News Article

By The Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame

When the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame inducts its Class of 2024 later this year, the group of 10 inductees — major-league ballplayers Dusty Rhodes and Duane Singleton; boxers John “The Heat” Verderosa and Kevin Rooney; softball pioneers Vin Scamardella and Margaret Grenier; basketball stars Sharon McAdams and Clare Guerriero; golfer Rodney Stillwell, and football icon John Skronski — will be the largest since 1996, when the Hall was still just skimming the surface of 150 years of sports history in the old neighborhood.

Hall President Anthony Santo noted, “this year’s induction group bespeaks the rich and accomplished pedigree of Staten Island Sports. It’s one for the ages. The class includes a World Series hero, a national boxing champion, a Jaques winner and All-City pitcher, a Major League veteran, a legendary women’s basketball player and coach, the father of Staten Island softball, a women’s basketball pioneer and seven-time PSAL city champion, an All-American high school quarterback, a 50-year and counting Staten Island golf legend and Mike Tyson’s boxing trainer.”

When asked why such a large class in 2024, the Hall’s Induction Ceremony Committee Chairman, Bob Scamardella, said, “The Hall of Fame is proud of its stringent 80% vote requirement for induction. However, with new deserving nominees being elevated each year, the committee realized that many worthy candidates were denied admission because votes were spread out among the many. As a result, the committee established a moratorium on new nominees and this, I believe, has fueled the effort to see those who deserve it, get recognized. The extraordinary caliber of the Class of 2024 reflects well on the Hall’s selection committee and its selection process. This year’s induction ceremony will surely be one not to be missed.”

The Class of 2024 Induction ceremony will be held in the fall and a date should be announced soon.

For a closer look at the Class of 2024, please scroll down:

MARGARET GRENIER

Margaret Grenier, who won seven PSAL city softball championships and five Metro Bowl titles in 22 seasons as a high school coach and blazed a path for the generations of women coaches who followed, was schooling softball players at Curtis High School before the city had a place for them to play.

Her career record of 360-125 includes 10 Staten Island PSAL titles and 11 PSAL city championship-game appearances.

CLARE GUERRIERO

Clare Guerriero was a decorated two-sport star in high school — a two-time Advance All-Star in basketball and softball, an All-City pitcher and winner of the 1988 Jaques Award as the best basketball player on the Island, the Pegasus Award as the best PSAL senior and the Margaret Wigiser Award as the city’s best female athlete.

Then, she played it back at St. Francis College, where Guerriero was the Northeast Conference Newcomer of the Year; a three-year, double-digit scorer in basketball and old-school pitcher in the windmill era of softball, and an inductee of the St. Francis College Hall of Fame.

SHARON McADAMS

Sharon McAdams, Moore Catholic’s first 1,000-point scorer, led the Staten Island Catholic League in scoring as a freshman, and set school records in scoring, steals, assists and free throws at Moore and at St. Francis College, where she’s still the all-time leader in steals.

Back at Moore as a coach, the 1986 New York State Coach of the Year won three Staten Island Catholic League titles, two Archdiocesan titles, 3 Catholic Downstate titles, back-to-back New York State Federation championships, and 80 percent of her games.

DUSTY RHODES

Before he was a World Series hero, Dusty Rhodes was a journeyman outfielder for the New York Giants, best known as a left-handed pinch-hitter and post-game partier.

But in the 10th inning of the opening game of the 1954 Series, Rhodes hit a walk-off, three-run homer to beat the American League champion Cleveland Indians, winners of a then-record 111 regular-season games.

The next day he delivered all the offense the Giants needed with a run-scoring single and a late-game home run, then drove in two more runs in Game Three, setting the stage for a Giant sweep.

KEVIN ROONEY

Kevin Rooney was a New York Golden Gloves champion, 21-4-1 as a professional — a record that includes a meeting with four-division champion Alexis Arguello — and heavyweight champion Mike Tyson’s trainer during the meteoric start and explosive prime of Tyson’s career.

With Rooney in his corner, Tyson was 35-0, consolidated the heavyweight championship, and fought seven successful title defenses. Without him, he lost all three titles, while Rooney turned his focus to training Vinny Pazienza through his comeback from a near-fatal car accident, a broken neck, and a 13-month layoff to a Super Middleweight title.

VIN SCAMARDELLA

As a young man, Vin Scamardella was a dominating fast-pitch softball star, with 30 no-hitters and a perfect game to his credit, and a parade of suitors eager to acquire his services. But as good as he was in the circle, Scamardella’s lasting gifts to the game go far beyond strikeouts, wins or losses.

A lifelong player, umpire, and ambassador for the game, he led the drive to build the first lighted softball field on Staten Island, and made the game accessible to a wider spectrum of players by standardizing the rules and providing legitimacy for the modified-pitch version of the game, earning a place in the ASA Hall of Fame as “The Father of Modified Pitch Softball.”

