The last softball waltz where I grew up

By late spring 1999, I was disillusioned.

I had come into the sports editor's position at the Ocean County Observer after working there as a correspondent and then assistant sports editor. By January 1999, I had taken over as the guy in charge of the department, the plum job you aspired to get to after 15 years. However, it was under the flag of Gannett, which had taken over from Goodson in 1998 and had us combine our efforts with our rivals of the last 100-plus years, the Asbury Park Press. So whatever it was we wrote for our publication, the exact same story would be in their publication.

I knew that was the beginning of the end of my paper and I knew it there and then, 9 1/2 years before it officially happened. We were suddenly a second-class citizen and my displeasure carried into taking the job. I had a meeting with the sports editor at the Press and he laid out what his vision for the two papers going forward was. I listened and wasn't agreeable on everything he put out there in front of me.

Let's just say I was looking for an escape route from the road to Hell. I had no problems whatsoever working with my immediate boss. It was the bosses beyond him I had issue with.

So as the 1999 spring sports season was coming to an end in Ocean County, I began to believe further and further that this was going to be it for me, the last season I was to cover in my home county for my hometown newspaper. Things were changing and they were changing for the worse. I simply had to leave.

So on Thursday, May 27, 1999, I had two county teams, Central Regional in South Jersey Group III and Jackson Memorial in South Jersey Group IV, playing for sectional championships. I chose to go down to West Deptford High School to see the iconic Central program play for its title. The Golden Eagles lost big that day. But on the way back, I heard Jackson Memorial won its first sectional title, beating Shawnee on Jessica Fiorentino's inside-the-park home run in the top of the seventh inning.

Two days later on Saturday, May 29, Jackson Memorial would win its second county tournament championship in four years by taking down Toms River East, 1-0, at Toms River High School South. It was the second time within a week, coach Al Aires' Jaguars had beaten coach Debbie Schwartz's Raiders, the first time being in the SJ IV semifinal round on that Tuesday.

The win against Shawnee meant the Jaguars earned the right to play in the NJSIAA Group IV semifinals on Tuesday, June 1, 1999 against Hunterdon Central, which was on fire, too, at 22-4. As a matter of fact, both the Jaguars and the Red Devils were 22-4 going into their matchup at Middlesex County College in Edison. There was irony in that the game was in Edison -- it was in September 1984 that the first-ever high school event I got to staff was a Sunday afternoon football game between Brick Township and East Brunswick at East Brunswick High School ... also in Middlesex County.

Somehow, I had a very strong premonition this was going to be my finale.

I knew both coaches. Obviously, for years, Aires had been head coach of the Jaguar program since 1987 and watched his program grow to this state sectional championship and two-time county winner. I also knew the opposing team's coach, too, from my years of covering high school gymnastics -- Pete Fick was the longtime head boys gymnastics coach at Hunterdon Central and I  had a number of conversations over the years with him at state championship meets, some hosted by he and his school.

Since I had never been to the Middlesex County College facility, it took me awhile to figure out where it was in an era long before GPS, Google Maps and Mapquest. We had the police department in the town to rely on, though I did have a Middlesex County map booklet to locate where I was heading toward though, admittedly, it was annoying to look at the map, look at the highway and take turns doing both until I was certain I was where I was supposed to be.

I literally got to the field as the two teams were lined up on their base lines with the national anthem playing in the backdrop, me having to scribble the lineups down from the scorekeeper for the game. The game was literally starting as I finished writing the last of the lineups down in my scorebook with hard-throwing left-hander Jenny Bender finishing up her warmup pitches.

The Jaguars made Bender work in the first inning, but within 14 pitches, Bender retired Fiorentino on a groundout, Erin Leonard on a comebacker and Toni Williams on a flyout.

Unlike Bender, Jackson pitcher Dara DeVincenzo wasn't a hard-thrower, but she was crafty with what she threw and placed around the plate. The daughter of Freehold Township High softball coach John DeVincenzo, she got a foulout and struck out Bender swinging. Lori Notaro singled to right field, but was wiped out on a forceout by Kristin Cass as shortstop Williams tossed to second baseman Fiorentino to end the inning.

The second inning was a different story for the Jaguars. Kelly Czubak singled to center field to lead off. This brought up Shannon Baldwin. On an 0-1 pitch, Baldwin hit a slow roller that got past Bender and headed for second baseman Crystal Epright. She fielded the ball, but things got complicated -- Epright was a left-handed second baseman and a right-handed second baseman could have flipped the ball easily to shortstop Katie Jenkins to get Czubak. But having to twist even the slightest bit to make the play at second took a few valuable milliseconds and Czubak beat the play to second.

