Like father, like son
41 years later, sons follow dads in CIAC baseball championships
John Swaim was sitting next to pitcher Dave Gonsalves in the Warde dugout in the ninth inning of that unforgettable June night in 1981. Gonsalves lived 100 yards from where Swaim lives today and the two were close friends.
“I saw Ed Bengermino give Greg Cantwell the steal sign,” Swaim said. “I turned to Gonsalves and said, ‘Did he?’ Dave said, ‘Yes, he did.’ ”
What happened next is baseball legend in Fairfield and led to a state championship that has not been repeated at Warde in more than four decades. That can change Saturday when the No. 1 team in the GameTimeCT Top 10 poll faces Southington in the Class LL championship at Palmer Field in Middletown.
Swaim was a senior on Warde in 1981. He served as a pinch-hitter in that 13-inning, 9-8 victory over Rockville. His son Carson is a sophomore on this year’s team.
In a little piece of role reversal, Mike Broderick was a sophomore on Warde’s team in 1981 and would go on to become a much bigger piece of the 1982 state finalists. His son Zach, the starting pitcher Saturday, is a senior. He’s an undeniable baseball talent headed to Merrimack in the fall and a player of considerable energy.
Two dads. Two sons. One mission.
The ’81 championship at Quigley Field at West Haven took four hours and 50 to minutes to play and didn’t end until 12:20 a.m.
“It was absolutely insane,” Swaim said.
Rockville had taken a 5-0 lead. Warde tied it. Rockville went up 8-5 with a pair of runs in the top of the ninth. Matters looked desperate. Cantwell, however, hit a two-run triple to make it 8-7. Here’s the situation.
Two outs. 0-2 count. Bottom of the order up. Warde was down to its last strike. The chances of contact were not great. Bengermino, the longtime Warde coach, was in the third-base box. Standing only a few feet away from Cantwell, he gave the steal sign. Cantwell broke for the plate.
“The ultimate risk,” said Staples
coach Jack McFarland.
Cantwell, who Swaim described as a gritty, fast, athletic kid, slid headfirst. Safe. He stole home.
McFarland, who would join the Warde varsity in 1982 as a sophomore starting first baseman and closer, remembers the pitch as down the middle of the plate. Was a surprised umpire so distracted he called it a ball instead of strike three and game over?
“Was it really strike three?” Broderick said. “I’ve heard both sides of it.”
“I’m not going to say it was a strike, but it was close,” Swaim said.
A pitch to be argued for decades. The game went into extra innings.
An announcement was made that the 13th would be the final inning of the night. The game would have to be resumed the following day.
Cantwell had other ideas. He doubled. When he went to steal third, the errant throw went into left field and he scored for a 9-8 victory. A wild celebration ensued.
WTNH cameras caught one of the players being carried on the shoulders of his teammates. He was holding up a big bottle.
McFarland identified the player as winning pitcher Gonsalves and the bottle as, yes, champagne.
“How the heck he got a bottle of champagne, I’ll never know,” Swaim said.
The public high school in Fairfield was known as Roger Ludlowe until 1956 when overcrowding led to the opening of a second one, Andrew Warde. With declining attendance, the schools were consolidated as Fairfield in 1987. It was during that time Fairfield won the state Class LL baseball title in 2002. With rising enrollment, Ludlowe re-opened as the second high school in 2003.
If all the switching emotional allegiances sounds like a John Mayer song, hey, Mayer graduated from Fairfield in 1995.
“The ’22 team wants to leave its own legacy,” Warde coach Brett Connor said. “But they’re definitely aware of the ’81 team. We also talked about the 2002 team.”
Fairfield defeated Simsbury 8-1 in the 2002 Class LL finals and along the way eliminated Shelton by a run from the tournament quarterfinals. Connor played for Shelton.
“So my last high school game was on the Warde baseball field,” Connor said. “My parents were both teachers at Fairfield High at the time. I was very familiar with a number of the players.”
Connor’s wife, Nicole, teaches math at Warde, but you don’t have to be a math teacher to know some of this has added up to heartache along the way. In Connor’s first year as Warde coach, Giacomo Brancato ripped a threerun homer with two outs in the sixth to tie the 2016 Class LL championship Amity won in the bottom of the seventh with a — dagger — walk-off walk.
Swaim, meanwhile, vividly remembers being stranded on first base in the ’82 championship, a 7-6 loss to Bob DeMayo’s North Haven team. That also marked the last time an FCIAC team went back-toback to the Class LL finals.
Much could change Saturday.
“We weren’t a favorite going into that tournament in 1981,” Swaim said. “We were a really good team. We weren’t dominant like today’s Warde team.”
From highly successful Little League teams on up, Fairfield is a baseball town. Broderick, now president of Fairfield National LL, coached the likes of Jack Andrews, Roman DiGiacomo and his son since they were 10.
“It’s incredible watching these guys,” Broderick said. “I think it’s more exciting watching your kid go through it than when you did, but it’s way more than just Zach. This is a really special group.
“They’re like family. These guys are always willing to give back. Clinics, workouts; we had a playoff game (Wednesday) and like 18 of them showed up to support the Little League program.”
Sparks figure to be flying off of Zach Broderick on Saturday. He’s not afraid to pump his fist or to let out a primal scream after big outs. Since battling his way back from a torn labrum a few years back, the lefty seems to savor every moment.
“We throw a lot at Zach and he’s a special player, an incredible competitor,” Connor said. “He is our energy guy and the team rallies around him.”
Trying to throw out a Glastonbury runner at second, DiGiacomo hit Broderick square in the right shoulder and dropped him in early May. Scary. His dad thought Zach may have gotten hit in the face. Broderick pulled himself up, retired the next two batters, came up the next inning and homered.
“A storybook-type of thing,” Broderick said.
In early April, Coginchaug came to play at Warde. Athletic director Dave Schulz earlier had mentioned to Connor that its coach played at Warde on the 1981 and 1982 teams. Connor was reminded during a rain delay.
“Brett came over to me and he’s like, ‘Just so you know, Mark Basil is the head coach for Coginchaug,’ ” Broderick said. “I didn’t want to interrupt him during the game.
“Once the game was over, I grabbed John Swaim. ‘Johnny, Mark is the head coach over there.’ He was like, ‘Get out.’ ”
“I had no clue,” said Swaim, a Fairfield insurance and real estate broker. “It was great for us to catch up with him.”
Carson and Zach, who had homered in the win, were called over to meet Basil.
“It was a nice moment for him to meet our sons,” Broderick said.
A Warde moment. “Getting to Palmer was one thing they put on their check list when the season started,” Broderick said. “One box is left unchecked right now.”