ROCKIES’ OTTAVINO BACK IN N.Y. GROOVE
Relief pitcher Ottavino, ducking these days at grade school he attended, is tall on mound
Public School 39, also known as the Henry Bristow School, sits on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Eighth Street in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. The distinctive brick building, with its classic mansard roof, opened in 1877, making it the oldest public school in New York.
It’s where Rockies relief pitcher Adam Ottavino attended elementary school. His mother, Eve, has taught at PS 39 for 25 years, and currently teaches in the same classroom where her son learned how to multiply and divide in the fourth grade.
“Every year, I make Adam come in and talk to my kids about working hard and dreaming big,” Eve said. “This is a really old school, and it was built for much shorter people. Adam’s 6-foot-5, so he barely fits in the doorways. He has to duck everywhere. But once he was a little kid in this school, just like these kids, so I tell them that anything can happen.”
Plenty is happening for Ottavino. At age 32, in his eighth year in the majors, he’s pitching like an all-star. Entering the weekend, Ottavino has been almost untouchable, posting an 0.53 ERA. Utilizing his fastball and a deadly combination of sliders, Ottavino has struck out 31 of the 58 batters he faced — a 53.4 strikeout percentage that ranked second in baseball.
This weekend, as the Rockies took on the Mets at Citi Field, he returned to the city, and the family roots, that shaped him.
His great grandfather, Adamo
Ottavino, literally helped shaped the face of New York City. In 1913, he founded the A. Ottavino Corporation, a stone-and-granite company, which for 105 years has specialized in building restoration, fine art conservation and stone fabrication. The company restored the Temple of Dendur at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in 1986, it restored the granite base of the Statue of Liberty. Ottavino’s grandfather, and his father, for a time, worked at the stone company.
“I think New York really helped shape Adam into who he is,” Eve said. “When he was a kid, he would go all over the city, on his own, unsupervised. It helped him become independent, I think. He was into skateboarding for a while, and he’d take his skateboard with him and go on the subway.”
Ottavino first learned to play baseball at Prospect Park, a 526acre oasis of green just across the street from his childhood home in Brooklyn. His father, John, coached Ottavino’s youth baseball teams — that is when John wasn’t busy acting on the Broadway stage or traveling around the country to appear in movies, television shows or plays.
John, who gave up his stable life in the family business to pursue his dreams, has been an accredited actor for 40 years. He’s appeared in more than 70 professional plays, acted in a number of movies and appeared in 17 episodes of “Law and Order” or “Law and Order, Special Victims Unit.”
In 1991, when Adam was just a toddler, John shot a key scene for a second-season episode of “Law and Order.” Part of the filming took place just a few blocks from the Ottavino’s home. In the episode, entitled “Renunciation,” John played the part of Larry Kealey, a man who is killed in a hit-and-run accident. It turns out that Kealy’s wife, a high school teacher, was having an affair with one of her students.
“So my wife and my son got to watch my character get run down by a car,” John recalled with a laugh.
Following your dreams
Ottavino looks at his father’s decision to quit the family business and pursue acting with a sense of awe and admiration.
“He chased his passion, which is what I did, too,” Ottavino said. “He could have stayed with the family stone company his whole life and made a very good living. But he did what he wanted to to and he’s still doing it. He might not have become a major star, but he’s a very good, well-respected actor in this city.”
Ottavino credits both his parents for his love and passion for baseball.
“I’m very close with them,” he said. “My mom always loved baseball, for as long as I could remember. I’m an only child and I was with with my father a lot. That was a big advantage for me. When he was gone away, acting, he was really gone. But when he was home, he was really home. So he was able to coach me a lot.”
Eve, born and raised in Manhattan, was actually a bigger baseball fanatic than her husband.
“I was a fan because my grandparents were huge Mets fan when I was a kid,” she recalled. “My grandmother, especially. She loved Cleon Jones. That was her favorite player. I learned about baseball watching it on a little black-and-white TV with my grandparents.”
Eve saved up her babysitting money so that she could attend Mets games at old Shea Stadium in Queens.
“Back then, you could go down to Grand Central Station and buy box seats, when you could still afford them,” she recalled. “So I spent a lot of my youth at Shea Stadium, by myself. I’d bring my camera and try to get autographs. I loved Wayne Garrett, so I would get seats along the third-base line.”
John Ottavino began coaching Adam when he was 6 years old. John discovered that he was going to land the coaching gig in 1991 while filming the movie, “On Top of the World,” on location in Colorado.
