Thursday,
February 4, 2016
By Cory K. Doviak
NJS.com Editorial Director
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Anthony Larezza talking to his team before the last high school game he ever coached, the Non-Public A state final last June at Kean University.
IHA won. Larezza was a winner. |
NORTH JERSEY -- It just won’t be the same. Pulling up to the parking lot on top of the hill at the Immaculate Heart Academy, I just couldn’t wait to get to the bottom. Down there, behind home plate and not on the field because I never made it to the first game of his showcase, the one his team always played in, would be Anthony Larezza, one of the good guys. We would say hello to each other and then the fun would begin.
ME: “Hey, Ant, who played second base for the 1983 Cincinnati Reds?”
LAREZZA: “Ron Oester. You are going to have to do better than that.”
On and on it would go until I was trivia-ed out, and left to go edit some pictures and write a few stories. Anthony would be there until the final pitch of the final game and would break my chops for leaving early.
There are big things in life: Family, career, you know, the stuff to worry about.
Then there are the little things like quizzing your buddy about the infield alignment of some long forgotten baseball team. Things like that are the essence of life and mine, all of ours who have made it a point to participate in, coach, watch, cover or otherwise follow high school sports in North Jersey, will no longer be as much fun.
My friend, our friend, Anthony Larezza has passed away and it really, really sucks.
He took out an ad on our website to promote his softball camp and support our business. I registered my daughter in his softball camp, told him I saw the ad on NorthJerseySports.com. I wanted to support his business. My daughter went to his camp, got stitches above her right eye because she didn’t get her glove up quick enough and had a heckuva time.
I picked her up on the last day, had a brief exchange with Anthony, told a stupid joke or two and headed home while my daughter told me some of the things Anthony said. That was the last time I saw him. That was July 30, 2015. I miss him terribly.
My daughter might not have been the best player in Washington Township that week, but Anthony made her feel like she was. If you are a parent, you know how it feels when someone goes out of their way to be nice to your kid. Anthony was nice to my kid; he was nice to everybody’s kids. How many did he help get into college? His players, players from other teams…didn’t matter.
He loved to win softball games. He did it often and he did it with class, always paying respect to the opponent. He hated to lose softball games. Didn’t happen that often, but he did that with grace and a touch of humor. When his team fell behind Indian Hills and went on to lose in the semifinals of the Bergen County Tournament in 2010, Anthony said, “Once the game got away from us in the fourth or fifth inning it was really just all about the handshake.”
That quote became part of our conversations from then on. "See the Mets game last night?”, “Yeah, after Wright hit the homer it was all about the handshake.”
There are a million of those stories. I am just one guy. Anthony had a network of hundreds, of thousands of people that had their own inside jokes with him. He gave you the time to build those relationships. He enjoyed them. And it wasn’t about his success as the head softball coach at the preeminent program in New Jersey. He knew what that meant in the grand scheme of things. What he was about was being a warm human being. He was no phony. He laughed at himself and laughed with others.
The news of Anthony Larezza’s passing is devastating, not just for me, but for all of us. If you are reading this, I mean you, too. My condolences. My daughter is heartbroken.
This is not about the loss of a softball coach. It’s deeper than that. The world today is not as fun as it was yesterday. That stinks.
Sleep well, Coach. These tears are for you.
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