DUANE SINGLETON

The Island has had other high school athletes who excelled in baseball and basketball; but only one, Duane Singleton, who scored 1,000 points on the hardwood, and then became a Major League centerfielder.

Drafted straight out of McKee/Staten Island Tech by the Milwaukee Brewers in the fifth round of the 1992 amateur draft, when he was 17, Singleton played 33 big-league games with the Brewers and the Detroit Tigers when he was still a teenager.

He hit .258 over parts of eight minor-league seasons, stole 30 bases five times, and went whole summers without committing an error, before finishing his career in the Independent Atlantic League, where the early promise of his speed and athleticism was still evident to anybody watching him play.

JOHN SKRONSKI

John Skronski was a High School All-American quarterback in the fall of 1978, throwing for 1,940 yards and 19 touchdowns for an undefeated Monsignor Farrell team, and one of three quarterbacks recruited by Notre Dame in its search for Joe Montana’s successor. (The other two were Dan Marino and John Elway; you might’ve heard of them.)

When Elway demurred, and Marino stayed home to play for Pitt, it seemed the job was Skronski’s, until a new coach decided he wanted an option quarterback to run his offense. He could’ve transferred; but Skronski remained loyal to his school, content to go through life as a Notre Dame man, and a Staten Island icon: the best there ever was in the old neighborhood.

RODNEY STILWELL

Rodney Stilwell has won all of Staten Island’s amateur golf tournaments, most of them multiple times, including five Staten Island Amateurs, six Staten Island Classics, and a combined 14 Senior Amateurs and Senior Classics. But there was a time when all that seemed impossible.

As a young boy, Stillwell was run over by a city bus, his right leg crushed, the knee ruined. In the years after college, the pain only grew worse, and by 1988, when he was unable to walk the courses, his competitive career seemed over.

Over time, advances in medicine provided a glimmer of hope. After several complicated surgeries and a three-year rehabilitation program, Stillwell returned to competitive play at the age of 46, his game as good as ever; adding to his string of titles and, in 2013, becoming the only man to complete the “Staten Island Slam” – winning the Staten Island Amateur, Staten Island Classic, Senior Amateur and Senior Classic in the same year.

JOHN “THE HEAT” VERDEROSA

The Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will be held on Nov. 15 at the CYO-MIV Center in Pleasant Plains (6541 Hylan Blvd.).

The doors open at 5 p.m. and the ceremony begins promptly at 6 p.m.

Admission is free and open to the public.

Inductees in the Class of 2024 include: Margaret Grenier, Claire Guerriero, Sharon McAdams, Dusty Rhodes, Kevin Rooney, Vince Scamardella, Duane Singleton, John Skronski, Rod Stilwell and Johnny “The Heat” Verderosa.

The event will be held in the gym, adjacent to the Hall of Fame, and the Hall will be open for visitation for the hour prior to the ceremony and for an hour after.

Anthony Santo, Hall of Fame President noted, “Our Induction ceremony is always a feel-good, heart-warming story that celebrates some extraordinary people and revels in the goodness of Staten Island and its people. Ceremony Chairman and emcee, Bob Scamardella, does an exceptional job in presenting an interesting, dynamic and well-paced program. If Staten Island sports is your thing, it’s a must attend affair.”

Staten Island lost some of its edge last week when Bert Levinson, who spent the better part of a lifetime picking the brains of the sharpest jocks in the old neighborhood and beyond, and poured all that acquired wisdom into an almost uninterrupted spate of winning as the baseball and basketball coach at Curtis High School – and, later, as a junior high school principal, and a basketball referee – passed away at his home in West Brighton.

He was 91, and nobody who knew him would say he frittered away any of that time.

Growing up in New Brighton, where his father ran a neighborhood drugstore, Levinson fell in love with the games early on; and when he fell, he fell so hard that playing ball six days a week was never enough.

On Saturdays when Jewish boys from observant families were expected to go to synagogue, Levinson would stuff his glove, spikes, and baseball uniform into a paper sack, and drop it out a bedroom window into the alley below. Then he’d walk out the front door in his best suit, retrieve his gear, and be on his way to Goodhue Playground or Clove Lakes Park, wherever there was a game to be played.

That devotion paid dividends a few years later, when Levinson and his hometown buddy Vinny Gattullo, Army privates stationed at Fort Carson, Colorado, spotted a poster announcing tryouts for the post baseball team. When the rest of the unit went off to keep the post-war peace in Korea, Levinson stayed behind to play ball with teammates like future Yankee manager Billy Martin.

“I got lucky, he’d say whenever he told the story.

He got lucky a lot after that, coming home to start a career as a teacher and coach in an era when larger-than-life coaches high school coaches wielded their out-sized influence to keep order in the hallways, and allowed their bosses the illusion that they were still in charge.

