The Impossible Dream:
Red Sox VP Goes From Cape League to Yawkey Way and Wins It All

27 June 2007


 

 
By MATTHEW M. BURKE
Dick Bresciani is living the dream. 

    The Red Sox Vice President of Publications and archives has been with the club since the 1972, when he left positions at UMass-Amherst, where he worked in the sports information department, and the Cape Cod Baseball League, where he was the public relations director and head statistician.

    Since then, Bresciani’s professional life has been a roller coaster ride, complete with dramatic ups and downs. He has been with the club through thick and thin, tasting bitter defeat as a young man in 1975, thanks to Joe Morgan and the Big Red Machine, reliving it in 2003 as an established professional thanks to Aaron Boone and those damn Yankees. 
He also experienced heartache in 1986, losing yet another World Series, plus postseason defeats in 1988, 1990, and 1995.

    He confronted the “Curse of the Bambino” on a daily basis, beginning when he arrived at the park each and every day to discuss the history and records of the storied Major League franchise.

    Today, ask him to show off his enormous 2004 Red Sox World Series championship ring, and the no nonsense Bresciani smiles, unable to contain his happiness. It is visible in his eyes as he poses for a picture, looking deep into the camera lens, the two carats of red rubies and the 1.89 carats of diamonds glistening in the overhead florescent lights.

    It has been a long road for Bresciani, from the Cape League to becoming a World Champion with his favorite team. He was considered so valuable to the franchise; he was even kept on despite a change in ownership. He was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame last year. 

    One might say, given all of the adversity overcome by the man they call “Bresh,” and more specifically the Red Sox as a whole over the past 35 years, that he has fulfilled the ultimate impossible dream.

    “Yes [it is a dream job],” Bresciani said last month from his office deep in the bowels of Fenway Park; the Sox and the Braves had been rained out. “It’s been a great experience with the franchise being what it is. All the players, the people I work for, the big disappointments and the tremendous finish in 2004. It’s been terrific…It’s a good situation.”
Bresciani is a small man with well-groomed gray hair and a commanding presence. He is kind and passionate about baseball, the Red Sox, and Red Sox history. According to MLB.com, each and every year, he releases a prospectus on why legendary Sox slugger Jim Rice belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame (Rice has just barely fallen short of the 75-percent needed to become enshrined for 13 years in a row now).

    On this day, a file rests on Bresciani’s desk, reading simply: Johnny Pesky. His office is filled with papers and books; the subject is all baseball; and the room is adorned with other memorabilia, some of which is suited for a museum. The surrounding hallways are wallpapered with black and white photos of Red Sox past.

    Bresciani’s long road began in the upper middle class community of Hopedale, Massachusetts, a small town in the Blackstone Valley. He says that baseball was “king” growing up, but the athletic Bresciani also played basketball and ran cross-country, the only three sports offered at his school at the time.

    After graduating from high school, Bresciani attended UMass-Amherst where he wrote for the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, New England’s largest college daily, eventually becoming the Sports Editor. Bresciani also worked as a broadcaster on the UMass-Amherst radio station WMUA.

    Bresciani was so good working for the media that he was hired by the UMass-Amherst Sports Information Department. Upon graduation, he was brought on full-time. He said that the job was a good one because the school was expanding their athletic department at the time. 

    He had summers off from work and he would visit friends, who had played or coached for UMass, Boston College, or Holy Cross, now playing and managing in the Cape League. In 1965, he began to score games for the league, and later, in 1967 he was asked to help run the league by Cotuit General Manager Arnold Mycock and Commissioner Bernie Kilroy.

    So Bresciani came to the Cape. He called the sports editor at the Cape Cod Times and asked if they were looking for people to cover games. They said yes, and he was assigned several games over the course of the season. The next year, he would see even more action.

    He made $3 per contest scoring games for the league. After each game, he would go the Times’ Hyannis offices and write stories for $5 a pop. He became the league’s head public relations man in the winter of 1967.

    Bresciani is the man who hired CCBL President Judy Walden Scarafile to score games for the league. The two had met as college writers covering their respective schools, Bresciani at UMass and Walden Scarafile at UConn.

    “That started me getting involved,” Bresciani said. “It sparked more of an interest in me [in regards to the CCBL].”

    Bresciani says that the league was going through a transformation period during the time of his arrival. A few years earlier, the Upper Cape and the Lower Cape leagues had been merged and NCAA sanctioning in 1967 had attracted money and better players.

    With NCAA sanctioning and Major League Baseball funding came rules. The teams were forced to abandon the town team format and eventually did away with high school players and older players, both of which generally lived in their respective towns. Somehow the league’s administration got all of the teams to agree with these rules, despite grumblings against banning town players that were not in college.

    Another phenomenon started happening soon after: players started getting drafted by Major League Baseball.

    For Bresciani, the experience would prove to be invaluable. He says that he met baseball professionals and established contacts, which would clearly help him later. 

    “The Cape Cod Baseball League helped me with the Red Sox,” Bresciani said. “Being in the Cape League exposed me to more professional baseball people. Same thing at UMass [although not quite to the same extent]; it expanded my horizons.” 

    He adds that it helped him when he came to Fenway Park for his first interview. He was relaxed. “I maybe had something extra over the other candidates,” he said. “I had this Cape League experience that definitely helped me. It would have been more difficult to get this position here if it had not been for the Cape League.”

