PressBox: Youse's Orioles Provide Legacy Of Greatness

Youse's Orioles Provide Legacy Of Greatness
Youse's Maryland Orioles Have Had Many Names, But Racking Up Crowns Is Unchanging Quality

By Keith Mills

Chris Ayers
(Sabina Moran/PressBox)

Tim Norris
(Sabina Moran/PressBox)

Dominic Fratantuono
(Sabina Moran/PressBox)

Southern's Greg Arnold and Mount St. Joseph's George Kaczmarek were sandlot sensations when they joined forces on the vaunted Leone's baseball team. More than 40 years later, they remain great friends.

Putty Hill's Mark Jackman and Frank Thomas of the Brooklyn Optimists had some fierce battles every summer before helping Johnny's win back-to-back national championships. They have remained close ever since.

Steven Bumbry went to Virginia Tech, Leon Landry to LSU and Jeff Rowland to Georgia Tech, but all three played the outfield together when Youse's Maryland Orioles won the team's 26th championship three years ago in Johnstown, Pa.

Rivals and strangers one summer, teammates and champions the next. Close friends forever.

"Anybody who talks about amateur baseball in the state of Maryland is talking about Leone's, or Johnny's or Corrigan's," Tim Norris said. “For us to carry on the tradition is a great feeling."

Norris is now manager of the Youse's Maryland Orioles collegiate baseball team, the grandson so to speak of the famed Leone's powerhouse that forever changed how the rest of the country looked at amateur baseball in Baltimore.

Earlier this summer, the organization celebrated its incomparable heritage and looked ahead to what should be another imposing summer by holding a fundraiser in Glen Burnie to recognize some of the players and coaches who made it happen. Bernie Walter, Jim Foit, Bobby Worthington, Rick Wagner, Gary Bishop, Mark Poehlman, Steve Jordan, Arnold, Kaczmarek, Thomas and Jackman all took an overdue bow for their enormous contribution to amateur baseball.

"To have those guys here is really a big deal to us," said Norris, the area's high school player of the year at Archbishop Curley in 1978 and now an associate scout with the Orioles. "We were hoping to have 300 people here. We had 500. We're trying to build on the tradition and try and create a fan base that will come out and watch us play and in many cases watch future pro athletes play right here in Baltimore."

That has been a constant in the team’s history -- terrific players. Since the Baltimore Boys Brigade won the city's first All-American Amateur Baseball Association championship in Johnstown, Pa., in 1946, the team has won 27 of them. The most recent was a dominating performance during last year's AAABA tournament, when Youse's Maryland Orioles won their seventh championship in eight years.

The link to then and now is still Walter Youse, the team's namesake who died nine years ago. He ran the club since he joined brothers Dominic, Vince and Tony Leone in 1956.

Sponsors have come and gone (the Leone brothers to Johnny Wilbanks to Bill Corrigan), as did managers and coaches (Walter, Foit, Norm Gilden, Mel Montgomery, Bobby Ullman, Dean Albany and now Norris). Youse, the affable and sometimes ornery former scout for the Orioles, Brewers and Angels, however, was always there, parked in his trademark lawn chair, eyes glaring at the diamond, never missing a pitch or an at-bat.

"Everybody wanted to play for Walter," said Kaczmarek, who played for Leone's in 1966 and '67.

"I remember going to Walter Youse Night way back in 1977," said Gary Bishop, who played for Leone's-Johnny's from 1974-75, "and here we are still talking about him. It's amazing."

"Walter Youse was a special person," said Jack Turek, who led Brooklyn Park High to the 1980 state championship. "To me it was always Leone's and Walter Youse."

"Walter would be happy to see everyone here," said Albany, a teammate of Turek's at both Brooklyn Park and Johnny's. Albany assisted Youse during the late 1990s and took over the team when Youse died of kidney failure in 2002. When Albany, an Orioles scout since 2004, was named the team's regional cross-checker, he turned the team over to Norris.

"He helped a lot of guys learn how to play,” Nbany said.

* * *

If Babe Ruth, Al Kaline and, later, Cal Ripken Jr. gave Baltimore Hall-of-Fame exposure and credibility, Leone's and later Johnny's New and Used Cars gave generations of players an opportunity to play the game the major league way.

Youse coached Kaline on the Westport American Legion team in 1951 and then led Calvert Hall to three MSA championships before joining the Orioles as a scout in 1959. His record as the architect of the great Leone's-Johnny's and Corrigan's teams has been well documented, although the real magic of the team was the mind-boggling talent assembled annually and the lifelong friendships that were formed.

Arnold was a flame-throwing right-hander from South Baltimore who was playing for the Dewey Lowman amateur team when Kaczmarek dug in against him in the summer of 1965 for the Glen Burnie Colonial Ramblers.

