Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Charlie Hustle
From the basketball court to the softball field, Charlie DiMarco remembered as Chesco’s jack of all trades
WEST CHESTER » The parlor game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ challenges competitors to arbitrarily choose an actor and then through their film work find a connection to another actor via the shortest path. The underlying theory is that you can get from any actor, alive or dead, to Kevin Bacon in less than six jumps.
The local sports equivalent is undoubtedly Charlie DiMarco. If it was athletics, and it happened in Chester County, chances are that Charlie DiMarco was either involved, or closely associated in some way going as far back as the late 1950s. And unlike Bacon, you could probably get to Charlie in far fewer than six steps.
“Charlie was a man of many interests,” said former West Chester University men’s basketball coach Dick DeLaney. “He had a lot of different careers, mostly in coaching, and he was good at all of them.
“Charlie was really good with people. He was a wonderful people-person and just a West Chester treasure.”
A lifelong resident of the borough, DiMarco died suddenly on March 25th at Chester County Hospital at the age of 79.
“He knew everybody in town,” DeLaney said. “He spent his whole life here. The kids he coached, loved him.
“He was just a true friend. There was nothing fake about Charlie.”
A three-sport star at West Chester High School (class of 1959), DiMarco was a legendary fast-pitch slugger in the West Chester Adult Softball League for six decades. In addition he served as the Athletic Director at St. Agnes, was an assistant coach at Bishop Shanahan, and he spent 13 seasons as assistant basketball coach at WCU. He was also a founding member, and later an inductee, to the Chester County Sports Hall of Fame.
DiMarco was Earl Voss’ right-hand man at West Chester for a decade, and when DeLaney took over in 1987, he stayed on for three seasons.
“Charlie and I go back 50plus years,” DeLaney said. “When I started coaching at Great Valley, we were on the same Independent Basketball League team.”
The two have remained close ever since, but last month they hadn’t seen each other for a year due to the coronavirus, although they spoke on the phone often. On March 20th, DeLaney and his wife, Toby, decided to get out. So they drove from their Springfield home to Jimmy Johns to get some pipin’ hot sandwiches.
“We got our food, walked to the back and who is sitting there in the corner, but Charlie,” DeLaney recalled. “He was there with his buddy, Tony Polito, the barber.
“We hugged each other – it was like two kids getting together. We must have sat there for an hour and talked.”
They parted with smiles on their faces, vowing to get together soon thereafter. But five days later, DeLaney got the news that Charlie had passed away. He is survived by his wife, Pat. The two were approaching their 50th wedding anniversary.
“That gave me an eerie, chilling feeling,” DeLaney acknowledged. “It was like it was almost meant to be that I got to see him. It was all just by chance. I hadn’t been out to Jimmy Johns since the beginning of the pandemic.”
DiMarco played baseball and basketball in high school, and helped lead the Warriors to Ches-Mont titles in both his senior year. He turned down a baseball scholarship to the University of Baltimore and chose to attend Goldey-Beacom in Wilmington to play junior college basketball and eventually graduated from Upper Iowa University.
He played and helped three teams win titles in the West Chester Adult Baseball League, but DiMarco fell in love with fast-pitch softball. He quickly became renown throughout the region as the quintessential cleanup hitter with a quick, compact swing that generated stunning power, especially from a 5-foot-11, 230-pounder.
“Charlie was the best softball player I ever saw,” DeLaney said.
His career stats were never complied, but it’s estimated that from 195991, DiMarco blasted at least 400 homers, drove in nearly 1,000 runners, and sported a career batting average just shy of .400. He played on 18 championship teams, including a state title in 1967 with the Wagontown Flyers.
“I used to call him the Babe Ruth of West Chester Softball,” DeLaney chuckled. “I’d go to see him play at Green Field and he’d see me play when I was in the (West Chester) Adult League then we’d get together at the Italian Social Club afterwards with a bunch of guys and we’d talk about how good we were.
“He was just a great athlete.”
In 2013, DiMarco became just the third Chester County inductee into the Amateur Softball Association of Pennsylvania Hall of Fame. Later that year, it was the Chester County Sports Hall of Fame.
“I love to be around the game and play it,” DiMarco said at the time.
In the early 1980s, when DiMarco was on the coaching staff at West Chester and DeLaney was at Philadelphia Textile (now Philadelphia University) under legendary coach Herb Magee, the two would travel in the same recruiting circles.
“Whether it was games, luncheons, banquets – you name it – Charlie was always there. We just connected right from the start,” DeLaney said.
“When I got the job at West Chester, Charlie was very supportive. Of course I wanted to keep him on. He was great at helping me transition with learning the ins and outs of the people to talk to at the university -- the admissions people, the financial aid people. He helped me get the lay of the land.”
After three seasons, DiMarco said to DeLaney: ‘you are on your way and I want to do some other things.’
He began working as a Pennsylvania State Constable and later served on the Board of Directors of the Keystone State Games/Senior Games. DiMarco made the switch to modified softball at the age of 50 in 1991, and then began competing in the Senior Games, where he won more than 100 medals in seven different events. Well into his 70s DiMarco continued to play recreational soft-pitch softball and his most recent sports discovery was pickleball.
“I love to compete,” DiMarco said in 2013. “I still have that fire today. I love the challenge.”