Charles Giambelluca, dedicated youth baseball coach, dies at age 77

In the late 1950s in Mercer County, New Jersey, the star athlete everyone wanted to watch was a serious- looking Italian American boy at Steinert High School in Hamilton named Charles Giambelluca.

Giambelluca, known to everyone as Chuck, once slammed into an iron outfield fence to catch a baseball, gashing his face so badly that it needed stitches. As a point guard, he helped Steinert’s basketball team defeat its rival, Ewing High School, leaping into a brawl that fol lowed a nd need in g stitches after that, too. When he left the hospital to meet his friends at a pizza joint that night, he was greeted with a standing ovation.

A three- sport athlete, he also played quarterback.

G i amb el luc a’s g lor y days are still remembered in Mercer County, and his name remains behind the glass display of Steinert High School’s athletic hall of fame. But it wasn’t until later that he made a far more indelible mark on the central New Jersey sports scene.

After playing in the Milwaukee Braves’ farm system in his early 20s and then working as a photo engraver for T he Trenton Times, Giambelluca in 1970 became the volunteer coach of the Broad Street Park Post 313 American Legion baseball team in Hamilton.

He stayed with them for the next 50 years, winning a state championship in 1975 and becoming a father figure to many young athletes in the area. Even after he stopped coaching in 2005, he continued as the team’s general manager.

He also ran a sporting goods shop in Hamilton, Mercer Locker Room, for 20 years.

Giambelluca died on Oct. 9 at a hospital in Trenton, New Jersey. He was 77. The cause was complications of COVID-19, his son, Michael, said.

“Nobody coa ches as long as he did,” Michael Giambelluca said. “He never got a cent. He did it because he loved the game.”

Rick Freeman, a coach who competed against Giambelluca for years, s a id , “C huc k ’ s t e ams played hard no matter what the score was, and that’s the ultimate testament to a coach.”

Charles Michael Giambelluca was born in Trenton on Dec. 5, 1942. His father, Angelo, whose parents emigrated from Sicily to America, was a train conductor. His mother, Theresa ( Puca) Giambelluca, worked in a cigar factory.

Chuck graduated from Steinert High School in 1961 and ser ved in the Army Reserve, stationed at Fort Dix. He married Geraldine Campanile in 1966.

In addition to his wife and his son, who is an elementary school principal, he is survived by a sister, Ginger Schnorbus, and three grandchildren.