"That was the first time I ever faced him," said Kaczmarek, who Youse once said was the best amateur hitter he ever coached in Baltimore. "He could bring it, one of the best to ever come out of here."

Kaczmarek grew up in Brooklyn Park and went to Mount St. Joseph, where he developed into one of the country's most feared hitters. He had two big games against Leone's in '65, earning an invitation from Youse and Walter to join their team the following year.

Arnold, who went to Southern High, was issued a similar invitation. Kaczmarek, along with Poly's Chuck Scrivener and Rick Senger, Loyola's Tim Nordbrook and Gary Matz, Archbishop Curley's Billy Kelly, Andover's Rick Wagner and Mount St. Joe's David Kropfelder, formed the nucleus of the 1967 team that won the city's fifth AAABA championship.

Arnold was not among those who celebrated. In fact, Leone's won the '67 title without three of its best pitchers: Arnold, Mount St. Joe's Rick Pecor and Brooklyn Park's Bob George.

"We lost all three of those guys to pro ball," Kaczmarek said. "They played with us for about the first month of the season, then signed. That's how good we were. We won without them.

"Walter would always say the '67 team was one of his favorites. He would never say we were the best, just one of his favorites."

Kaczmarek played first base. John Shaw and Nordbrook, who eventually played with the Orioles, played second; Scrivener, who helped the Detroit Tigers win the 1968 World Series, played shortstop; Matz played third. Mount St. Joe's Dave Schmid was the team's center fielder, while Senger and Kropfelder split the catching.

Scrivener, a tremendous player for legendary coach Bob Lumsden at Poly, was named the tournament MVP. Nine years later, Poly's Rick Steirer, Parkville's Jackman, Tom Qualters of McKeesport, Pa., Joel Crisler and Mount St. Joe's Dave Woessner finished a combined 54-4 to anchor a pitching staff that made the 1976 team one of the best in city history.

Thomas and McDonogh's Duke Duncan were two of the best hitters in the country as the '76 team rolled through the Baltimore City 16-19 league and beat Buffalo, 6-0, for its eighth AAABA championship.

"It was run like a professional baseball team," said Jackman, a 6-foot-4 left-handed pitcher. "We got there at 4:30, practiced from 4:30 to 6. We played eight games a week, doubleheaders on Sundays. If you wanted to play baseball for Walter Youse, you had to have a commitment and you had to want to be there."

"Walter just had this aura about him," said Thomas, the team's multi-talented shortstop who was named the tournament MVP after leading Johnny's to a second straight AAABA title in 1977. "You respected him. He demanded the best of you. Every game we'd meet on the mound and he'd go over things we did well and didn't do well. He taught us the game of baseball every day for 100 games a year."

"Bernie and Walter always said they built their team to win the national championship," said Bishop, who spent a year at Indian River Community College in Florida before joining Thomas, Jackman and Poehlman at Maryland. "They felt if they built a team to go to Johnstown and win it, then they would win the Baltimore City championship along the way.

"We had pitching, hitting and defense. There were always teams who wanted to take us down and try and beat us. It never happened around here. That was a winning philosophy. You carry it with you. If we finished second, we finished second, but at least we went for it."

\Bel Air's Jeff Grantz was the Baltimore Sun's Athlete of the Year in 1972. Later that summer, he and Brad Ful anchored a Leone's team that won the AAABA championship.

One year later in Johnstown, Paul Hartzell of Bloomsburg, Pa., was the MVP as Leone's-Johnny's won the team's sixth AAABA championship. Hartzell, Joe Kerrigan, Perry Hall's Chuck Porter and Penn State's Mitch Lukevics formed a rotation that may be the best ever in Baltimore amateur baseball. Kerrigan went to Temple and spent four years in the big leagues and was involved in one of the most significant trades in Orioles history. After the 1977 season, he was traded from Montreal to the Orioles. Kerrigan played for the Birds in 1978 and '80.

Hartzell also spent part of 1980 with the Orioles, while Porter left Perry Hall for Clemson in 1973. Porter was selected in the seventh round of the 1976 amateur draft by the California Angels, and he spent five years pitching for the Milwaukee Brewers. The White Sox selected Lukevics in the 1975 draft.

Calvert Hall's Phil Linz, Andover's Jim Spencer, Sparrows Point's Ron Swoboda, Edmondson's John Miller, Mount St. Joe's Tom Phoebus and later Gavin Floyd, Towson's Gene Hiser and Glenelg's Greg Smith all played for Leone's or Johnny's and played in the big leagues. So, of course, did Aikens and Reggie Jackson, who were two of the many out-of-town players Youse brought in to help the area's premier local players contend for the AAABA every August in Johnstown.

