Cronin had Father Ray Doherty's Message Down Pat

"To them, life in the summer was baseball, cold Coca-Cola, and the fun that could always be found from taking the time to simply observe the world around them. None of it is wasted time."

While at St. Michael’s College in Vermont during the 1960s, Pat Cronin was in a work-study program with Father Ray Doherty, a man Cronin refers to as “Big Ray” in his 2022 book, “Inside” Baseball in the Time of Covid.  According to Cronin, “With six younger siblings back in Whitman [Massachusetts], I was lucky enough to have found a school that arranged for me to pay the total cost of my education on my own.”  Cronin would go on to become a high school English teacher and a celebrated high school baseball coach winning 500 games over the course of four decades.  Cronin mentions in his book that he was lucky to have crossed paths with Ray Doherty, a person whose presence at that time in his life proved to be immeasurable.  

“Inside” Baseball in the Time of Covid begins as a series of posts that Coach Cronin is writing to his Whitman-Hanson High School baseball players as the pandemic first begins to grip the New England area, but evolves into a more humanistic series of writings that reveal Cronin’s sense of compassion and community demonstrating his ability to communicate on a level that often exceeds the field or the classroom.

On March 13, 2020 Coach Cronin tells his players that after a two-week delay, baseball will finally begin with a full schedule.  By April 6, the message changed.  “I took my daily walk out to the mailbox today and saw how beautiful it is.  I think it is a good sign, but it may make you tempted to join in with others and play a little ball.  Please do not do this.  Let’s allow this virus to subside before we let our guard down.”  The season, he tells his players, is now scheduled to start on May 4.  He reminds the kids to “stay healthy, positive, and follow all suggested guidelines concerning prevention of the coronavirus.  This is no joke.  It is important for your own benefit, but being vigilant about masks, separation, sheltering in place, and washing your hands can save the lives of those around you.”  

Continuing to share posts with his players, Cronin sends out stories of how he was once able to talk hitting with Red Sox legend, Ted Williams, and reminisces about an inspiring chance encounter he had at St. Michael’s with baseball great Jackie Robinson.  By the end of April, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker ends any hopes of a high school baseball season when he announces that schools will be closed indefinitely until the Fall.  Cronin continues sending posts to his players.  On April 28, he forwards a series of what he calls pandemic coping strategies.  “The best part of the day is the morning,” writes Cronin, encouraging kids to get out of bed early.  He suggests coming up with daily goals, describing what his own list might look like.  He tells them about house projects that he currently has in the works, joking that his wife might not be in full agreement about his so-called skill or commitment.  He talks about the importance of writing, the power of music, and the potential of combining the two suggesting that kids consider learning a musical instrument and begin writing songs.  He stresses the importance of poetry and its relationship to songwriting encouraging his players to take advantage of every artistic opportunity as a means of expression.  He tells kids to make the most of being relegated to their homes by engaging more with parents and family members.  He reminds kids to help out around the house while they are at home.  “Unload the dishwasher every now and then.  Try to see if you can return your bedroom to its original design - you know, where your mother or father can actually see a bed.  And tell them you love them as often as you can.”  He recommends selections from his pandemic music playlist including Fleetwood Mac, Shameika, the Lucy and Linus Peanuts song, and Bob Seger’s Live Bullet album.  He shares a list of what he calls binge-worthy television programs like Yellowstone and the Romanoffs, but also suggests that kids watch Masterpiece Theater’s World on Fire on PBS.  He offers his opinion about the music of Harry Styles, at one point calling it a combination of A Day in the Life by the Beatles and Duran Duran and suggests that kids try listening to Bob Dylan’s Murder Most Foul both for its lyrical references and also its connection to Shakespeare.  He highlights the Brothers Osborne, the song I Don’t Know Why by Shawn Colvin, and Queen’s later hit, A Kind of Magic.  

By the middle of May, Cronin posts that the weather is improving and that eventually everything will warm up and things will bloom just as they always do.  “The good news is that regardless of the pandemic, nature remains resilient.  It knows what it is supposed to do, and not even the coronavirus can stop it.”  He cautions kids about keeping up with their academics. “Please continue to do your schoolwork.  It is not enough to simply graduate from high school or college.  Those who actually do the work will always be better off when they are called on to show their skills and knowledge in the workplace and in life.  It’s just like baseball.  Put the time in and do not cut corners, and you will always be better off than those who are not willing to do the work.”  By the final weeks of June, Coach Cronin reminds his players, “As hard as it may be, you have to attempt to turn adversity into an advantage.  Those of you who are tenacious, determined, thoughtful, and forward-thinking will see that this can be used as an opportunity.  All of you are capable of excellence in school.  As a retired teacher, I want that for every one of you.”

