26 July 2008

Mrs. E: A legend in Cape League circles and beyond

By Katie Julian
REGIONAL -

“Mrs. E can’t come to the phone right now. She’s taking batting practice! Please leave a message after the tone …”

When calling the house of a 79-year-old woman, one might expect to hear a meek and fragile voice on the other end of the receiver. Not the case with Barbara “Mrs E” Ellsworth, a 30-year Cape League aficionado and host to more than 150 Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox players and coaches since 1978. The booming male voice recorded on her answering machine is no one-time prank.

“Oh, an old friend from the league did that for me a while ago. My kids still joke about it to this day,” she says.

Ellsworth’s no-nonsense attitude, dry wit and passion for the game have made her a legend around Red Wilson Field and in the collegiate baseball scene. Her admirers — former Y-D players turned coaches, team trainers, snack bar employees and even Y-D General Manager Jim Martin come by to her regular spot behind the backstop to say hello before the game.

Her service to the team has been extraordinary — current director of player housing and even GM for a year. But for a woman who says she was “born into baseball,” this can’t seem all that unexpected.

“I was raised on the North Shore. At 5, you went to the ballgame. All the men in my family played amateur baseball and my uncle was in the majors for five months,” says Ellsworth.

After moving to the Cape in 1973 and serving as cheerleading coach at D-Y High School, where she acquired her nickname, Ellsworth met Merrill “Red” Wilson, former Cape Cod Baseball League MVP and D-Y Athletic Director, who asked her to house a few players for the summer.

Many of the former players Mrs. E housed still keep in touch, especially those who didn’t make it to the majors, as their fondest baseball memories come from their time in the Cape League.

While Ellsworth hasn’t housed many stars, perhaps the closest relationship she has with a former player is with 13-year Major Leaguer Mike Bordick. Now retired, Bordick made his name as Cal Ripkin’s replacement at shortstop for the Baltimore Orioles. Ellsworth still wears Bordick’s 2000 MLB All-Star ring on a necklace, even though they don’t see each other very often anymore. “He has six kids now, and I don’t really do kids,” she says.

Living in Arizona in the off-season, Ellsworth makes the effort to see her former players and coaches play against Arizona State University or in the Arizona Fall League. Every year she makes the approximately 3,000-mile drive from Arizona to her summer home in Yarmouth, stopping along the way to visit with former Cape Leaguers at Southern Illinois University, Elon University, University of South Carolina, Georgia Southern, Coastal Carolina and UNC-Chapel Hill, to name a few. The entire trip takes about a month, with driving stints of up to 12 hours each day. “I collect my dues from kids I’ve fed through the years. Now they pay for me.” 

Even Ellsworth’s son Mark got in on the family business of hosting players for a year, including seven-time All-Star and 20-year veteran Craig Biggio of Houston. But to Mrs. E, Biggio was just another player in the Cape Cod Baseball League and didn’t deserve any special treatment. “He worked at K-Mart, and he was a whiner!” she says with a straight face.

She treats her current host players — D’Angelo Mack, Joe Kelly, Tyler Waldron and Jerry Sullivan — no differently than those she housed in the ‘70s and ‘80s, but does see some major generational differences.

“In the old days, players would crawl across broken glass and hot coals to get here. Now some of them arrive and act as if we’re lucky to have them!”

Ellsworth keeps tabs on her players by maintaining a tight ship and expecting them to follow the rules of her house, which contains a dorm-like setup in the basement. They include no hats at the dinner table; no entertaining girls in your bedroom; arriving home at curfew and doing your own laundry.

“We in the Cape Cod Baseball League owe these children more than just baseball. I don’t believe in making concessions for them. They are still children. They may come in 6-foot bodies and think they’re adults, but they are still children.”

After a while, Ellsworth says almost all of her players warm up to her personality, once they realize they are responsible for their actions and are here for one reason — to play baseball — and not to be distracted by girlfriends.

“I tell them teaching at the youth baseball clinic is the best form of birth control they can ever get!”

Perhaps one of Mrs. E’s signature trademarks (aside from her dog Joanne, which she calls “the team mascot”) is her wide assortment of T-shirts from the colleges of the players she’s housed. “I don’t think I’ve seen her wear the same shirt twice to a game,” says temporary player Mike Tamsen, who stayed with Ellsworth at the beginning of this season.

But sometimes particular T-shirts don’t go over well with the players, especially if they are that of a collegiate rival. “Last year, Nick Romero wouldn’t talk to me if I had my University of San Diego shirt on,” says Ellsworth. Romero played for San Diego State.

Mrs. E doesn’t plan to retire from hosting players anytime soon. “Most of my ties are here,” she says. Her two sons live in Massachusetts and Maine; she has great-grandchildren in New England, and her daughter graduated from D-Y High School in 1977.

Martin certainly doesn’t want her to leave the baseball world for retirement life.

“She is truly an Ambassador for the Cape Cod Baseball League. I am proud to say she is my friend and I thank her for all she does to help me, and I admire her tremendously,” he says.

“When you first meet Mrs. E, she is like a bag of M&M's ... hard and crunchy on the outside but soft and gooey in the center. She will melt in your heart, but not in your hands.”