The Post-Journal

Leo Squinn, A 40-Year Fixture In Local And Area Sports Scene

There is no record of Leo Squinn ever having been a parachute jumper, or a deep seas diver or a mountain climber.Of course, there's a reason. Jamestown's earlier-day sports scene did not include these activities. If they had, the husky, ramrod straight Squinn would have been in there challenging someone.

As it is, the smiling Newton Avenue Polish resident, who is employed in the security department of Marlin-Rockwell TRW, where he has been for 39 years, has tried his hand at boxing, baseball, football, softball, basketball and bowling as a participant or manager or coach.

Forty years is a long time to be an active part of a community's sports scene, but that's Leo. "A sort of cocky guy when he was young who was willing to try anything and usually produced," as one man who has known Leo for decades puts it.

A baseball team called the Shepards was operating here in 1931 and that's where Leo broke into organized competition. Then there was the White Liners, managed and sponsored by Dutch Halfrick, the Noah's Ark team, the Chautauqua Institute club, the Corry club of the old NY-P League, San's Plumbing, Hope's Windows, the Vikings, the All-Jamestown, the Orioles, the Jamestown Boosters, and the Steel Partition Bombers. Leo played with all of them at one time or another.

The Boosters won the state amateur title in 1944 and competed in the National Baseball Congress Tournament at Wichita, Kansas, with Leo in the line-up.

His football tenure was mostly with the old Liberties and the Crescents.

Softball? Sure, with the S.M. Flickinger team in the 30's.

He played a forward slot on the Spirs Drugs basketball team, the Landy Brothers club and the Shamrocks.

Leo managed in softball, particularly the Marlin-Rockwell Rollers during their three-seasons undefeated stint when they won 93 games in a row to set a record that still stands. He also stepped in for one year to manage the National Worsted team, a powerhouse for years, when the club's regular pilot, Slats Nicosia, took an illness leave.

In later years, Leo has managed in Babe Ruth baseball, taking one team to the state tournament at Amsterdam, which went to the quarter-finals, and another to the same meet at Syracuse.

Squinn also served as president of the Jamestown Bowling Association on more than one occasion, which may or may not wrap up Leo's background as an official and participant. The fellow has gone in the front door and out the back door in every local sports program for years and made all the stops in various capacities in between, so it is difficult to pin down dates, places and positions even with the aid of a bulky scrapbook, his charming wife of 37 years, Helen, has maintained for him.

Leo played in a baseball game at Olean one time that...

On second thought, we'll just hang onto that one for part two of a follow-up on the current president of the Jamestown Baseball Oldtimers Association.


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