Siena Coach Tony Rossi Has Lived A Lifetime Of Purpose

To get an idea of why Siena’s Tony Rossi is still coaching at 78 years old and after 53 years in the job, you have to go back to when he was 12, growing up not too far from where he now coaches outside Albany, N.Y.

Like many baseball-mad youths, he played in his local Little League, but that wasn’t enough baseball for him, so he joined a second league called the Grasshopper League. Still not satisfied and out of other options, he simply started his own league. Not only did he find players for one team, but he went out and got sponsors lined up on his own, got shirts made for four teams, gathered the equipment, assigned three other 12-year-old kids to recruit players for other teams and then drew up a schedule.

It’s that same love of the game that keeps him going, distilled down to its purest form, and frankly, that’s the only way it could be in a place like Siena, which occupies a specific corner of the college baseball universe.

When Rossi arrived in 1969, Siena was a Division II program and its home field, Connors Park, didn’t have a fence or dugouts. His was also a part-time job that paid him $200 annually, so he taught math in a local school district as well. In addition to coaching, field maintenance chores such as dragging the infield also fell to Rossi, but without the equipment to do so, he used a piece of reclaimed chain link fence dragged behind his car to get the job done.

Stories like that feel almost alien today.

“All of us young coaches are like, ‘What? You did what? You had to do what?’ We don’t even understand what that’s like,” said Central Florida coach Greg Lovelady, who has great admiration for Rossi and whose team has played Siena five of the six years he’s been there, save for last season when the Saints played a conference-only schedule.

 

In the last 53 years, not only has the home park come a long way, but Siena has moved from D-II to, ultimately, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference.

The experience he gained in switching conferences so much is more relevant than ever today given the shifting sands of realignment, but he’s not sure there’s any real secret to navigating those waters.

“It’s tough,” Rossi said with a laugh. “I don’t know what advice I could give other than, ‘Go get better players.’ We don’t do anything without players. It’s all about talent.”

Siena has one notable big leaguer: lefthander John Lannan, the Nationals’ 11th-round pick in 2005, who recorded a 4.18 ERA in 862 innings over eight seasons.

Rossi’s greatest legacy, outside of uncommon longevity, is the loyalty he engenders among his players and those who have worked with him in the program.

To talk to Rossi about his career is to hear stories about everyone who still comes out to see him and the team every year. There’s the player from his early years who he laments having to let go—Rossi currently has a policy of not cutting any player he recruited to campus—who still checks in despite having been cut all those years ago.

 

Wins and losses are also always part of a coach’s legacy, and Rossi’s 2014 team stands out.

That group won the MAAC automatic bid for a trip to regionals, the second of Rossi’s career—the other came in 1999—and were placed in the Fort Worth Regional. There, in an elimination game, the Saints took down No. 2 seed Dallas Baptist 9-8 in 10 innings.

With any coach who has been at it as long as Rossi has, the retirement question just kind of hangs around at all times. Trust that Rossi is very aware that there’s a fair bit of curiosity about the subject from the outside looking in.

For now, he says the adrenaline is the same every year. He only sleeps two to four hours per night as it is, but the night before his team was set to fly down to Florida to begin the season, Rossi went to bed shortly before 9:00 p.m. and woke up about two hours later. Rather than fight to squeeze more sleep out of the night, he just got up and waited to leave for the team’s early-morning flight.

At the field, the energy coming off of him is also apparent. He hasn’t hit infield or pitched batting practice in more than a decade, but he’s still very present in pregame activities.

You can spot him perched by the entrance to the dugout. He’s often carrying on a conversation with the players who happen to be leaning on the railing at the moment, and he’s quick with a joke for any player who comes back after a round of BP.

At this stage, no conversation about Rossi’s timeline for stepping away has been all that serious.

“He has family outside of Siena with his wife and his kids and his grandkids,” said Siena athletic director John D’Argenio, who has worked with Rossi since 1993.

The AD will occasionally ask Rossi if he wants to spend more time with family.

“Those conversations are had, but I’m not going to lie and say they’re very intense,” D’Argenio said.

Rossi clearly has passion for what he does, but that’s not to say that he loves everything about the way things have turned in college baseball. He bemoans how distracted players are now that they have the world at their fingertips in the form of a smartphone, and he worries about the effect that the transfer portal will have on programs like his.

While plenty of coaches bristle about those same things, with some questioning whether they’re cut out to coach in today’s world, Rossi looks at it differently. He doesn’t resent those changes. He just sees it as part of the job.

“The kids, they’re pulled away because of this,” Rossi said, holding up his smartphone. “And because of the media, and so forth, they’re pulled in different directions where previous generations were not. Do we fault them? No, because they’re dealt that hand.”

Rossi spends significant time in the warmer climes of Estero, Fla., but fishing and golf, pastimes of the retiree crowd in the Sunshine State, don’t hold his interest.

He’s a baseball man, through and through—ask him about watching a replay of a game in the 1952 World Series instead of the most recent Super Bowl—so he’ll keep plugging away, giving back to the players and game that have given him a lifetime of purpose.