40 Years On The Diamond And Still Making A Difference

April 20, 2012

By Gary Brown, NCAA Champion Magazine

Celebrating his 40th year on the field, Massachusetts Maritime baseball coach Bob Corradi sure knows the score.

“But what I always say is that the game doesn’t know the score,” said the man whose career has spanned parts of five decades. “It doesn’t matter how well I prepare kids to play – hopefully it will help – but they are going to make the difference in the score at the end of the day, especially by what they do off the field.”

While Corradi hangs onto the adage, it’s more likely that he is the one making the difference, maybe not in the game but certainly in student-athletes’ lives.

He built the baseball program from scratch at the academy in Buzzards Bay, Mass., starting in 1973 when Massachusetts Maritime switched from a two-year school to a full-fledged NCAA member. At that time, Richard Nixon was two months into what would be a shortened second term as president of the United States. The cost of a new home was $35,500. Drivers could fill up a 12-gallon tank for less than 5 bucks.

What motivated Corradi then still does today.

“I absolutely love everything about Massachusetts Maritime,” he said. “I certainly believe in Division III athletics, too. Once that juice leaves me, I’ll know it’ll be time to move on. For now, though, I feel like I can make a difference with young people, so that’s why I keep on coming to work.”

He has more than 500 career wins on the diamond. In addition, Corradi spent more than 35 years as an assistant football coach. He’s also the school’s athletics director.

“Think about that,” he mused.  “I’m the head baseball coach, but I can hire and fire the football coach.  Yet, for 38 years I was the assistant football coach, and the head football coach told me what to do and could fire me!”

A pivotal point in Corradi’s career – and in the athletics program’s tradition – came in 1987. At Massachusetts Maritime, cadets take classes in the fall and then embark on a 55-day “sea term” in the winter to train, which already compromises the spring sports teams’ practice time. But after a tragedy in 1986 when a fire on the ship claimed a young person’s life, the 1987 sea term was delayed such that the baseball team could play only a 10-game season. The student-athletes wondered if canceling was the right play.

“I said, ‘Listen to me, you gotta understand, this is what the mission of the school is,’ ” Corradi said. “ ‘We have a responsibility to the athletics program – you need to play this year, even though you’ll be sacrificing a year of eligibility for a reduced schedule.’

And they did. We were 4-5-1 that year, but the decision they made established our program and our tradition. If that team had decided not to play, I don’t know whether we’d have the tradition we have today.”

Now they have that tradition, and a coach who upholds it.