MATTHEW M. BURKE

     John Schiffner has a reputation for being gruff, and he plays the part, looking more like someone you’d expect to pull up to you at a stoplight riding a Harley than a baseball coach. 

     His trademark mustache and thick physique can, at times, be a bit intimidating. For those who have never met him, seeing him in the corner of the dugout with his arms crossed, looking sternly at the field as he analyzes the game, only adds to this misconception.

     However, spend five minutes with the man, and quickly you will see that he is funny, laid back, kind, and passionate about the game of baseball. He drives two hours from his home in Connecticut to games and practices for the first two weeks of the season because, as a high school teacher, he is obligated to be at work everyday until the end of the year. He has a home in Chatham and often stops there on the way home for a meal or a shortened night’s sleep before making the trip back home for class.

     He is an outdoorsman who enjoys fishing and hunting; his father raised bird dogs when he was a kid. On the baseball field, he is intense and so happy to be there that when he steps onto the field, it is evident that he is truly at peace.

     Schiffner, who grew up in northern New Jersey, fits the mold of what all Cape League coaches should be, because he says that he gets the most enjoyment out of being a coach from seeing his players develop into stars, on both the high school and Cape League levels. He exhibits genuine sportsmanship and class, even leading his team in giving an opposing player a standing ovation after a commanding performance on the mound last season. 

     Schiffner is also motivated strongly by winning.

     Schiff is going into his 15th season as the head coach of the Chatham A’s baseball club. He was an assistant coach for nine years before being handed the reigns in 1992. He also played in the league for Harwich while a third baseman from Providence College.

     At press time Schiffner had 313 wins, after opening the season with two losses to Harwich and Y-D. He is 21 wins shy of the record held by Don Reed, the legendary Y-D and Wareham skipper.

     Schiffner has become the face of the Cape League in recent years, first being portrayed in the book “The Last Best League: One Summer, One Season, One Dream” by Jim Collins and later by Brian Dennehy in the 2001 major motion picture “Summer Catch,” starring Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jessica Biel.

     Not bad for a high school baseball coach (Schiffner coaches the Plainfield, Connecticut Panthers, where he has been a teacher for 29 years), and social studies teacher, with no Division I or even prior college coaching experience. If Chatham has a good season, Schiffner could be on his way to Cape League immortality as the winningest coach in league history. 

     “To be this close to breaking that record is, to me, humbling,” he said from the Chatham dugout at the end of an A’s practice, several days prior to the start of the season. “Because I’d like to consider myself a minor historian of the Cape Cod League, since I’ve been here pretty much without a break since 1974. I know an awful lot about the history of the league and to be included in that group already, to me, it’s humbling … Sometimes I wonder wow, how lucky I am to be in that position. If it happens, it happens, if it doesn’t that’s fine. I’ve had a great run here. For me, just to coach one year was the goal.”

     Schiffner smiles, because he was passed up for head coaching positions in the CCBL at least eight times, interviewing for many different positions, before Chatham stepped up to the plate and gave him a shot. The naysayers told him that because he was a high school baseball coach, and the CCBL is a college league, he wasn’t qualified to become a head coach. Furthermore, he says that people doubted his recruiting abilities.

     Schiffner has proven them all wrong. He won league championships in 1996 and 1998, coaching in five total title games. Schiffner guided the A’s to the playoffs in eight straight seasons and was awarded the Mike Curran Award for Manager of the Year in 1999. He says that his first championship felt vindicating.

     “Everybody asked me, ‘What are you going to do?’” he recalls looking out onto the field, under overcast skies; the field is now empty. “I said, ‘Well, I want to be a head coach,’ and everybody said, ‘Well, you can’t be, this is a college league, you’re not going to be a head coach.’ I said, ‘Okay, I’ll try. I’ll do my best and if that’s the case that’s the case, and I’ll make a decision at that point.”