The Jaguars had two on with no one out. And after Cheryl Fossati walked on four pitches, the bases were loaded and a run, maybe two coming across in this major point of the game was all but inevitable. However, the bottom of the Jaguars' lineup was coming up and Bender was about to change the Jaguars' hopes. She caught No. 7 hitter Tara Bailey looking on strikes for the first out. Then she wiped out DeVincenzo swinging on the same 1-2 count. This left it to Casey Bartolf. But on a 1-0 pitch, Bartolf grounded out to Epright, who made the play to first with ease.

Fick clapped and cheered the girls back to their dugout. Aires jogged back dismayed by the lost opportunity.

DeVincenzo had a 1-2-3 bottom of the second. Then the Jaguars had another potential threat in the third. Fiorentino led off with a walk. Leonard grounded out to first baseman Dayna Egan, but on the play, Fiorentino moved into scoring position at second. Bender got Williams to fly out to right fielder Annie O'Keeffe for the second out, setting up the most important moment of the game.

On a 2-1 count, Aires had Fiorentino stealing with Czubak at the plate. Notaro's throw to third base bounced past shortstop Jenkins covering the bag with third baseman Nicole Gacos playing up. The ball skipped into left field and it looked like Fiorentino was on her way to the plate.

But with Jenkins arriving the same time as the ball being thrown toward third and Fiorentino arriving at the base, things got messy. Fiorentino tripped over Jenkins' feet after sliding in to third and she stumbled to the ground. Left fielder Cass retrieved the ball quickly and got the ball back to the infield. Fiorentino was forced to hold at third and Aires was a tad bit upset that no interference was called on the play.

Was the play interference? I say it was close. Everything happened in such a flash -- and both were trying to do something after the ball got by Jenkins. By the letter of the rule, it probably should have been ruled interference and Fiorentino should have been allowed to continue home with the run automatically. Turns out it was a huge play for a few pitches later, Czubak grounded out to Egan.

Another opportunity wasted.

In the bottom of the third, Allison Pricer beat out an infield single and was sacrificed to second, but a flyout by Epright and a comebacker by Bender ended that threat.

The fourth inning saw Jackson Memorial strand Fossati at first after a one-out walk. The bottom of the fourth got a bit contentious when Cass doubled to left field with one out. Gacos walked, but DeVincenzo struck out Egan for the second time and O'Keeffe forced out Gacos as Williams tossed to Fiorentino to end the inning.

The fifth went by quickly as Bender set the Jaguars down in order and Pricer's leadoff single in the fifth was wasted by a strikeout by Sarno and a popout and lineout by Epright and Bender, in order, both going to Williams ended the inning.

With two outs in the sixth, Baldwin walked and moved to second on a wild pitch, another possible threat for the Jaguars. But just like she did all afternoon, Bender was able to bear down in the circle and got Fossati on a comebacker. In the bottom of the inning, Cass reached on an infield single and got to second on a sacrifice, but Egan flied out to right fielder Fossati to end the frame.

The game was flying fast, but the more the zeros got put up on the scoreboard, the less time I had to beat the ridiculous 11 p.m. deadline that our newspaper neighbors to the north slapped on us almost immediately after the company made the sale official on July 7, 1998. I had over an hour to get back to work, write my story, then layout my pages on a system I still had trouble understanding since the company took us off our reliable systems we worked on for years that May 17 ... just another reason to want to check out of what I slowly started calling Club Clusterf*ck.

Meanwhile, Bender was still going strong. She got two groundouts and a strikeout of the bottom three hitters in the Jaguars' lineup in the top of the seventh. Not to be outdone, though, DeVincenzo got a popout, flyout and strikeout of the bottom of the Red Devils' lineup to send the game to extra innings as the sun was sinking a little further and I was looking at my watch a little more with each passing half-inning. Good thing this game started at 3 p.m. instead of 4 p.m.

With one out in the top of the eighth, Leonard sharply singled to left field. After Williams grounded out to move Leonard to second, Czubak won an eight-pitch at-bat by walking, putting runners on first and second. But Bender found the little extra and fouled out to Gacos to end the last big threat the Jaguars had.

Onto the bottom of the eighth. Epright led off. She hit a grounder to third baseman Bailey, who bobbled the grounder for an error. It would turn out to be the only error of the game, but it set the tone for what was to happen next. Bender singled to right field to move Epright to second base. Notaro put down a perfect sacrifice bunt that DeVincenzo fielded and threw on to first baseman Michelle Goldych for the out.

