Featured Story

New Shelter Island Bucks coach makes his pitch to win

JO ANN KIRKLAND PHOTO  The Bucks brain trust for 2015. From left, recently named Pitching Coach Casey Buckley, Head Coach Jamie Quinn and General Manager Dave Gurney.
JO ANN KIRKLAND PHOTO
The Bucks brain trust for 2015. From left, recently named Pitching Coach Casey Buckley, Head Coach Jamie Quinn and General Manager Dave Gurney.

Opponents of the 2015 Shelter Island Bucks are on notice: Your hitters are not going to be happy at the plate.

So says the Bucks’ newly announced pitching coach, Casey Buckley. “I want pitchers to command the inner half of the plate and make the hitter uncomfortable,” Mr. Buckley said. And, he added, Bucks’ pitchers will “above all, compete.”

Currently the pitching coach for the University of Rhode Island, Mr. Buckley, 24, has some Long Island connections, pitching for Dowling College in Oakdale, where he graduated in 2014.

A career-ending injury to his pitching arm moved him into the coaching ranks, where he became the pitching coach for the Golden Lions. His tutoring resulted in Dowling putting up the best ERA in the Division II collegiate ranks with a 2.42. Dowling went 36-17 overall , winning its conference title with a 19-5 record and going to the finals of the NCAA East Regional.

He’s been busy ever since, taking the job with Rhode Island and being tapped as pitching coach for the Bucks by Jamie Quinn, who will be skippering Shelter Island’s entry in the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League this coming season.

Last year the Bucks had a stirring run at the end of the season, making the finals of the HCBL after multiple comebacks, only to lose to a powerhouse Southampton squad in the championship series.

General Manager Dave Gurney brought Mr. Buckley and his fiancée Amber O’Malley— a Long Island girl who grew up in Farmingville — to the Island one day during the holidays, the first visit for the New Jersey native. Also on hand was Mr. Quinn.

“They’ll make a good team,” Mr. Gurney said, adding that he had a chance to see the two coaches interacting during the tour and at lunch at the Islander. “It’s a good fit.”

He also noted that Mr. Buckley has “a good last name. Just take off the ending and you can tell he was born a Buck.”

The new pitching coach credits his former Dowling coach, Tom Caputo, with instilling in him that “There are different ways to push everybody. But above all, take an interest in all your players.”

Pitching is unlike any other position in sports, he said, and individual styles have to be respected. “There are 400 different ways to throw 90 miles an hour,” he said.

Mr. Buckley will teach his pitchers to “win the first three pitches and attack the strike zone. If you can’t pitch inside you’re only pitching to one dimension of the plate and you’re going to get hit. “

As for working with young pitchers getting rocked in the early innings, Mr. Buckley’s advice will be that it’s not a unique situation.

“Anyone who has ever pitched has been in that situation,” he said. “Standing out there and you’re thinking, ‘Good God!’ But I know one of my biggest responsibilities is the mental side of the game and to tell a pitcher to just calm down and slow down and remind them that there’s a way out of every thing. I can tell them that in the professional ranks, the guys who have succeeded are the ones who can make the game slow down.”

Mr. Buckley and Mr. Quinn will most likely be housed together by an Island family during the season. General Manager Gurney wanted to let Islanders know that the team is reaching out to the community for housing for players and coaches.

Hosts for the college-age players provide a bedroom, some space in the refrigerator for a player to store some food and washing machine privileges for uniforms. They don’t have to provide transportation for players, Mr. Gurney said. To host a player for the upcoming season, give  Dave Gurney a call at 433-1502 or email him at [email protected].

Mr. Buckley and fiancée Ms. O’Malley thoroughly enjoyed their time on the Island during the holidays.

“It was really cool,” he said. “It seems like a tight-knit, throwback community that really cares about its team. I’m excited I’ll be working in that kind of environment.”