Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame
Relive It All Again
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It is with regret that due to the serious nature of the current Covid-19 virus situation we have decided to POSTPONE THE UNSUNG HEROES BREAKFAST FOR SATURDAY, 3/14/20 at The Staaten. This decision was made for the safety and concern of our attendees, honorees and guests. We currently do not have a date to reschedule.
Please email lbergonzi@verizon.net for additional information and check here for updates
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A quarter-century after the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame founding fathers – decked out in formal dress for the occasion – introduced its first group of Olympians, All-Americans, big-leaguers and local legends, only the dress code has been relaxed.
The Hall will welcome its newly-elected Class of 2019 – boxing all-timer Tony Canzoneri; baseball stars Herb White and Anthony Varvaro; standard-bearing coaches Walt Hameline and Tony Rafaniello; and sportswriter Harvey Araton – in formal induction ceremonies April 4 at the CYO-MIV Rec Center in Pleasant Plains.
As part of the silver anniversary celebration, the Hall will present its first-ever Staten Island Icon award to the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation.
Admission to the ceremonies and the Hall of Fame Room is free.
The new class comes bearing its own legacy of national and world championships, all-time lists and assorted halls of fame, and will swell the roster of inductees to 154 individuals and five teams or groups.
White and Varvaro – a battery for the ages – could serve as bookmarks for the evolution of modern baseball in the old neighborhood.
The New York World-Telegram named White, a catcher who hit .365, .420 and .553 at Tottenville High School, the city’s high school MVP in 1935, and he hit as high as .348 over six seasons in the New York Yankee farm system. Then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and he spent six years in the military during World War II.
With his best baseball behind him, and Yogi Berra ensconced behind the plate in the Bronx, White came home to a career on the Fire Department, coached the Wagner College baseball team, and served as an inspiration for Island players and coaches long before he was named to the Staten Island Advance All-Century Team.
Like White, Varvaro first gained attention in high school, with a no-hit, 15-strikeout game for Curtis in the 2001 city playoffs; and he was a third-team All-American and two-time Big East pitcher at St. John’s, where he remains among the all-time leaders in wins and strikeouts.
Injuries plagued Varvaro’s pro career at beginning and end; but in the decade in-between, he appeared in 166 big-league games, helped push the Atlanta Braves to an N.L. East title in 2013, and averaged a strikeout-an-inning over 11 major and minor-league seasons.
Walt Hameline, just 29 when he was named Wagner College’s football coach, guided the Seahawks to the 1987 NCAA Division III national championship, as well as a Lambert Cup, five ECAC titles, two Northeast Conference championships, and the school’s first and only PCS playoff victory.
When he retired from coaching in 2014, Hameline’s 223 victories put him in the top 50 in college football history, fifth among FCS coaches. The 2012 FCS National Coach of the Year is a member of the New Jersey Sportswriters’ Hall of Fame.
Tony Canzoneri, who moved from New Orleans to Staten Island as a teen-ager, was a five-time world champion – winning titles as a featherweight, lightweight and junior-welterweight – and one of the best pound-for-pound fighters in his prime, which coincided with the height of boxing’s popularity.
Fighting as often as three or four times a month through the 1930s, Canzoneri defeated 13 world champions on his way to a 141-24-10 record that propelled him into the World Boxing Hall of Fame, the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and the Ring Magazine Hall of Fame.
Tony Rafaniello won 511 games – almost 200 more than the next highest total among Staten Island high school basketball coaches – over 38 seasons at Monsignor Farrell, New Dorp and Moore Catholic.
Rafaniello, whose teams won five Staten Island High School League championships – two at Farrell, and three more at New Dorp – was the chief architect behind the creation of the Staten Island High School League Tournament, annually the highlight of the Island sports calendar.
Harvey Araton covered some of those games, amid a wide range of local, New York, national and international sports – including 10 Olympics – in a 40-year career as a sportswriter and columnist at the Staten Island Advance, New York Post, Daily News and New York Times.
A Pulitzer Prize nominee, he’s the author of eight books including Driving Mr. Yogi and When the Garden Was Eden, the basis for an ESPN “30 for 30” feature, and the 2017 recipient of the Curt Gowdy Award for excellence in sports journalism, presented by the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
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John Woodman likes to say it never rains on the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame Golf Outing & Reunion.
