On Thursday, while Sandy and I were at the Florida Strawberry Festival, I received a call from one of my old players, it was the type of call that you wish you had never received.

The call was from Timmy Brill, he was calling to tell me that his dad, Tim, had just passed away.  This was an extremely difficult call because Big Tim wasn’t just Timmy’s dad, he was also a former player of mine and so much more.

You see, a small part of my childhood was spent growing up in a small town in Pennsylvania called Oley.  It’s funny because in reality, I was only in Oley from kindergarten until mid-way through my fourth-grade year of elementary school.  My mom and I moved to Florida, where I spent the next 4-1/2 years of my life.  I returned to Oley again in 1983 when I moved back to Pennsylvania with my dad at the start of my freshman year of high school, but my return was short-lived.  My dad and I relocated to the Schuylkill Valley School District just before Thanksgiving of my ninth-grade year.  However, to be honest, sometimes I feel like I never left Oley because I’ve stayed in touch with so many of my friends there.

Long before I ever met Tim Brill in person or coached him, I knew who he was.  Like I said, Oley was a small town, but Tim was already making it big.  By the time that we had moved to Oley, Tim had already graduated high school and was well on his way to a stand out collegiate baseball career.  My brother played sports with Tim’s younger brother, Mike and we knew the family well.

Tim Brill’s 1979 baseball card.

As I was starting to play Little League baseball in 1977, Tim was drafted in the 21st round of the MLB draft by the Cleveland Indians.  He was originally drafted out of high school in 1973 by the California Angels, but chose to attend Manatee Junior College in Florida, prior to transferring to St. Joseph’s University.

As a young boy, knowing that someone from our small town could go on to play professional baseball was a pretty cool feeling.  Tim advanced to AA in his first season of professional baseball and fortunately, the Indians AA team, the Jersey City Indians played in the Eastern League, the same league that our hometown Reading Phillies played in.  When Jersey City came to Reading, the stands were filled with tons of fans from little old Oley, just down the road.  My family and I were always among those fans in 1977.  After the 1977 season, the Indians moved their AA team to Chattanooga in the Southern League.  Tim was then traded to the Atlanta Braves organization and finished his professional career with the Braves AA affiliate in Savannah in 1979, also of the Southern League.  So, 1977 was the only season that I got to see him play professionally.  But as a young ballplayer, Tim Brill was a larger-than-life figure that I wanted to be like one day.

Fast forward to 1995, I was soon to be 26 years old and had started an amateur baseball organization called Berkshire Baseball in 1989 that had an unlimited age adult team and an Over-30 team under its belt.  Our Over-30 team already had a few guys from Oley on the team and one of them, Barry Stebbins, who was a good friend of Tim’s asked Tim to join the team.  When Barry first told me that Tim wanted to play for us, I was absolutely in awe.  The guy that I once watched play at Reading Municipal Stadium now wanted to play for our organization.  I was very excited to have Tim as part of the organization to say the least.

When I met Tim for the first time in person, he treated me with nothing but respect.  Here I was 14 years younger than him, with very little life experience under my belt and this former professional was treating me with the utmost respect.

Although, if there is one word that described Tim Brill, it was professional.  When he first came to the organization, it was long after his stellar career at St. Joseph’s University had ended and long after he had advanced to Double-A in the Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves organizations.  None-the-less, Tim Brill brought with him a professionalism that was second to none.

He led by example and was the type of player who just naturally elevated the play of his teammates by just being there. Although during his tenure as a player with the Berkshire organization from 1995 through 2001 was primarily on the Over-30 roster, Tim would make the occasional appearance on the Red Sox Optimist (unlimited age) roster as well.  That was where I got to coach him.  When he played with the youngsters, he kept them in awe as they witnessed this 40-something year-old man continue to throw out attempted base stealers that were half his age with ease and hit line drive after line drive off of some of the best pitchers in the league.  Our younger players looked up to him and leaned on him for knowledge and guidance.