    Bresciani had gotten to know the Red Sox public relations director Bill Crowley over the years in the Cape League. And despite the fact that he knew that there were no openings, Bresciani sent Crowley a resume and asked to be kept in mind should any PR jobs open up. He was denied several times.

    In May 1972, he finally got a call. It was Crowley on the phone, and Art Keefe, the assistant director of public relations, was leaving Boston for the head job with the Milwaukee Brewers. They asked if he could interview that weekend. Bresciani said ‘yes’ and the rest is history; he was now the assistant director of public relations for the Boston Red Sox. He said that he knew Keefe because Keefe had covered the Red Sox Impossible Dream season for the Cape Cod Times in 1967.

    Bresciani said that at the time, getting a job as an assistant PR director was quite an accomplishment. At the time, almost every Major League club had a small front office. There weren’t really any promotions going on at the time. He said that the front offices began to expand around 1980 with the additions of marketing and promotions staff.

    The Red Sox promoted Bresciani to PR director in 1984, and he became a vice president in 1987. He coordinated the media during the Red Sox playoff runs during the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s. 

    Bresciani made many contributions to the modern day Red Sox franchise. Under his stewardship, the Red Sox began a uniform number retirement policy in 1984, the national Tony Conigliaro Award in 1990, which is distributed annually, and the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 1995. He won the Robert O. Fishel Award for MLB Public Relations excellence in 1997.

    Bresciani served as chairman for the Task Force Committee for the 1999 All-Star Game Week at Fenway Park. He has been the liaison between the club and the Red Sox Booster Club since 1981, which is the team’s official fan club, and he is also the liaison between the team and the Cape League where he serves on the board of directors. 

    Bresciani is a Hall of Famer’s Hall of Famer and has received his fair share of accolades. He was elected into the Cape League’s Hall of Fame in 2000, the inaugural class. He was inducted into the UMass Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003 and he received the University’s Alumni Award for Professional Excellence in 1994. He was inducted into the New England Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame and the Red Sox Hall of Fame last year.

    “I was fortunate to be in the first group [inducted to the CCBL Hall of Fame] in 2000,” he said, adding that old friends turned out in force for the induction ceremony, from old scouts to players to front office personnel. “That was nice. I think it was great.”

    Today, Bresciani sits in his quiet office, a flurry of activity just out the door. He is in charge of all Red Sox publications and he works with Red Sox alumni for events. “We try and do a lot with the alumni,” he said matter-of-factly. Bresciani also deals with historical data and records. He was promoted to vice president of public affairs in 1996 and served in that capacity until he was promoted again in 2003 to his current position.

    He still works with the media but not in the traditional sense. He now works with people writing books and making documentary films, and even people wishing to compare statistics of Red Sox players from the past. He says that these members of the media are not covering the day-to-day field play of the team, but there is still quite a bit of media involvement. He works hand in hand with the current PR regime.

    Bresciani says that he is proud of the Red Sox organization for keeping up the relationship with the Cape League over the years. The current ownership pays to bus the players to games for safety reasons and the Yawkey Foundation also donates money for field improvements.

    Despite his successes, Bresciani will never forget where he came from. “Of course the Cape League is now the number one league in the country, no doubt,” he said unflinchingly. “With the amount of talent on every team, it’s the greatest it’s ever been in the last 10 years.” He adds that the league switching to wood bats in 1985 helped propel it to the forefront of amateur collegiate summer baseball.

    “Bresh” remembers Jim Hubbard, the coach of Cotuit, and Joe Lewis of Chatham, touring around the country in the 1960’s improving the league by recruiting the top talent in the country. He remembers when the Cape League All-Stars used to play the Atlantic Coast League All-Stars, before switching to an all Cape League All-Star format. 

    He remembers four first round picks from the Chatham A’s in 1968, including Thurman Munson and Bobby Valentine. He said that the allure of having the scouts at games and also the quality of those types of players got the league to where it is today.

    “Thurman Munson was really an amazing player,” he recalled. “In 1967 with Chatham, they won the title. The year after, they had four number one picks.” Bresciani continues, rattling off the names of lesser-known players that impressed him during his time with the Cape League.

    Today Bresciani doesn’t get to as many games as he would like to due to his work. He said that he still follows the league though, and he keeps in touch with Walden Scarafile. He said that he tries to help them in any way that he possibly can. He and his wife Joanne, a first grade teacher for many years, generally just relax if they can make time to come to the Cape.

    For Bresciani, the league is slightly different now, but he still has his hand on its pulse. He said that there is a lack of continuity nowadays where players play only one year in the league, two at the most. He said teams used to be able to build and keep the same players for several years. He is also concerned by the season being constantly squeezed by the College World Series, and by players being snatched up by Team USA. 

    “That era is gone,” he said referring to a time when television didn’t drag out the College World Series and players would stay with the same CCBL team for several years. “It’s like free agency in Major League Baseball. You can’t build any real continuity.” 
But Bresh doesn’t blame anyone; it’s just the way it is. Who can blame a kid for signing with a Major League club? That’s what he did.
 


 


Back to CapeNews.net home page

50 Depot Avenue - Falmouth MA 02540 - Phone 508-548-4700

© Copyright 2007 Falmouth Publishing Co., Inc. All Rights Reserved.