* * *

Dominic Leone and his brothers, Tony and Vince, began sponsoring an amateur baseball team in Baltimore in 1952. Ray Muhl was their first manager. Vince owned a restaurant/bar on Key Highway in South Baltimore called Leone's Cafe. Tony owned a gas and service station in Brooklyn Park, while Dominic eventually won a seat on the Baltimore City Council, though Charles Hopkins gunned him down in the infamous City Hall shooting of 1976.

Mike Leone, now the first base coach under Norris for Youse's Maryland Orioles, is the son of Tony Leone Sr.

Mike Leone's brother-in-law is Turek, a power-hitting shortstop at Brooklyn Park who hit seven home runs during the Bees' state championship run in 1980 and is one of the rare four-year players in Leone's-Johnny's history.

Kropfelder, an outstanding catcher for Mount St. Joe, played for Leone's from 1966-69, and Allen Strick, also of Mount St. Joe, who played for Youse's Maryland Orioles from 1999-2002, are the others. Turek played for Johnny's from 1979-82, helping the team win four-straight AAABA championships.

Turek's teammates on Johnny's through his four-year championship run were a Who's Who of Baltimore amateur baseball: Kenwood's Tony Maggard; Northern's Renard Brown; Mount St. Joe's Foit; Loyola's Frank Velleggia; McDonogh's Rich Bosley; former Archbishop Spalding coach Steve Miller; Franklin's John Antonelli; John Thornton; Rick Knapp, now the pitching coach of the Detroit Tigers; Arundel's Marty Freeman and Tony Tait; and Brooklyn Park teammates Albany, Frank Raska and Scott Rowe.

"Everything was geared to professional baseball," Turek said. "Walter would watch everything. You might not think he's watching. He was watching. The greatest piece of advice he ever gave me was even if you were just taking ground balls during infield practice, someone was watching. He was special."

Dulaney's Jimmy Crowley, the son of Orioles bullpen coach Terry Crowley, helped Johnny's win three-straight AAABA championships in 1989, '90 and '91 while setting a record for most RBIs in the tournament (23) in 1989 that still stands today. South Carroll's Joey Goodwin, Severna Park's Steve Neuberger and Johns Hopkins University second baseman Joe Kail helped Corrigan's Insurance win the title in 1993, while North County's Mike Wooden, Old Mill's Brian Foster, Arundel's Casey Trout and Calvert Hall's Liam Healey helped Corrigan's win another in 1996.

Six years later, Youse died at age 88, though his legacy lived on as Albany, an assistant to Youse for five years, took over as manager and changed the name to Youse's Maryland Orioles. That team now plays in the prestigious Cal Ripken Sr. Collegiate Baseball League and is still winning AAABA championships.

Under Albany, Youse's Orioles won six-straight titles from 2003-08 and once again proved a breeding ground for minor- and major-league baseball. Floyd was another four-year player, who is now pitching with the Chicago White Sox. Maryland's Kevin Hart anchored the '03 pitching staff before the Orioles selected him during the 11th round of the 2004 draft. He is currently pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates, while Towson University's Brian Conley and Broadneck High's Preston Pehrson helped the '06 team win the city's 24th AAABA title before moving on to pro careers with the Orioles.

Two years later, the team won No. 26 behind one of the best outfields in team history: Dulaney's Bumbry, who is now playing for the Frederick Keys; LSU's Landry, a third-round pick by the Dodgers during last year's draft; and Georgia Tech's Rowland, a Tigers 19th-round pick two years ago.

A year ago, Norris and assistant coaches Leone, Jason King and Brandon Berlett watched their team put together one of the most dominating pitching performances in the 66-year history of the AAABA tournament as it rolled through the tournament unbeaten at 6-0, outscoring opponents, 41-6.

Calvert Hall's Pat Blair and Chris Cook of George Mason paced the offensive onslaught, while Francis Brook of Northwestern University pitched a six-hit, complete-game shutout as Youse's beat Delweld of Johnstown, 4-0, in the championship game.

Cook and Brook are both back this year, while once again Youse's feature's an all-star collection of local players that includes Loyola's Harry Slade (Southeast La. University); C. Milton Wright's Brad Markey (Georgia Tech), Cardinal Gibbons' Dominic Fratantuono and Andrew Parker (Towson University), Mount St. Joe's Mike Draper (Towson), Calvert Hall's Blake Geiger (Essex C.C.) and Kevin Lingerman (George Mason), John Carroll's K.J. Hockaday and Brendan Butler; and C. Milton Wright's Bobby Ruse.

Hockaday (14th round) and Butler (50th round) are graduating seniors who were both selected by the Orioles during the 2011 draft.

"We have as many local players as we've had in a long time," Norris said, "and we also have brought in some of the best players in the country. We talk to them from day one about the tradition of this team and what Johnstown means, so by the time we go up there they have a pretty good idea of what it's all about."

Issue 163: July 2011