As a young coach, I leaned on him quite a bit as well.  He had no reason to listen to anything that I had said.  He had so much more knowledge of the game than I did, yet he never made me feel less than him.  The conversations that we had on the bench during games truly changed my life and molded what I wanted to see the organization become.   Tim would tell me that with the way that I ran the organization, I’d make a good minor league GM someday, but that wasn’t going to be my calling.  My calling and what that fledging organization’s calling would be, was much greater than anything that would have been accomplished in minor league baseball.  I didn’t know it at the time, but the Berkshire organization would go on to make a positive impact in the lives of thousands of young people.

A few years prior to Tim playing for us, another former professional, Rick Dunnum played for us as well.  When Rick and Tim played for us, I had no idea that we would ever start running youth programs, but what those two men taught me about the game of baseball and life had more influence on what our program would become than any other people that I knew.  I explained that influence in the Berkshire Baseball Newsletter following their inductions into the Berkshire Hall of Fame on November 13, 2011.

During Tim’s playing career in our organization, he played for myself and Phil Raccuglia, who coached our Over-30 team at the time.  Both Phil and I were just starting our coaching careers, I in my mid-20’s and Phil in his early 20’s, yet Tim treated both of us with nothing but dignity and class.  I’m pretty sure that I can also speak for Phil as well when I say that Tim Brill certainly had a great influence on how we each coached throughout our careers.

I coached Tim’s son in 2011 while he was playing on the same field that I had watched his dad play on when I was a kid in 1977.

Not quite 10 years after Tim played his last game for us, he reached out to me to get his son, Timmy involved in the organization, which had now grown to sponsor youth teams from 10-U through 18-U in addition to the adult teams that we had originally started with in 1989.

I was now coaching our 16-U team, and young Timmy, who was 15 would be playing for me as well.  This was somewhat mind-blowing for me because I still remembered Timmy as a little kid who would be playing in the pile of infield dirt during games at the Robesonia Playground while his dad was playing.

Little Timmy Brill on the scoreboard.

So, the news that young Timmy gave me on Thursday about his father, and when I later spoke to one of Tim’s daughter’s, Teryn, hit me pretty hard.

Tim was so much more than just a former player to me.  He was more than a former professional baseball player.  He was more than a member of the All-Time Berkshire team, the Berkshire Baseball & Softball Hall of Fame, and the St. Joseph’s University Hall of Fame.  He was a friend and a role model, and that meant more to me than anything.

I always looked forward to when Sandy and I would go to the Oley Fair because we knew that we would always see Tim and his wife Lynn.  We would stand and talk for a long time.  Many times, we hadn’t seen each other since the last time that we were at the fair, which wasn’t always every year for us because of my schedule, but we would pick up right where we left off.

Back in August, Tim and Lynn came up to one of the yard sales that Sandy and I had when we were selling everything and preparing for our new journey.  They bought some tools and other stuff, but that really wasn’t the reason why they had come up.  It was to see us off, and that meant the world to both Sandy and I.  They were probably there for a solid hour or two and we just talked as if we were at the fair.  Tim loved telling stories of his kids.  His eyes would light up when he would start telling us about Alison, Teryn, Melanie or Timmy.  He was so proud of each and every one of them and what they had accomplished in their lives.

Even with Sandy and I starting this new journey, we never would have imagined that that day in August would be the last time that we would see Tim.  We’ve talked about that a lot these last two days.  As sad as we are, we are also incredibly grateful to the Lord for giving us that time that we had together before we embarked on this journey.

Tim may be gone now, and that hurts a lot.  That pain is going to last for a long time for Lynn, their children and their grandchildren.  However, the legacy of his life will live on forever in those lives as well as every life that Tim touched while he was here on earth.  He may be gone from our physical presence, but will certainly never be forgotten.

He was taken too soon, but his spirit will live on, farewell my friend, we’ll see you again on that diamond in the sky.