Paul Cantiani, the man that brought independent baseball to the city of Worcester, Mass., believes that Minnesota Twins first baseman Chris Colabello should wind up and hit a tree. Evergreen, birch, hickory or willow – it doesn’t matter: He should just let loose and wail on some arbor. “I just want to punch him once in a while and say, why don’t you get pissed off? Punch a tree or something,” says Cantiani in an East Coast accent so thick he could be mistaken for a Family Guy character. “He just smiles back.”
Cantiani is kidding of course. Colabello broke his hand while playing in his penultimate season for the Worcester Tornadoes, the Canadian-American independent league team that Cantiani brought to central Massachusetts. Even if he hadn’t done that, it isn’t smart for a person that wants to hit a ball 400 feet or throw a runner out at home to run around punching trees.
Colabello would be justified if he let loose, however. He played his first MLB game at age 29 last year. He is also primarily a first baseman, a fungible defensive position where Joe Mauer will play next season, and a right fielder, where first round pick Chris Parmelee and blue-chipper Oswaldo Arcia play, and he hit below the Mendoza Line in 181 plate appearances as a rookie. That means that if he cannot get the bat going, he probably will not find a spot on a major league roster. He cannot play for the Tornadoes if he gets cut because they folded shortly after he entered the Twins system and he does not have much more to accomplish in the minor leagues after being named International League MVP and Rookie of the Year last season.
None of that bothers Colabello, though, because he is just taking it one step at a time. “Every day my focus is on the task at hand and when I say that I mean it,” he says. “If you get too caught up in where I’m going to be in a week or where I’m going to be in two weeks or what’s going to happen in my next at-bat or all that stuff, it has a tendency to really detract from what you’re trying to do as a player.”
“He doesn’t feel pressure,” says Cantiani. “He’s acting no different in the major leagues than he did when he was [with] the Tornadoes. I’m not kidding you; the kid’s wacky. You can tell him I said that too. If you talk to him about me, he’ll tell you how much he loves me.”
Beloved in Worcester
Everybody in this city took to him because he’s just so personable. He’d stay after games and sign autographs for an hour or two hours and it was all for nothing. He’s just a nice kid.
– Paul Cantiani, Cantiani Insurance Agency
“The one thing I can say about Paul for sure is that he has a huge heart and he’s a very straight shooter,” says Colabello. “Until you get to know him, it’s hard to see how big his heart is and what kind of guy he is.” He calls Cantiani the Godfather of Worcester. “He’s a guy that cared very deeply for a lot of players who played for the Worcester Tornadoes those years when I was playing and became like a surrogate dad to me.”
It was not as though Colabello needed a surrogate father, though: Both of his parents, Lou and Silvana, were supportive of his choice to pursue professional baseball despite his long odds and allowed him to live at home while he was playing for the Tornadoes. Lou, a high school physical education teacher and former pitcher, met Lou while he was playing professionally in Italy. “My mom and dad have the same passion for the game that I do,” Colabello told Sports On Earth’s Pat Borzi. “A day on a baseball field is better than a day somewhere else. That’s the way I looked at it.”
So while his parents were comfortable with him living at home until age 27, it was Cantiani that got in his ear about his pursuit of a career as a professional baseball player. “I was like, ‘you’re outta your goddamn mind!'” yelled Cantiani, adding that Colabello made enough money to live independently during that time. “Would you goddamn move out? He loves his mother and father.”
“They were more than happy to have me there,” says Colabello, smiling. “I was an only child in an Italian family.”
“The problem I was having, personally at the end, I was saying, ‘Chris, you’re 27, you’re 27 years old, stop bullshitting yourself. You’ve got to get out and get into the real world and find some kind of career,'” says Cantiani. “I used to think he was playing baseball because he was too lazy to get a job.”
The two used to get together every for lunch when Colabello was playing for the Tornadoes, but Cantiani would not allow Colabello to talk about baseball. “He knows I don’t want to hear it,” Cantiani says. “I want to talk about your life, I want to talk about your girlfriend: I want to make sure you don’t knock her up.”
In the offseason Colabello taught baseball lessons and worked camps and clinics while also substitute teaching at local schools. Not only was it additional income for Colabello, who made between $800 and $2000 a month playing Indy ball, but it also allowed him to integrate with a community that he cared for greatly.
He even went so far as to participate in an event called Dancing with the City, Worcester’s play on the popular television show Dancing with the Stars. Colabello, who admittedly is a poor dancer, took Beth O’Brien, the wife of former City Manager Mike O’Brien, to the event. He had to do countless lessons, in addition to playing baseball, in order to be competent enough to dance in front of other people. In three weeks he learned how to do the Cha Cha and the Limbo. “Why would a guy do that? He just respects the City Manager,” says Cantiani. “And then he calls me up one time and says, ‘We’re going out with the City Manager’s daughters for lunch.’ So he takes me because he knows I’ll pay – so he’s not stupid.”
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Tom Schreier can be heard on The Michael Knight Show from 2-3:00 on weekdays. He has written for Bleacher Report and the Yahoo Contributor Network. Follow him on Twitter @tschreier3. |