Jays prospect had one dream season
Kuziomko, who died from COVID-19, helped win minor league title Tim Kuziomko helped the Jays’ rookie-level team win its only Pioneer League championship.
As the proverbial expressions go, Tim Kuziomko could hit a ball a mile and was strong as an ox.
His good friend Nick Lazaratos talked about his “blasts” as a hockey player, “howitzers” that would make goaltenders freeze with fear.
Kuziomko was also a threat any time he went to the plate. That’s how I remember him as a teammate in the Dorval Senior Baseball League in suburban Montreal in 1992, when he batted .520. He was big and muscular, a commanding presence at six-foot-three and 200 pounds. Opposing pitchers would have been better off issuing intentional walks every time, instead of trying to pitch to him.
“He was the best bad-pitch hitter I knew,” said Terry Tsekos, another 1992 teammate and friend for 50 years.
By then, Kuziomko was approaching 30, past his prime as a major-league prospect. Ten years earlier, he had signed with the Blue Jays and reported to their rookie-league club in Medicine Hat, Alta.
That ’82 team, with Kuziomko as a backup corner infielder, went 44-26 under manager Gary LaRocque and won the Pioneer League championship. The cast featured future majorleague pitchers David Wells and Jimmy Key and third baseman Pat Borders, who would make his mark in the majors as a catcher.
Ex-teammates, family members and other friends reminisced recently after word spread that Kuziomko had died of COVID-19 in early May at his home in Newmarket. Although he was never identified in a report from York Region Public Health on May 9, the 57-yearold warehouse attendant was among 24 employees infected at the Saputo Dairy processing plant near Highways 7 and 427 — the only one who died.
The Montreal-based company didn’t respond to requests for comment, but company president Lino Saputo Jr. sent a letter to employees on May 11, disclosing that Kuziomko’s death was due to COVID-19 and offering condolences.
Cousin Linda Kuziomko-Kucharski told the Star that he had been suffering from flu-like symptoms since February, but was never tested for the coronavirus. She said he was diagnosed after he died, which showed up in the coroner’s report obtained by the family.
Close friend Claudio Piroli said he delivered food to Kuziomko on May 2, a Saturday, at the house he was renting. “When I saw Tim when he answered the door, he was weak. He was huffing and puffing,” Piroli recalled. “I asked him if he wanted me to call an ambulance. He said, ‘No, don’t worry about it. I’m going to eat.’ I told him he should go and get tested to see what is wrong, even if it’s not COVID. He said he didn’t go because he didn’t have an OHIP card. Yeah, he didn’t have an OHIP card.”
Piroli tried to call Kuziomko several times later that weekend without a response, and notified the family. On the night of May 5, Piroli drove over and found police cars in the driveway. One officer told Piroli that a neighbour had found Kuziomko dead inside the house.
“Tim was on antibiotics and he just got worse and worse,” Kuziomko-Kucharski said. “He kept telling his adopted daughter (Kyana) that, ‘I will be OK. I’m not feeling good, but I will be fine.’ Then that weekend, he told (Kyana) he could barely walk. He was so sick and it was suggested he go to emergency.” He died soon after. According to Tsekos, Kuziomko worked for Saputo near Quebec City for many years, then accepted a transfer to the suburban Toronto plant in June 2018.
“He decided to jump on the position,’’ Kuziomko-Kucharski said. “He was going to be making more money — and because there was better health care in Ontario.”
Born and raised in Montreal, the right-handed hitter caught the eye of Jays area scout Bill Slack and signed as a free agent in the days before Canadians were eligible for the major league draft. He was immediately assigned to Medicine Hat. While several websites list his first name as Stanley, his father’s name, teammates only knew him as Tim.
“Tim was pretty good for the time he was in there at third,” Borders told the Star. “I remember him being a tall, lanky kid, a powerful guy. He could throw the ball really good to first. And he was a good, genuine, nice people person. So sad to hear what happened to him.”
Borders was the regular at third and batted .316 that season with five homers and 33 RBI. Kuziomko was the backup and appeared in 29 games, batting .176.
The league championship, over Montana’s Great Falls Dodgers, was the only one in Medicine Hat history.
“It’s one of the better teams I ever played one. That’s one of the real reasons we were so close,” former outfielder Kash Beauchamp, now a coach, said in an interview. We had a lot of camaraderie … We never had any money. We played for the love of the game. Tim fit in. He was such a great teammate, a guy to depend on. He worked hard, played hard.
“Tim looked really good in a baseball uniform ... He had the look of a major-league third baseman.”
Beauchamp added that he’d been in touch with Kuziomko just a few weeks ago about a possible team reunion, and that his old teammate never mentioned he was sick.
Kuziomko played 47 games for Medicine Hat in 1983, but quit pro baseball after the Jays released him the following spring. A tryout offer from the Montreal Expos wasn’t accepted.
Lazaratos said he recently paid tribute to his baseball and hockey buddy, on a trip to a Montreal Canadian Tire story.
“I put on a Rawlings glove like the one he had that I used,” he said, “and I tossed a few fly balls to myself like the towering ones he would hit to me. And I took a few phantom swings with a bat from both the right and left side, as good memories of our trips to the batting cages.”
Kuziomko is survived by his father Stanley, who recently turned 90, sister Terri, and daughters Calynda and Kyana.