With the open base at first and the game on the verge of ending, Aires instructed DeVincenzo to throw four wide ones to intentionally walk Cass, who had singled and doubled. That brought up Gacos, who was 0-for-1 with a walk and sacrifice. Aires had his middle infielders move in as well as his outfielders. Gacos didn't waste time -- on the first pitch, she hit a low line drive that right fielder Fossati came charging in for.

The ball bounced in front of Fossati, but that was just the start of things getting entertaining. Having to wait for the ball to fall in, Epright took off for the plate. Fossati was able to get the ball and make a throw to Leonard at the plate. For a moment, it looked as if Fossati and Leonard had gotten Epright for a forceout.

The home plate umpire made the "safe" call instead. And once again, Aires came charging out from his position and argued the call at the plate, asking for help. But it was to no avail.

Hunterdon Central 1, Jackson Memorial 0. Just like that, it was over. The careers of Fossati, utility player Erica Meyer and Leonard, the best athlete in Ocean County, came to an end. I can still remember asking Leonard if she thought they had gotten Epright at the plate on the bang-bang play.

"I knew I had my foot on the plate, but the umpire said (Epright) had got in," she said.

In this pitcher's duel, Bender was wildly effectively with five walks and five strikeouts. She allowed just the hits to Czubak and Leonard. DeVincenzo scattered seven hits in allowing the one unearned run, walked just the one batter intentionally in the eighth and struck out five.

Both pitchers had done their job. It came down to who would take advantage of the other team's gift. It was the error by Bailey that eventually led to that one run in the eighth inning.

I left the college, found my way back to Route 9 and ended up getting back to work by 6:45 p.m., writing my story for our paper first, then for the Press, and then laying out my section. On Friday, July 30, 1999, I flew down to Key West, interviewed with my former Observer editor in chief, Steve Sosinski, and a day later, I took the job as sports editor at the Key West Citizen. I worked my final day at the Observer on Sunday, August 15, 1999, glad that the end came of a short, six-and-a-half-month stint as sports editor ... the plum job that turned out to be nothing more than rotten fruit.

Four days later after that game at Middlesex County College, Hunterdon Central would beat hard-throwing pitcher Michele Walker and Paramus High in the state 4A championship at Toms River East for Fick's first state title as the program's head coach. He eventually stepped down after the 2012 season, winning 741 games in his career.

Aires remained head coach with the Jaguars until 2006 when he finished a 20-year career to become Jackson Memorial athletic director, and then an administrator at another Jackson-based school.

I won't forget that '99 Jackson Memorial and players like DeVincenzo, Williams, Fiorentino, Fossati and especially Leonard, who would say of her time as a four-year varsity member of the team and move on to Caldwell. She said, "I'll always remember the togetherness and how we won as a team and that it's not one or two people that carried the team."

Yeah, 22-5 wasn't bad. To this day, I believe the Jaguars would have figured out a way to get to Walker and Paramus and win the state title. But like so many other times I watched before or after that 1-0 loss, I was left with "What if?"

That Jackson Memorial-Hunterdon Central game would be the last high school game of any sport I would cover for the Observer.

Turns out it was a heck of a way to end my career in covering high school sports there .. even if it was a loss for the team I covered.

Remembering Earle

Long enough time has passed since I lost one of my first sports colleagues from my first real job, the Ocean County Observer, on May 21, 2020, at the age of 65, cancer taking him away from us.

Well, not all of it has been spent in deep thought -- during these days that the COVID-19 pandemic has sidelined those with jobs, I'm still having to do mine at my current employer, the Palatka Daily News, while playing radio hero one hour each morning, five hours a day, at another outlet. So I've been a bit busy and there are chores that need to be done, too.

But I'm prepared. Or at least I think I am.

Was John Earle Livingston the best sports writer I ever came across in my lifetime? No. I've come across numerous award-winning sports writers in my career who I admire for their work. But was Earle the most colorful writer I ever came across? That one is a resounding, "Yes." Before you could get into the first two or three paragraphs of the story, he had painted a picture so vivid that you were already there.

Of course, he painted it for you without giving you much of the "what actually happened" detail. Many an editor I worked for -- Ken, Mike, Al, Tom, Greg, Dave, even me -- were driven nuts by his storytelling from a journalistic aspect. Even if you told Earle yourself that the story might be a tad bit better if you had kinda, sorta put the main details in those first three paragraphs as they taught you in journalism school, it would've been fruitless.