Cronin then begins to add a series of original stories starting with a fictional piece called, “A Pep Talk Disguised as a Story - Eddie and Michael.”  He introduces the characters Eddie and Michael, inspired by his younger brother and a friend while growing up in the small town of Whitman during the late 1950s.  Filled with neighborhood imagery like Joubert’s clothing store and Cavicchi’s Market, the story centers on two boys, both nine years old, eventually drinking cold soda outside of an old gas station, thinking about life as they carelessly watch the world pass by.  Cronin writes that the boys would have found it unbelievable at the time “if they had been told they would become husbands, fathers, and successful in their chosen careers.  The boys would have been happy when they learned that their enduring friendship, their love for playing baseball - and even the time they thought they were wasting while watching gas station traffic and drinking cold soda had all contributed to making the dreams they were just beginning to have all come true.”  

Cronin later contributes “The Clown Dream,” with a new cast of characters:  Gregory John, Kevin, Michael, and Brian.  Brian’s bike has been stolen as the story begins.  After playing pick-up baseball one morning, the boys realize that an elderly woman is in need of medical attention in a nearby home.  Brian, whose dad is a local policeman, responsibly takes charge and assigns important jobs to each of the other three boys.  Having saved a woman’s life with their actions, the kids are celebrated at their church and subsequently become local heroes.  With reward money that they are each charitably given by the sister of the woman whose life they were instrumental in saving, Gregory John, Kevin, and Michael decide to pool their reward money together and surprise Brian with a new bicycle in an act of collective kindness.  

Cronin closes out 2020 with a final story, “The Girl with the Kalamata Eyes Dream,” again using the characters of Gregory John and Kevin.  When Gregory John is knocked unconscious during baseball practice, he dreams that he visits an orphanage in Fall River, Massachusetts.  With a turn of events reminiscent of a novel by Charles Dickens, a girl that Gregory John had previously imagined with what he describes as Kalamata eyes guides him on a journey of self-discovery.  As the story concludes she tells him, “Now you know, your life will be different.  Some of the choices you will make in the future will reflect what you have seen today.  You will never be able to forget it.  You can begin with these New Year’s Resolutions:  Celebrate, Appreciate, Live, and Remember.”      

The people who have the greatest impact on us do not enter our lives with a sign around their necks telling us that they will have such an effect.  Instead, their influence is typically woven into the context of daily life through honesty, humor, showing human vulnerability, and demonstrating care and concern, all of which are evident in Cronin’s writing.  Teaching kids values and respect is not done through data and pre-packaged definitions, as has largely become the method for teaching such things in contemporary public education.  It is done through presence, authentic communication, and modeling behaviors.  As Father Ray Doherty reflected in a St. Michael’s interview regarding his own upbringing a few years back, “We were not much for throwing the word ‘love’ around.  It’s very common now.  I knew my parents loved me by the way they treated me.”  

At the time of Cronin’s writing in 2020, Father Ray Doherty was turning 90 years old.  Cronin sends birthday wishes to Doherty in his book, and includes parts of a letter that he forwarded to Big Ray.  “You continue to pop into my thoughts frequently, as you have most of my adult life.  You have been a positive force in the lives of too many to count, I am certain.  Crossing paths with you had much to do with my good fortune.”

I was reminded of so many things while reading “Inside” Baseball in the Time of Covid, messages that I picked up four decades earlier as a student in Pat Cronin’s high school English class and also as a member of his baseball team, but it was also clear after finishing the book that the influence of Father Ray Doherty had been extended to all of us through Cronin.  “It is in the name ‘Ray,’ in the sense of a ray of light,” writes Cronin explaining why Father Ray Doherty was referred to as Big Ray at St. Michael’s College.  “He is a man who is always optimistic, someone who sees the best in everyone, a source of light in a world that can sometimes seem dark.  The power that comes from choosing to be like that is awesome, I think.”  

In Pat Cronin’s case, it is safe to say that it takes one to know one.