Comings and goings of the New York Collegiate Baseball League.
Concussion management is now law for N.Y. school districts
(Geneva Red Wings strength training coach) Ray Ciancaglini was a middleweight boxer who never was knocked down in seven years, he told the East High football teams.
Ciancaglini, who grew up in Geneva, also shared another important part of his boxing career Friday afternoon.
“I’m still paying the price for gutting out a concussion,” the 61-year old Romulus resident said. “My life consists of not what I want to do, but what I’m capable of doing.
“I’ve had a headache everyday since I was 16.”
Ciancaglini shares the story of his improper treatment of a concussion more than ever, as head injuries in sports are a growing concern from the youth to professional levels.
“It cost me my quality of life and potential,” Ciancaglini cautioned the players.
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Video courtesy of EveningTribune.com.
More about the subject…
SN Concussion Report: NFL career worth it? Two Hall of Famers say no
Joe DeLamielleure pulls a business card out of his wallet and puts it on his kitchen table. On the card is an explanation of his desire to donate his brain to science. He wants doctors to cut open his skull, take out his brain, slice it into pieces and study it. He says he knows what they’ll find: brain damage.
At 61, he has displayed several hallmarks of CTE—chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a type of brain damage common to people who have suffered head injuries. He bounces in and out of depression, he gets angry for little or no reason, and he has short-term memory loss. Until he recently started taking a controversial supplement, he hadn’t slept through the night in years.
He carries the card everywhere he goes in case he dies suddenly because he wants to make sure Boston University’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy gets his brain. His wife and kids carry copies of the card, too.
“Juiced” baseball could be reason behind CCBL’s inflated offense
The epidemic of offense hasn’t just been felt on Cape Cod. Offensive numbers are up dramatically across the country in other National Alliance of College Summer Baseball leagues. The Florida League saw their homers increase from 57 to 158. The Great Lakes League went from 99 homers in 2011 to 276. In the New York Collegiate Baseball League, the total exploded from 117 to 315. And in the Valley League, homers rose from 287 to 469.
All members of the NACSB order their baseballs from the same company. The NACSB has an exclusive baseball-provider agreement with Diamond Sports of Santa Ana, California. Galop explained that each spring he receives requests for balls from each of his 10 general managers, on average about 120 to 150 dozen Diamond D1-Pros per team, and then places a bulk order to Diamond which manufactures the balls in China. Diamond in turn orders the balls from their plant and then ships them out to the leagues en masse.
From NYCBL to NY-P Bostick keeps making the grade
New York Collegiate Baseball League alum Chris Bostick is doing his part of keeping that spotlight on his home state.
The 19-year old is now coming off his first of what he hopes is many All-Star appearances in professional baseball, his first coming as a shortstop for the Oakland Athletics, Short Season Class A affiliate, Lake Vermont Monsters of the New York-Penn League.
After playing 37 games with the Webster Yankees of the NYCBL during the 2011 season, Bostick, a 44th round draft pick in the MLB Draft, signed with the Athletics thus forgoing a baseball scholarship with those same St. John’s Red Storm.
Amsterdam Mohawk alum Jon Schwind getting used to life behind the plate
AUBURN — When it came to baseball, Jon Schwind had always considered himself a very good student of the game.
So, too, did his coaches at Hilton High School and then at Marist College.
A middle infielder who could also play the outfield, Schwind was always thinking, whether he was at the plate, on the bases or in the field. He was keenly aware of not only the situation, but also what needed to be done to advance a runner or if the ball was hit his way.
And yet, when the Pittsburgh Pirates decided to make him a catcher after drafting him on the 41st round in 2011, Schwind realized just how much he didn’t know.
Former Hornell Dodger Rajai Davis brings back a home run
Former Hornell Dodger Josh Kinney happy to get a second chance at his first save
SEATTLE — Josh Kinney was two-thirds of his way to his first-career Major League save on July 30, but after walking a batter with two outs in the ninth inning, Mariners manager Eric Wedge played the percentages and brought in Lucas Luetge for a lefty-on-lefty matchup. It was Luetge who walked away from that game with his first-career save.
Kinney finally got another chance Sunday, gutting out a 2 1/3-inning, 42-pitch performance for an extended save.
“If I’d a had to go and finish my career and say, ‘Well, I never got a save, but I was pretty close to getting one,’ that would be a good story, too,” Kinney said.
But don’t get Kinney wrong, he wanted the save, and the 33-year-old is more than happy to be able to tell his save story with a different ending.
Kinney still throwing strikes
Before Port Allegany started its own high school baseball program, students who wanted to play had to catch the bus over the hill to Shinglehouse for practices and games as part of a co-op agreement with Oswayo Valley, a trip the players jokingly called the “squirrel trail.”
Little did pitcher Josh Kinney know that those rides through the northern Pennsylvania woods would lead to a World Series ring and an 11-year – and counting – professional baseball career.
“I don’t think you could ever plan it like this. I count my blessings every day,” the 1997 Port High grad says during a Sunday-morning chat in Buffalo, where his Charlotte Knights are preparing to play the Bisons that afternoon. “When I look back on stuff like that, it’s just funny how it all works, because I didn’t think I’d be playing baseball for a living. I just always played because it’s what I like to do.
Bostick adapting to pro ball
From the adjustments that create perfect defensive posture to the ability to read a pitcher’s mind or pick up the subtle movement on a fastball, the journey
to the major leagues in the Oakland A’s system has just begun for Bostick.
Tuesday he will be at the NY-P League All-Star Game in Niles, Ohio, an honor that says the youngest player on the Vermont roster has made a definite impression.
Mohawk alum Hunter Pence and the bobblehead giveaway
But it’s safe to say Tuesday’s bobblehead giveaway topped all of the past promotions. It came complete with a love letter from a long-lost pen pal.
Three weeks after the Phillies traded popular rightfielder Hunter Pence to the San Francisco Giants, the promotions department went ahead with the already planned Hunter Pence bobblehead giveaway. What else could they do with 45,000 dolls?
Sherrill’s Van Boom ends summer with the Harwich Mariners of the Cape Cod League
Seventy-nine games was not enough. After starting 44 games for the Brown Bears and 35 for the Sherrill Silversmiths, Wes Van Boom went looking for more.
He got what he wanted.
Soon after his New York Collegiate Baseball League season ended, Van Boom headed east, crossed the Sagamore Bridge and ended the summer with the Harwich Mariners…
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