Earle painted pictures without "who, what, when, where and why within 90 words" journalistic rules. That was not his style. If you tried to ruin what he had painted for public consumption because journalism meant everything, all you were doing in the process was ruining what local wrestling and football fans looked at was the latest Monet, Picasso, Rembrandt or Van Gogh.

Again, he drove us editors crazy!!

Still, the truth was no one was more passionate about the sports he reported on in all my career than John Earle Livingston. And he saved his best for wrestling. Every year during my 15 winters at the Observer and in years before and after I wasn't there, Earle would regale the viewing audience with match stories and previews that made you sit up and read. even if you weren't a wrestling fan. He knew everything about the good wrestler as well as the future state champion like Damian Hahn of Lakewood or Maurice Worthy of Central Regional or Bobby Martin from Brick Memorial.

Earle knew 'em all. A key matchup involving an Ocean County team could be broken down individual match by individual match. Those 13 or 14 individual matches were dissected like a high school biology class frog. Many times, he was correct. And if he couldn't be at a match himself, you could almost be assured he would have had something in a roundup he took from a phone conversation that made it sound like he was there, sometimes making you believe he was at two matches at the same time if he was covering a match himself.

As for myself, I had a very good working knowledge of wrestling going into the paper. I went to Toms River High School East -- we had a kick-ass wrestling program that included standouts such as Joe Hadge, Denis Thesing, Chris Sierchio and Eric Priest, coached by a great coach and one of the nicer people you will ever come across, Warren Reid. My parents regularly went to East wrestling matches because they knew people in our Georgetown neighborhood who wrestled for the Raiders. It was second nature, really.

My first year at the newspaper had me covering a couple of wrestling matches, but they weren't of "great" note compared to what Earle got to cover. I didn't know the technicalities of the sport like he did, but I did know how to describe the action to Earle for which he could understand -- and that would be the tone of our conversations for years until I got to become an assistant sports editor and had my own girls basketball beat to cover in 1993, which kept me away from wrestling.

And if I had anything to ask about a certain match he was at, Earle would explain it as if I was there. If I close my eyes now, I can still hear him that first winter explain how Brick Memorial's Dean Kanabrocki caught Toms River East's Tim Rioux in the right position with a memorable bear hug, would not let him go and eventually pinned him in the heavyweight class to score Brick Memorial's memorable first Shore Conference Tournament championship over East. Ultimately, I saw Clear Cable-8's replay of the match ... yup, exactly how Earle described it.

There were other matches along the way he wanted to know about that I covered -- that February night in 1986 when Lacey stunned host Point Pleasant Boro in the Shore Conference Tournament quarterfinals or the night in February 1987 when defending state Group III champion Brick Memorial lost to coach Ralph Ross' Highland Regional Tartans in Blackwood and how the place became a near-riot when Tod Narwid took his Highland opponent down hard and eventually got disqualified for a slam that I personally thought the kid was not hurt enough to stop wrestling. Narwid was dominating him and if he won, there was no doubt Brick Memorial would have won that match. I can still hear coach Tony Caravella's voice cracking to the point of near soprano as he broke into tears over the loss and slammed the locker room door behind him to have to deal with his unhappy Mustangs wrestlers.

Earle knew the nuances of the world of wrestling because he, too, was a wrestler back in the day at Toms River High School North for the legendary John Nemetz. Wrestling wasn't just a sport Earle wrote about ... it was a way of life, too, though his other way of life were both the Seaside Heights boardwalk stands and memorabilia businesses he owned.

And it's because of that passion and love he won many over as fans. It also made it easier for the wrestling coaches to warm up to the non-wrestling writers. Some of my favorite coaches over the years were Ed Gilmore at Point Boro, Mike Baldi at Toms River North, Al Aires at Jackson Memorial, the late Don Burstein at Lacey, Steve Sasse at Point Pleasant Beach, Bill Savage at Pinelands Regional as well as the venerable Warren Reid and Tony Caravella.

Was I as passionate about covering wrestling as Earle? Hell, no! I did it, though, because it was a continuing growing sport, even though a boys basketball match between Lakewood and CBA or Lakewood against anyone was more appealing. But knowing Earle could tell you things you needed to know before you headed out to a wrestling match made it that much easier to cover.

Individual stories about Earle? Well, I have three in particular.

The first one came at the NJSIAA wrestling championships in 1987 at Jadwin Gymnasium. I was at the Dillon Pool facility on the Princeton University campus that March 14 to see if Toms River South standout swimmer Terence Donnelly could win a state championship in either the 50 or the 100. He did not, but he got a medal for his efforts. When I got done dictating my story to Chris Christopher, our fastest typist in the sports department, I headed over to where the state wrestling championships were. I had my press pass so I could easily walk in and find my way to press row. I found Earle. He was getting into each match, so I found a spot sitting next to him. For the next hour, he was going over what each individual wrestler was doing right and wrong with me or anyone else willing to listen -- whether he was an area wrestler or not. You could get a quick education listening to Earle talk about these wrestlers.

