2016 Red Sox Top Dodgers to Capture 45+ Division in Utah Adult Baseball League
Utah Adult Baseball League 45+ Division
Utah Red Sox 16, Hoelscher Dodgers 7
Top Row L-R: John Misrasi, Bill Naylor, Ted Billick, Eric Ladd, Jason Strong, Andy Campbell. Bottom Row L-R: Keith Hess, Dave McCuistion, Gared Marvell, Matt Wood, Brett Blackburn, Joe Dailey, Danny Slagowski
‘Season Dedicated to Fallen Teammate Pete Cooley’
Submitted by David McCuistion, Red Sox manager
The 2016 Utah Red Sox completed a five year quest to win a championship in a tough, competitive 45+ division of the Utah Adult Baseball League winning the Spring Championship 16-7 against the Hoelscher Dodgers. We had to beat an MSBL pitching legend Danny Pawelek to take the one game Championship. At the start of the year, with my Assistant Coach Brett Blackburn, we took a great core team and added five extremely versatile players with lots of speed, moving away somewhat from the slow moving slugger towards the fast moving slugger!
As a result we were never without great up the middle defense (or at almost any position) in
any game no matter who was missing and wound up stealing 50 more bases than any other team during the season. In the Fall we won a brutal Semi-Final against the Salt Lake Buzzards but lost the Championship Series against the Jameson Pirates. We had great pitching (and hitting) from Gared Marvell, Jason Strong, and Dave McCuistion. We then added great defense, run scoring and stolen bases from Brett Blackburn, Joe Dailey, and Andy Campbell, and great slugging and defense from Danny Slagowski, Bill Naylor, John Misrasi and Ted Billick.
We had an unfortunate tragedy in May as we lost a beloved teammate, Pete Cooley, who passed away at his home. Although Pete was our oldest player at 57, he was still one of our best hitters, swinging a 34 inch, 38 ounce bat! An iconic member of his Cicero (New York) High School team, Pete played MSBL in Cleveland and Seattle before joining us in Salt Lake. For the last four years of his life, Pete organized a reunion game for his High School teammates and MSBL friends from all over at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown and played the 55+ “Albany MSBL All-Stars”, a tradition that continues forward in his name by those of us who were lucky enough to have been with him there.