Chasing A Dream

Recently, I have been reading plenty of books about people in baseball seeking their dream to become players, managers, coaches, umpires or broadcasters and the sacrifices and gambles they took to make it happen. They could be knocked down, but they kept bouncing back because they wouldn’t give up even though some thought they were out of their minds in seeking their goal.

We have an example right here in Jamestown with Anthony Barone. He took a big gamble to try to advance his baseball career and while others might have doubted him, he never doubted himself. And the result was he learned you can go home again.

Barone, a Jamestown High School graduate, continued his baseball playing career at Jamestown Community College, where he played shortstop and became one of the best Jayhawks ever. That is why he was included in the college’s Top 50 Athlete’s list announced in 2000. After playing for JCC and for Felician College, a Division II college in New Jersey, Barone became the Jayhawks head coach from 2007 to 2012. While recording 207 wins, the Jayhawks qualified for five straight NJCAA Region 3 Division III Tournaments and Barone was named Coach of the Year in 2008. But in August of 2012, he felt it was time to move on.

“It was more or less I did what I could do with that program,” he said. “I put every ounce of sweat into my job at JCC and I thought I got pretty good results while I was there and I felt like I needed a change. And I wasn’t going to leave the job for just any job. I wanted to make sure it was the right decision I took.”

He began searching online and found there was an opening for a coaching job at NCAA Division I California State Bakersfield. He was interested, but it would involve moving 2,500 miles from home and leaving his wife and three children.

It sounds crazy, but did Barone have any doubts about doing it?

“Not really,” he said. “I had all the backing from my family. Everybody was really supportive, wanted to see me move on in my career and do something to help me move to a higher level in baseball in coaching. To be honest with you, there might have been one or two people who said, “Wow, what are you doing to leave New York and go all the way to California? But it was a no-brainer for my future.”

He contacted Cal State Bakersfield coach Bill Kernen and got the ball rolling.

“He’s a legend on the West Coast,” Barone said. “He’s one of the classiest guys I’ve ever met, not only in baseball, but off the field as well.”

Things began to move very quickly.

“He responded to my email,” Barone said. “Usually big-time coaches, they skim through it, but this was much different. He responded in less than an hour and he asked how serious I was about going out to California and making the move.”

Of course, Barone was very serious.

“He looked over my resume and obviously he liked it and he said, “I want to set up a phone interview tomorrow,” Barone said. “I had a pretty extensive phone interview, over an hour, and at the end of the conversation he said I’m going to give you 24 hours to decide what you want to do.”

It wasn’t difficult for Barone to decide what to do.
“I talked it over with my family and I decided I wanted to take the job,” he said. “I had to report to California by Sept. 1. I had three weeks to find a place and move out there.”

Suddenly, Barone was in a whole new world of baseball.

“Coaching Division I baseball on the West Coach is an honor,” he said.

And there was an interesting twist that helped him land in that West Coast world.

After coaching at Cal State Northridge years before, in the fall of 1995, Kernen stepped away from baseball and enrolled in the prestigious dramatic writing graduate program at Columbia University.

“It was my New York connection as well,” Barone said. “Coach Kernen took a unique path to Cal State Bakersfield. The he just quit baseball to write plays at Columbia University. He got out of the game for eight years and just wrote plays. He loved New York City and he loved the East Coast. That sort of drew him to my resume. He always told me he liked the way East Coast people went about their business. East Coast people are tough minded and really know how to work. He said that’s what stuck out.”

Barone was named the assistant baseball coach and worked mainly with outfielders and hitting. Meanwhile, he was 2,500 miles from home.

“It was tough,” he said. “I came home at Christmas time for about a month and that was it. It was very difficult being away from my family. But every day I looked at it as, it was to better my family’s future.”

But from a baseball standpoint it was all worth it.
“You look back and you miss your family,” he said. “From a baseball standpoint and a professional standpoint there was never a doubt in my mind. At first it was a little bit (intimidating), to see the level of play out there and the work ethic of the student-athletes at a Division I school on the West Coast. It blew my mind.”

And to make things better, Cal State Bakersfield had its best season ever.

“We won a school record 37games the year I was there,” Barone said. “We won the WAC (Western Athletic Conference) title. We had six players drafted that year in the major league draft. We had the WAC pitcher of the year and player of the year. Since the time I’ve left, nine or ten are playing professionally.”

After one year there, Barone returned to Jamestown.

“I left on great terms,” he said. “I could have had the job back if I wanted it. It had nothing to do with baseball, it had more to do with family.”

In 2014 he worked at GA Family Services. But he also stayed involved with baseball. In the summer he coached at Wellsville in the New York Collegiate Baseball League.

That’s pretty close to Jamestown, but in the fall, things got closer. It was announced that Jamestown would have a team in the Prospect League, a summer league like the one in Wellsville. It would be playing at Diethrick Park this summer in place of the Jamestown team of the professional short-season New York-Penn League that moved to Morgantown, West Virginia. And the team would have the same name—Jammers.

There it was. A team right in his hometown that would be seeking a manager, but Barone didn’t jump at the chance. Someone else did.
“(Jamestown) mayor (Sam) Teresi brought my name up and they pursued me, which was even nicer,” Barone said. “Anytime you’re wanted in your profession and your career, it’s more doable and that sort of got the ball rolling. They contacted me and I flew out to Milwaukee (to league headquarters) and I guess I impressed them.”

Barone was named the Jammers manager and discovered you can go home again.

“I just didn’t want to jump into anything,” he said. “It couldn’t have been any better. I’m working for a great ownership group in MKS Sports and Entertainment. They have a lot of faith in what I can bring to the table. In any profession you choose, any time the people have faith in you it makes you feel good and what you’ve done in your career.”

And now his managing career is back where it started at Diethrick Park. But don’t expect it to stay there long as Barone isn’t afraid to take a risk to keep moving up the baseball ladder.