So it was hardly a shock when Levinson’s high school coach Harry O’Brien, having decided he no longer had the stamina to coach two sports, marched his young assistant into the office of principal James Corbett.

“Mr. Corbett,” he announced, “I want you to meet your new basketball coach.”

And that was that.

A decade later, Levinson would take the same walk with his assistant, Larry Anderson.

In those days, even as a rookie coach, Levinson could walk down the line of prospects on the first day of basketball tryouts, pausing in front of every kid with longish hair.

“Get a haircut,” he’d say, “or don’t come back.”

Telling the story decades later, he’d shrug.

“They all came back,” he said, still amazed at the tug of the games. “They wanted to play.”

He coached some great players – big-leaguers, college stars, and Staten Island Hall of Famers – and some of his competitive swagger rubbed off.

“Coach, what are you worried about,” all-city second baseman Bill Wolfe asked him one day, when Levinson was grousing about a missed sign or a botched cut-off.     “We always win.”

And it was nearly true.

Levinson’s teams won seven Island basketball championships in 10 seasons. His baseball teams made six straight appearances in the city championship game, winning back-to-back titles in 1961 and 1962.

He didn’t have the physical stature of some other legendary coaches. But I once saw him stop an argument … and maybe a minor riot … before it started.

Just by raising an eyebrow.

This was after his coaching days were over, when Levinson was officiating the biggest high school games in the neighborhood, and made one of those high-leverage, bang-bang calls that was certain to make somebody mad.

An aggrieved coach stormed off the bench, inciting a crowd that was already teetering on the edge of anarchy.

He was halfway to the scorer’s table when Levinson turned his head. He didn’t speak, or raise a hand. His baleful stare, and that one raised eyebrow, were enough to stop the outraged coach in his tracks. Suddenly uncertain, he retreated to his seat on the bench, and the tension leaked out of gym.

That same moxie came in handy in Levinson’s tenure as the principal at Dreyfus Junior High School, a troubled school in danger of collapse. Levinson succeeded where others had failed, because he wasn’t afraid to try, and because staff and parents knew the new guy couldn’t be cowed; that he meant what he said; and that when push came to shove, he had their backs.

He could be a demanding taskmaster, and an unyielding disciplinarian. But once you were one of his guys, that membership card never expired. Levinson’s word opened doors that might otherwise have been closed. And more than once, he put his own reputation on the line in front of a desk sergeant, district attorney, or judge, after one of his players – or ex-players – got himself in a jam.

It all came back to him later in life.

Diminished by age and illness, and crushed by the passing of his son Mickey, a gifted physical therapist whose clients included baseball greats like Mariano Rivera, Levinson was sustained by the attention of his former players, now middle-aged men.

Some, like Larry Anderson and Larry Liedy, seemed more like sons.

But the doting father and grandfather, who drove his granddaughter to nursery school every day – and waited outside until the end of the school day, just in case she needed him – could be moved to tears by the attention of athletes he hadn’t seen in decades.

At his 90th birthday party, he was serenaded with a personalized version of “My Way” led by Island crooners Al Lambert and Jack Furnari, and a chorus that included Edy, his bride of 58 years, their kids and grandkids, former players and onetime adversaries.

On days like that, when he was surrounded by familiar faces and voices, and the stories started to flow, there were moments when the years seemed to melt away, and he was still Bert Levinson, who could tell a nearly full-grown man when to get a haircut, and stop a nasty ruckus before it started, just by raising a questioning eyebrow.

By Charlie De Biase Jr. | debiase@siadvance.com

What’s wrong with starting the celebration a little bit early?

Nothing, as far as the guys who once made L&M Tavern a household name are concerned.

The legendary Staten Island Touch Tackle League team, of course, learned it was getting inducted into the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame (SISHOF) earlier this year. However, even though the official ceremony isn’t until November, the former players and coach decided to get together to start the festivities ahead of time.

On July 14, they did just that. Eleven former players and one coach got together at Jody’s Club Forest in West Brighton to not only reminisce, but talk about the upcoming SISHOF induction ceremony on Nov. 17. The SISHOF is located inside the CYO-MIV Center in Pleasant Plains.

L&M has a laundry list of accomplishments through the years including, most notably, four straight SITTL regular-season and playoff championships and a 46-game winning streak. L&M, of course, played in the highly touted league’s top division and always rode a team-first culture to immense success.

Those in attendance at last month’s shindig included Nick Antonucci, Bert Benedetto, Daryl Dinkins, Bill Masella, Joe McAdams, Larry Puccerelli, John Santora, coach Gunnar Sjolander, Kristin Sjolander, Sean Slattery, Dwight Stilwell and Pat Sweeney.

“We’re elated for the coming Induction Ceremony in November,’’ said Benedetto. “We’re proud to be together and gathered at Jody’s Tavern to celebrate our election into the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame.’’