The second one came in a more contentious time for us at the paper. It was February 1993. Pinelands Regional High School had some big-time wrestlers who suddenly weren't on the lineup sheet for the district tournament. Earle, obviously, was inquisitive. He pressed Savage on the matter. Most coaches wouldn't pry the "real" reason out of themselves for protection purposes. But Bill Savage was not one to hold back. Turns out, he told Earle that those wrestlers had been suspended for an incident involving the egging of another coach's car at the school. Earle reported what Savage told him. Let's just say that time was not fun because Savage spent an entire day having to explain himself to higher-ups for his comments in the paper and, to top that, the once-affable athletic director at the school refused to talk to any of us in the sports department ever again. I know, I know ... what a freakin' cry baby! But Earle had no fear to report something that involved a key member or members of the team, good or bad. He proved his worth.

The last of the three came in a more sentimental time. Now I was not around Toms River at the time -- I was up in Bristol, Conn., covering the Toms River East American Little League All-Stars ride to the East Region championship and ultimately, their first trip to the Little League World Series in 1995. It was during this trip to Bristol that two iconic figures of a generation or two ago -- baseball star Mickey Mantle and Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia -- passed away. Mickey Mantle died on a Sunday morning, August 13, 1995. Earle was working his boardwalk stand that morning in Seaside Heights and one of his young workers at the stand, a young lady who had just graduated from North named Renee Larson, has no idea who Mickey Mantle was when he brought up his death to her. He had to take initiative -- after he got done with his work at the stands, he headed over to the paper's 8 Robbins Street location and told our boss, Mike Lazorchak, he wanted to write a column on Mickey Mantle and who he was to a generation of kids growing up. And so Mike gave him the green light to do so.

It was, in my opinion, the best column Earle ever wrote.

As the assistant sports editor from 1993-99, then sports editor for the last winter I was there, I understood the frustration of other editors before me who had to deal with Earle's personal touch in writing stories. The one thing I could never understand was the three-dot statement in his stories -- the ..., which drove me crazy! The ellipsis, I came to find out, meant leaving a word or a whole phrase or sentence out of the text of the story. It left me wondering what the heck else Earle had to say in his story that was missing.

But years later, I came to appreciate that three-dot interlude. Now ... because of Earle ... I regularly use the ellipsis in stories and on my Facebook page. It's ... helpful.

So there! There's the Earle influence on me journalistic-wise! I can't paint pictures in five or six paragraphs to start a story like he did, but hey, I can take something from him!

The only times I saw Earle after I left the Observer in the summer of 1999 would be at either his boardwalk stands or in the Ocean County Mall at his sports souvenir and memorabilia kiosk. In 2003, he, my former boss, Al Ditzel, and photographer, Pete Picknally at the paper, and some others went to what was the final opening day at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia between the Phillies and Pittsburgh Pirates during the time I was in between my jobs in Key West and Palatka. It was 43 degrees that day. God, it was cold!

The last time I saw Earle was the Summer of 2014 while I was up in Toms River for my 30th class reunion and got to see my old Little League, Toms River, win a state championship. It was just a passing "Hi!" and to catch up on things.

And so with his passing, so much thought comes to mind. I think to my former Observer compatriot, Steve Falk, who has taken what Earle passed down to him in my later years at the paper, and run with the wrestling baton as the main man in covering that sport at the Asbury Park Press. And believe Steve when he said how much he hated wrestling -- I was there to hear it back then!

Wrestling was already a top sport in Ocean County, the Shore area, the state of New Jersey when Earle began writing about it in 1983 -- he helped elevate it to a point no one had seen it, especially in a time period when the newspaper was the only way to find out how matches went in detail if you could not be there yourself. And if you were there, you just wanted to read Earle's take on the match just to see if he and you were thinking the same thing about that match and its key moments.

Being at the Observer was a lot of work, but I could not have picked a better time to be working at the newspaper, which I did from 1984-99. We elevated all local high school and college sports to a new level not quite seen before. But no sport in Ocean County got elevated the way wrestling was.

That was all Earle, colorful writing and all, even if it took him a number of paragraphs to get to the main point.

R.I.P. Earle. It was always knowledgeable what you wrote ... entertaining, too.