“We were shooting for 10 weeks at Winter Park in March and April,” John remembered. “I was doing the movie for Denver Center (Productions). So Eve and Adam took a ski vacation in Winter Park to coincide with my shooting.
“When Eve got there, she said to me, ‘Oh, by the way, I signed Adam up for baseball and they just had their first game on Saturday.’ I asked her how it went. So Eve tells me, ‘It was so cold and wet that everybody ended up crying and going inside for pizza.’
“Then she said, ‘Oh, by the way, your son is terrible. When you get home you’ll have to teach him how to play baseball.’ I said, ‘I think I can do that.’ ”
So, for eight years, John passionately coached his son’s baseball teams, until his son grew so talented that he began attracting the attention of traveling teams and scouts. Now, John spends many afternoons and weekends umpiring youth and high school games all over New York’s five boroughs.
“My dad loved the strategic part of baseball, and that’s how we would watch games together,” Ottavino said. “I always wanted to know, ‘What pitch is this guy throwing? What’s he going to pitch next?’ ”
Early on, Ottavino’s mom noticed her son’s attention to detail.
“We’d go to a ballgame and Adam was always pointing things out,” Eve said. “He’d say, ‘Let’s go over to the bullpen to watch this guy,’ Adam always approached baseball that way.”
In love with the game
When Ottavino was 7 years old, his dad took him to Yankee Stadium to see the home opener. Yankees legend Joe Dimaggio threw out the first pitch.
“I leaned over to Adam and said, ‘Hey, son, that’s Joe Dimaggio,’ ” John recalled. “Adam looked at me with absolute disdain in his eyes and said, ‘Geez dad, everybody knows who Joe Dimaggio is!’
“I have no idea how my 7-yearold son knew that.”
Though Ottavino plays baseball in Colorado, New York remains home base. He lives in an apartment on Manhattan’s East side with his wife, Brette, and their 2 K-year-old daughter, Bradley.
This offseason, however, Ottavino faced a dilemma. He wanted to train in the city he loves, but he also wanted to spend more time with his family. The idea of commuting to a baseball facility in Long Island, where he had trained in previous years, was no longer the right answer.
Plus, Ottavino needed a fresh start, especially knowing that he’ll become a free agent after this season.
The right-hander, who missed most of his 2015 season because of Tommy John surgery, had a disastrous 2017 season, and was even left off the Rockies’ wild-card playoff roster. He walked nearly seven batters per nine innings. In a June 27 game at Dodger Stadium, Ottavino fired a Rockies record-tying four wild pitches, and also gave up a two-run homer to Cody Bellinger leading to six earned runs charged to him in one inning. He became the first pitcher in 50 years to give up four or more runs on wild pitches in a game.
“You can call it whatever you want,” Ottavino said afterward. “It was pretty pathetic. I’ve pitched badly before. I need to get to the drawing board and see what changes I need to make.”
In search of change, he built his own baseball gym, utilizing a vacant commercial space in a strip mall in Harlem. Ottavino’s fatherin-law, a real-estate developer, came up with the idea. He said he would allow Ottavino to use the space for four months, rent free, if Ottavino would get him a bat signed by Rockies all-star third baseman Nolan Arenado.
The setup was perfect. His homemade pitcher’s heaven included a store-bought pitching mound, a strip of artificial turf, netting, and cameras to record his every move. Mostly, he worked out alone, but on Wednesday’s and Friday’s, young pitchers would join Ottavino and they would throw to a local college catcher.
Perhaps best of all, Ottavino’s facility was just a block from the “A” and “C” trains, giving him him a short commute back to Manhattan, enabling him to spend more time with his wife and baby girl.
“I was desperate for a new situation to train in,” he said. “I needed a place for my baseball stuff. A place I could go anytime I wanted and work out when I wanted.”
So, for six days a week, Ottavino dedicated himself to that little baseball island in a Harlem strip mall. Now he could be on a path to his first All-star Game.
“My mom and dad have always given me support, and they had something to do with me bouncing back this year,” Ottavino said. “But the truth is, I worked really hard to get to the place I am now. I’m pitching better now than I ever have and I have an opportunity to make it very special.”
Eve Ottavino looks at her son with immense pride.
“The thing that I am really the most proud of is that he came back, and was able to figure out what the issues were and what he needed to do about it,” she said. “Adam’s had his ups and down, but he’s always been able to pick himself up.”
Like any good New Yorker.