Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame
Relive It All Again
Matty McIntyre hit .269 in 10 big-league seasons with the Athletics, Tigers and White Sox, and teamed with Ty Cobb and Sam Crawford to take the Tigers to back-to-back World Series in 1908 – when McIntyre led the league with 105 runs – and 1909.
Traded to the Chicago White Sox, partly as a result of a bitter feud with Cobb, McIntyre hit .323 and scored 102 runs in 1911.
Bert Levinson was the basketball and baseball coach at Curtis High School for just over a decade, but all his Warrior teams did was win: seven Staten Island PSAL basketball championships, and a trip to the city semifinals.
If possible, Levinson’s baseball record is even more impressive: six consecutive trips to the city championship game, and back-to-back city titles in 1961 and 1962. He sent three players to the major leagues.
Warren Fenley, a three-sport star at Port Richmond High School and All-Met basketball player at Manhattan, played with the 1946 Boston Celtics, the first season of the team’s existence.
A strong defender and rebounder, Fenley helped take Manhattan to the 1943 National Invitational Tournament and served in World War II before joining the Celtics of the American Basketball Association, which soon became the National Basketball Association.
Dan Blaine, a restaurateur and onetime halfback, built the hometown Stapleton Football Club into the best semi-pro team in the metropolitan area, and then – from 1929 through 1932 – a competitive member of the National Football League.
During four mostly middle-of-the-pack seasons, the Stapes hosted the Bears, Packers – and, every Thanksgiving, the New York Giants – at tiny Thompson’s Stadium, highlighted by a 7-6 upset that cost the Giants the 1930 NFL championship.
The 1987 Wagner College football team, coached by Walt Hameline, upset Dayton 19-3 in the Amos Alonzo Stagg Bowl to win the NCAA Division III national football championship.
The Seahawks rolled through the playoffs, beating Rochester 38-14, Fordham 21-0, and Emory & Henry 20-15, before dominating the favored Flyers in the title game.