Some days are just brighter than others.
The 9th annual outing was played under perfect conditions, with a cool breeze under sunny skies, and LaTourette Golf Course in prime condition just a week after the New York City Amateur was contested over the same track.
The quality of the golf was as nearly as brilliant as the weather, with former tour pros Bill Britton and Jim Albus in the field, and a slew of current and former Staten Island Amateur champs, contenders and regulars in the mix.
In addition to Albus, Britton and longtime Silver Lake pro Ed Sorge, more than 20 Hall of Famers made it for golf, dinner, or both, helping to swell the dinner crowd of 140 athletes, coaches, and friends in the big room at the Staaten, and putting the spirit of reunion back in the reunion.
John Venturella and his young team of reigning Staten Island Amateur champion Brent Frederickson, Amateur runner-up Michael Young and Darren Fernandez took the team trophy, out-dueling the foursome of Dan Pizzuto, Ken Quinn, Rich Quinn and five-time Amateur champion Rodney Stilwell.
Frederickson shared closest-to-the-pin honors with Tony Navarino and Mike Reardon.
Hall of Famer Ray Rudolph and Suzanne Woodman had the longest drives of the day, and Borough Historian Tom Matteo was straightest.
The formal highlight of the evening was the presentation of the Bobby Thomson Ambassador Award to Penn and Philadelphia Big 5 Hall of Fame basketball star John Engles, and Curtis High School two-sport star Dan McDermott.
Jim Kelley and Mike Reardon were the 2019 recipients of the Steve Zuntag Good Guy Awards.
Then they all fell back in with teammates, playing partners, old enemies and forever friends, on one of those rare nights when so many of the best of the best in the old neighborhood find themselves under one roof.
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It all snuck up on Bobby Rodriguez, like a linebacker waiting to meet him on a pass over the middle.
The record-setting wide receiver, who went about his business so quietly that his high school coaches dubbed him “the ghost,” had already been through the Hall of Fame Room with his kids, trying to wrap his head around seeing his plaque up there with the All-Americans, All-Pros and Olympians who were suddenly, now and forever, his peers.
Now he was at the podium, having just heard his high school coach call him one of the most loyal, dedicated players he’d ever known, as the echoes of a standing ovation ricocheted around the CYO/MIV Rec Center in Pleasant Plains.
He stood like that for a long time, pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger; then he dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief, and stood some more.
The ghost was crying.
“This is so … overwhelming,” he said at last.
There was a lot of that going on at an induction ceremony where Rodriguez, a pass-catching star on Georgia Tech’s 1990 national championship team, was the only honoree going into the Hall on the strength of his on-field heroics.
All the rest … coaches Cathy Morano, Bob Steele and Howie Ruppert; orthopedist and Unity Games co-founder Dr. Mark Sherman; golf impresario Steve Zuntag; Hall of Fame baseball writer John Drebinger; and the Staten Island Little League founding fathers – Buddy Cusack, Arthur “Jiggs” Seaman, John Marino, Joe Darcy Sr., Joe “Babe” Darcy Jr., Jim Darcy and Ed Elliott – helped prepare the ground for Rodriguez and others like him.
Now it was all coming back to them, and to everybody they touched.
So, Bobby Rodriguez wept, right there in front of a full-house crowd littered with Hall of Fame alumni.
Cathy Morano’s Tottenville High School softball players rushed the stage with hugs and flowers.
And Matt Zuntag told the story of the time his father got scolded for spending all morning at a local tournament, and tried to make amends by taking the family for a ride.
And where did they wind up?
At Golf House, the USGA stronghold in Far Hills, N.J.
“He gets in trouble for spending too much time on golf,” the younger Zuntag said, laughing now at the wonder of it. “And his solution is to take his kids to a golf museum.”
Maybe that’s how somebody winds up with their plaque hanging up there with the olympians … and the Olympians … with the memories washing over them.
“It’s like what Russell Crowe says in Gladiator,” Matt Zuntag said. “What we do on earth echoes through eternity.”
He turned, looking over Bobby Rodriguez’s shoulder toward the open door to the Hall of Fame Room.
“What the people in that room did will live forever.”
A fuller version of this story appeared in “Echoes from the Hall,” the newsletter available to Hall of Famers and Friends of the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame.