winter HOURS

SUNDAY: 10:00am-5:00pm

MONDAY:  2:00pm-8:00pm

TUESDAY:  2:00pm-8:00pm

      WEDNESDAY:  2:00pm-8:00pm

  THURSDAY:  2:00pm-8:00pm

FRIDAY:  CLOSED

    SATURDAY:  10:00am-4:00pm

A BASEBALL VAGABOND ENDS UP COMING HOME

Lefty Looney now wants to share his baseball knwledge-BY MARK JAFFEE REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN HAMDEN: His baseball dream spanned 18 years, trekking through 39 U.S. states, two continents and international baseball hotbeds in the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. He even played in the Italian Baseball League.Brian Looney’s nearly two-decade tour of the globe stemmed from the rookie level New York-Penn League to the International, Midwest and Pacific Coast leagues. The Cheshire native sports championship rings from stints with the Class A Jamestown (N.Y.) Expos and the Double-A Harrisburg (Pa.) Expos.In the mix were brief stops on two major league rosters, the Montreal Expos’ and Boston Red Sox’s, pitching 122/3 innings in a total of seven games from 1993-95.As he glanced over the U.S. map recently, he was asked whether he’d ever played a game in Alabama. “No,” Looney replied, “but I had Tommy John surgery performed on my left elbow by Dr. James Andrews in Alabama in 2000 … Does that count?”It was quite a ride. Growing up, Looney had envisioned life as a professional hockey player, not as a left-handed journeyman baseball pitcher. But a total of 11 major league organizations either drafted him, signed him, traded for him (Boston and Minnesota twice) or released him.He also donned the uniforms of two independent league baseball teams, the Nashua (N.H.) Pride and the Bridgeport Bluefish.The most money he ever made was $9,000 a month.That’s been the roller-coaster pro baseball life of Looney, who noted, “You name it, I was there, up and down the East Coast, from Maine to Florida and a lot of other places in between. I’ve had a lot of great memories at every single place.”The day he made his major league debut, for Montreal against the Mets at Shea Stadium on Sept. 26, 1993, is likely the most unforgettable. Just a few days earlier, he got the unexpected phone call from then Expos general manager Dan Duquette.He had finished the 1993 season with Harrisburg of the Eastern League and returned to Cheshire, where he was trying desperately to line up a golf game with his hometown buddies, but couldn’t reach any of them.”I’m so lucky that I didn’t play golf that day,” he noted.Expos manager Felipe Alou and pitching coach Joe Kerrigan had kept tabs on Looney’s fine numbers at Harrisburg (3-2. 2.38 ERA, 76 strikeouts, 56 innings). So when left-hander Kirk Rueter was injured and shut down for the final four games of the season, the Montreal braintrust thought of Looney.”I was sitting at home watching some bad TV and was about to leave the house, and the phone rang at about 3 p.m.,” Looney recalled. “(Duquette) asked if I wanted to join the team for the final homestand in Montreal. My jaw dropped.”Dan said there was a flight out of Hartford at 4:30, but I told him there was no way that I could get there in time,” Looney said. “He said, ‘I’ll call you back in 10 minutes.’ I called my dad (Ray Looney) and he said that he’d be home in 20 minutes. I don’t even think I said good-bye. The phone rang again, and Dan told me he got me a flight at 5:30 to Montreal. Somehow my dad got me to Bradley in about 30 minutes. I still don’t know how he did it.”When Looney arrived at Olympic Stadium that night, he met Duquette and Alou in the manager’s office. They gave him a uniform, but told him he wasn’t yet activated.”I sat in the stands for three straight nights against the Braves,” said Looney. “The Expos were going to New York and purchased my contract.”On his 23rd birthday, Looney appeared in his first major league game, in relief of Jeff Fassero at Shea Stadium. Darren Fletcher was his catcher.”I remember being extremely nervous when Felipe Alou handed me the ball on the mound,” said Looney.He pitched an inning and two-thirds, struck out his first batter and then gave up two runs. “After that game, I think I threw five scoreless after that to end the season.”What was the best city he ever played in?”I’d love to say Boston or Montreal, but I wasn’t there long enough to call it home,” he said. “I would have to say Salt Lake City, Utah. I ended up getting hurt, but I had one of the better pitching coaches I ever played for in Rick Anderson (now with the Minnesota Twins) and the city itself was absolutely gorgeous. I lived halfway up a ski mountain and was having a career year in 1997 before I blew my elbow out.”His roots in Connecticut are deep, beginning in Cheshire Youth Baseball and youth hockey. He played two years at Cheshire High before transferring to The Gunnery in Washington, Conn. and then playing hockey and baseball at Boston College.”I played two years of hockey before I went full-time with baseball. I regretted it for a while,” he said. “But it ended up being the best decision I ever made. I was a good hockey player, but when I got to BC, the players were just a step ahead of me. I made the right choice.”Then came the tour of the U.S. and beyond.Looney’s longevity in the game, he believes, was because of his ability to get right-handed batters out. Only 5-foot-10, 180 pounds, he threw between 79 and 89 mph, not particularly overpowering stuff. “But I threw strikes and had pinpoint location,” he said.His hockey mentality also helped, allowing him to believe he could get batters out. Selected in the 10th round of the amateur baseball draft by the Expos in 1991, he made an immediate impact for Class-A Jamestown, posting a 7-1 record with a 1.16 earned run average and 64 strikeouts in 62.1 innings. He won seven games at Triple-A Ottawa in 1994, striking out 90 in 124 innings in 1994 before getting traded to the Red Sox. He won nine games over two seasons at Triple-A Pawtucket and briefly pitched for the Red Sox at Fenway Park in 1995.There were plenty of other memorable moments, too, facing the likes of future Hall of Famer Eddie Murray.”I faced Eddie Murray with runners on first and third, got him to chase a 3-0 pitch and he hit a sacrifice fly,” Looney recalled. “Two days later, I started against the Marlins and threw three scoreless innings. I came out of the game because I had thrown a lot of innings that year in the minor leagues, so they had me on a pitch count. "Another special moment came when he induced Pittsburgh’s Andy Van Slyke to pop out with the bases loaded and then struck out Jay Bell on three pitches to end the threat. Perhaps his best pitching ally in the big leagues was Pedro Martinez, who approached his Expos teammate in the bullpen to give him tips. Pedro was a little guy like me and helped with my delivery and showed me how to push off better with my back leg,” said Looney. “He was phenomenal to talk to. "After his stint with the Red Sox, he never reached the major league level again, but did play over the following decade at the Triple-A level with the Yankees, Orioles, Tigers, Indians, Phillies, Marlins, Pirates and Rockies organizations. Following three seasons as a pitching coach and player in Italy, he was offered a contract in 2009, but the deal eventually fell through.”It was lucky for me, as I actually met my future wife (Jen Simione, a Cheshire native) in Cheshire during the time I would have been playing,” he said. They are getting married in September.Looney worked at the Hit Club indoor baseball facility in Thomaston for the past five years before opening his own baseball facility, called “Hamden Yards,” last November.After two decades of accumulating and adding to his baseball knowledge, Looney is lending his help to aspiring players and passing along stories on what it takes to make a boyhood dream become a reality.”I had a dream of getting to the big leagues,” he said. “The hardest part is getting established and staying there. I never looked at my career as having longevity. I just have such a love for the game and my goal now is to try and pass that onto others.