things were working, nothing was allowed to change.
"One year, we bought new bases for the field, but I didn’t want to put them in like the first day because it was really muddy and I wanted to wait," Terlecky said. "We ended up playing real good and we ended up going on this winning streak, like 12 games. He wouldn’t let us change them and put these brand new bases in. The old ones are all chewed up, there’s like a piece coming off of the one, but he says 'No, we’re on a winning streak. We can’t change.'
"Whenever you were on a winning streak, you always had to keep doing everything exactly the same. You had to keep score with the same pencil on the book and in the score book had to write to keep the batting order the same and we had to do batting practice in the same order."
The jersey numbers never affected his superstitions because Kennedy's priority was the kids. Whatever he could do to help the kids, he'd do. If a player needed equipment, Kennedy would take care of it without a second thought.
Over the last couple years, Kennedy bought what is expected to be a truckload of granola bars as snacks for the kids. They could have as many as they wanted of course.
When thinking of ways to honor him, Terlecky found himself struggling. While he wanted to put something on the hats this season – Kennedy had hats from each season neatly lined up in order in his home – Terlecky could already hear the voice of his longtime friend saying "No."
After all, that money could be spent elsewhere.
"I can hear him now saying, 'You should have spent that money on something else. We could have had another bat for the team,'" Terlecky said. "He always wanted that money spent on the team. We'd do a fundraiser, buy the kids equipment stuff and with what was left he'd say 'Let’s go get the kids, a couple pizzas.' Or after games we'd get them ice cream.
"Everything he had, he wanted to give to those kids, he loved them. And those kids loved him back."
While he may not be in the dugout physically this year, the legacy Kennedy has left behind is going to be felt in the Mustang program for years to come. Whether it be through stories of years past, or a granola bar in the dugout, the impact left on Vienna isn't going away for a long time.
“Vienna is a small community,” Weymer said. “You grew up playing against kids, and then you eventually became teammates when you got to high school. It was the great thing about growing up in a small community. Dan was the guy that was always around. Whether he was the high school coach or not. He was always at games. He coached one little league team, but then when the All-Stars got together, Dan was there and then we went and played Pony, Dan was there.
“When he wasn’t coaching the high school team, he was still there because he had relatives or he just wanted to be around the game. He was just this omnipresent person and Never, never in a forceful way, you know, just always with this idea of ‘I’m here to help.’ ... He loved that community, he loved baseball, and it’s just a really unique thing. It’s a small knit community and if you don’t live there, you probably have no idea who Dan Kennedy is, but if you live there, you know who he is.”
byauger@tribtoday.com