     Schiffner said that when he entered the Cape League it was in stiff competition with the Alaskan League. In the early 80s, the CCBL chose wood bats over aluminum. This move brought energy to the league he says. He also said the quick path to the Major Leagues by several Cape League alumni brought the league to prominence. This led to sponsorships and an influx of talent, something that Schiffner absolutely loves. 

     Schiff has coached everyone from Mike Lowell, of the Red Sox, to Drew Meyer, an infielder and top prospect in the Texas Rangers organization, over the years. He says that he doesn’t plan on teaching 18-year-olds how to play baseball when he’s in his 60’s and 70’s, but at 51-years-old, he says that there is still a lot left in the tank.

     “There’s no end in the near future,” he said. “I’ll know when its time. I don’t have a deadline. Its still a lot of fun, you can’t beat it. I always tell people, I feel that I have one of the 10 best jobs in amateur baseball, and then I do show my Chatham blue and I say, ‘I think I’ve got the best one.’”

     Coach Schiffner, with a little help from his assistant coaches, does all the recruiting for the A’s. This year, the A’s are heavily laden with temporary players, with nine of their contract players arriving late due to the NCAA Super Regionals and the College World Series. Schiffner said that the temporary players are working hard and have game. 

     He is excited to welcome back Matt Giannini, a right-handed pitcher from Rutgers, and Allan Dykstra, a Wake Forest first baseman, who led the Cape League in RBI’s last year. He is also excited to welcome Tim Federowicz, a catcher from North Carolina, and Gavin Brooks, a left-handed pitcher from UCLA, to the Cape for the first time.

     He says that there is always a certain amount of pressure mounting behind the scenes for him to put together another contender, despite the fact that he hasn’t heard anything to that effect, but he looks relaxed. 

     “I’m sure there’s some people in Chatham who would like to see us win more than we have lately,” he said. “It shouldn’t be judged on wins and losses. It should really be judged on, did the kids improve from the beginning of the season? How did the kids act on the field? How did the kids act with their host families? As much as you’d like to, you can’t win them all.” He added that the league has improved over the years, and is so good now; the parity has made the league a lot more competitive.

     When discussing the film “Summer Catch,” Schiffner laughs, saying that it was “neat” and that he was honored to be portrayed. He spoke of the summer romances that were shown in the film. “There’s a lot of guys that have their summer catches,” he said. “Like me, I met my wife down here.”

     In addition, Schiffner’s boat is called the Summer Catch. He said some of the aspects of the league and of himself were on point in the film and others were not, like him being caught smoking in the dugout and players drinking at local watering holes. He said that most of the players are too young. He did say that the kids still find a way to have fun, which was accurate, as was the homesickness. He said that he is not as “gruff” as he was portrayed to be by Dennehy, but he said that he does have a gruff side.

     Schiff has been offered positions in the minor leagues and at the collegiate level due to his successes in the Cape League, but he has decided not to take any of the positions for what he called selfish reasons, namely he didn’t want to leave the security and the money he was making at Plainfield High for the college or pro games, which can be one and done for a coach who fails. He also is not ready to leave the Cape League.

     “It was a big gamble, and I just didn’t want to take that gamble,” he said. “Because I probably would have been taking a 60 to 70 percent pay cut…I don’t have a lot of regrets, the offers just came at the wrong time.” He said that it was unrealistic to think that somebody was going to offer him a lead assistant coaches position without previous collegiate experience, and he didn’t want to start out at the entry level. He added that it wasn’t fair to either him or his wife Martha. They celebrate their 10th anniversary in August.
Schiffner is almost beside himself when asked what the league has meant to him over the years, “The level of talent is fantastic,” said. “Whether it’s my team, or somebody else’s team … It’s almost indescribable to watch. To watch a Mark Teixeira hit from both sides of the plate. To watch a Matt Anderson throw almost 100 miles per hour. To watch Jason Varitek hit from both sides of the plate, then throw missiles down to second base … I could not ask for a better summer, and its been many, many summers for me. It doesn’t get old.”

     Schiffner loves baseball, plain and simple. The only way to make this summer a better one for him would be if the A’s could win 22 games out of their 44 game schedule.