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Overcast 'Gentleman Joe' does it again
Colts baseball coach of four decades wins second Nassau title
Thirty-eight years after Joe Corea began his four-decade career as Calhoun High School's head baseball coach, he can still rattle off most of the names on his starting lineup from his very first year -–– 1972.
On a recent Monday, Corea, 66, leaned back in his chair in an office at the Brookside School in North Merrick, took a quick breath, and the names started to flow. Then it was on to the 1980s, and the names kept coming. Then the '90s. The years of the squad's semifinal finishes and playoff runs blended together in his mind, but the players' names stuck.
"We've had a lot of great kids at Calhoun. It's just so much fun" to coach, Corea said.
Saul Lerner, the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District athletic director, said it is Corea's love of students and his desire to see them succeed, coupled with a deep knowledge of baseball acquired through a lifelong obsession with the game, that have enabled him to excel as a coach over the past decade.
Corea, a retired Calhoun math teacher known by those close to him as "Gentleman Joe," recently led the Colts to their second Nassau County Class AA Championship in the past eight years. The team fell two runs short of reaching the state championship, dropping the Long Island title game last Sunday to Lindenhurst, 4-2, at SUNY Farmingdale. Lerner insisted that Corea deserves a lion's share of the credit for this year's remarkable run, but the coach dismissed the praise.
"The parents have given them the basic foundation," Corea said, noting that the Merrick-North Merrick Little League has fed a good number of top players to Calhoun of late. "We've had a lot more talent" in recent years, he said.
Lerner retorted, "He's being overly modest."
Lerner said that for Corea, sportsmanship comes first and winning second, and that basic philosophy shows in his players, on and off the field. "They always act with dignity," Lerner said of the squad. "They play in the image of their coach –– with class and dignity. Kids know what to expect from Joe. There's a mutual respect."
The players agree, but say Corea also brings a sense of intensity to the game that is rare among coaches, which encourages them to work hard –– and to win.
