Baseball
Jack Hurley
Jack Hurley, a three-time all-city pitcher, threw three high school no-hitters and struck out 46 batters in one three-game city playoff run, and was captain of Port Richmond’s PSAL borough basketball champions. Drafted four times in high school and the University of Michigan before signing as a first-round pick of the Minnesota Twins, Hurley won his first nine minor-league starts in 1970 before suffering a rotator cuff injury, and was out of the game a (Read more...)
Ron Isler
Ron Isler was a three-sport star at New Dorp High School when he was struck and critically injured by a hit-and-run driver after a basketball game. He came back to hit .496 and .390 on the diamond, score four touchdowns in a game, and be named a Teen Magazine All-American. Recruited to play football at the University of Iowa, Isler wound up a three-year starter on the baseball team, an All-Big 10 shortstop and Academic (Read more...)
Johnny Johnson
Johnny Johnson, a longtime executive with the New York Yankees, served as baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn’s chief administrator and, as president of the National Association of Professional Baseball Clubs, led a resurgence in minor-league baseball. Johnson, who began his career as a $50-a-week stenographer, spent 24 years with the Yankees as a business manager, farm director, personnel director and general manager, during a period when the franchise won 18 pennants and 12 World Series.(Read more...)
Bert Levinson
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.(Read more...)
Sonny Logan
Sonny Logan toured the country with the New York Black Yankees in the final days of the Negro Leagues, while he was still a student at Tottenville High School. He played three seasons in the Cleveland Indian organization before a shoulder injury ended his professional career, and Logan came home to play and later officiate in the best Staten Island Sandlot Leagues, and coached four national championship softball teams.(Read more...)