The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Yale’s Guarino managing while fighting cancer
NEW HAVEN — Ray Guarino admits patience isn’t his best trait. Not when he’s the patient. And especially not on Thursdays during the college baseball season, when his weekly chemotherapy session conflicts with Yale’s winter travel schedule.
“(Doctors and nurses) want to sit and talk to me,” Guarino says. “I don’t want to talk. Just put the needle in, hook me up and let’s go. I’ve got a flight to catch. Let’s pick up the pace.”
Cancer treatments, to Guarino, are a major inconvenience; a necessary nuisance that gets in the way of his busy days teaching and coaching.
Take this past weekend, for example.
Guarino spent Thursday morning in a treatment chair at a Smilow Cancer Hospital care center in North Haven, annoyed because things were taking
longer than usual. He finished up and hustled to catch the Yale team bus to the airport for a flight to South Carolina, where he coached first base for three games in three days at the Citadel.
There was a Sunday night flight and another long bus ride back to Yale. He arrived at his Milford home well after midnight, caught a few hours of sleep and was at his job teaching eighth grade at New Haven’s St. Francis School at 7:30 the next morning. Then it was off to practice at Yale, where he’s served as an assistant to John Stuper the past 11 years.
Next weekend Yale heads to Norfolk, Virginia for a three-game set with Old Dominion. Then its three games in Charleston, South Carolina the weekend after that with a midMarch trip to Florida for four more games.
Guarino will be there for every game, as well as the frigid Northeast portion of the schedule that begins on March 18 against Quinnipiac.
“I’m not one to sit around and do nothing. I need to be active; I need to be doing something,” Guarino said. “I feel so much better when I am working and trying to lead as normal a life as possible. My days are cut short, though. By 8 p.m. I’m done. I get home from work and practice and once the body starts decompressing, you shut down.”
Guarino, born and raised in West Haven, has been fighting multiple myeloma since May. He underwent a stem cell transplant last fall, and doctors monitor his progress with regular scans. At last check-up, cancer cells were found and chemotherapy ordered. Side effects are minimal and he remains ambitious.
Two weeks ago, he was hired to manage the New Britain Bees, a new franchise competing in the Futures Collegiate Baseball League. It’s a step up from the Hamden American Legion Post 88 team he’s coached the past seven years, both in quality and quantity of play.
There’s a 56-game schedule with daily travel to the league’s other affiliates in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. He’ll be managing a roster of mostly Division I players, which fits in line with his goal of becoming a full-time college coach.
He’s realistic. College baseball jobs don’t come around often. And at 44, his window is closing. So padding his resume just in case is a solid career choice.
Still, leaving Post 88 wasn’t an easy decision.
The team, their parents and the town rallied around him this past summer in the weeks after his initial diagnosis, helping raise money for his cause and lifting his spirits daily with their willingness to fight alongside him. They also reached the Super Regional portion of the American Legion state tournament.
“You get into coaching, and yeah, you want to develop and get guys better and see them play college or pro ball,” Guarino said. “But the bonds that I’ve had with current and former Hamden players, and what the town of Hamden and Hamden Legion parents did for me last summer, was something I’ll never forget.”