He looked freshly pressed with wrinkle-free khakis, and lean and strong, as though he could snap off a curveball like the old days in the Sunset League, billed as the oldest after-supper adult baseball league in the country.
Meanwhile, some of DeStefano’s
joints hurt after pitching for six decades, emerging as one of the faces of organized baseball in the city. So who can blame him for wanting to step down as the heart and soul of the Sunset League for the past 30 years, beginning in 1992? And don’t forget, DeStefano began playing in the league in 1974 and only retired as a player in 2017.
Now, he’s tired. His knee still requires surgery, more than 40 years after he turned it into hamburger while playing center field during a Sunset League game, at its home field at White Park.
Local athlete and coaching legend Bill Hardiman
followed DeStefano’s career and nominated him for the Monitor’s weekly Hometown Hero award. The timing seemed right because DeStefano wants to move into an administrative role with the league.
“It is time for me to step back,” DeStefano said recently. “I want to stay involved in the league, but not as president and not as a coach.”
He’s been trying to step aside for several years now, but, again and again, nobody has stepped forward. At least not to be the No. 1 voice of the league, which carries a great deal of responsibility.
“No one wanted to do it,” DeStefano said.
He took control from the late Red Eastman, the beloved former league president who dedicated a huge chunk of his life to keeping the league afloat. DeStefano seemed like a good fit as Eastman’s successor. He played Little League in Concord in the late 1960s and never stopped playing until recently, when his body began to rebel.
“I hurt my left knee
and I’m still getting my shoulder back,” DeStefano said. “It’s been five months since that surgery, so I’m still trying to get that ready. It’s a metal shoulder. It sucks to get old.”
He’s 67. He wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Rather, some say, he was born with a baseball in his right hand. At 6-foot-2, 170 pounds, his nickname at the University of Maine, an elite program in the Northeast, was Bones.
DeStefano made sure
to mention that he rarely pitched for the Black Bears of Maine.
“I sat on the bench,” DeStefano said. “That’s my only claim to fame. People don’t believe I went there because I don’t show up with a letter, but I’m actually on the roster.”
He grabbed Maine’s 1976 program, on a shelf in his office near photos of Carl Yasztremski, the Red Sox celebrating their 2004 playoff win over the Yankees and ancient black-and-white photos documenting the Sunset League through the decades.
The slender pamphlet shows that DeStefano did, indeed, make the Maine roster. So did Mike Curry, another baseball legend who dominated the local scene.
He and DeStefano were big names back in the day. DeStefano played at Bishop Brady High School, then Maine, then more adult leagues than a beer-loving softball player.
But the Sunset League was his primary focus, incorporating him into a league that featured family members playing in different
eras.
DeStefano’s father, who was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds, played Sunset ball in the 1950s, and his grandfather coached in the league before that.
Later, starting in ‘92, DeStefano was a jack of all trades, pitching, coaching and doing all the menial tasks that, behind the scenes, kept the league alive.
The season opened on June 5, celebrating its 114th season.
Eastman and DeStefano spent more than 80 years supervising the league. These days, DeStefano looks terrific, but his shoulder and knee hurt.
“I don’t remember how they did it, but they coerced me into doing it,” DeStefano said. “I thought Red Eastman was going to hit me with a bolt of lightning if I let the league fold. He did it for 50 years. It was time.”
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