Marty Coyle was coming off his first college baseball season, looking for a summer team to join.
“Todd Sippel was all over me about getting on this team,” Coyle said of the Beecher Muskies. “Really, he wouldn’t let it go. So I came out and played a game or two and I did pretty well. Couldn’t get him to stop calling me after that.”
That was literally half a lifetime ago for Coyle, who’s now 36 and in his 18th season with the Muskies.
And the former Bremen, South Suburban and Robert Morris catcher isn’t just hanging on. Last year, he made the all-tournament team at the National Amateur Baseball Federation Major Division World Series.
Earlier this summer, Coyle hit his 100th home run as a Muskie. Through June 21, he was batting .270 with a homer and 11 RBIs to move his career numbers to .321, those hundred homers and 487 runs batted in over 616 games.
What keeps him returning year after year to play alongside teammates who are half his age?
“That’s a really good question,” Coyle said. “When you play baseball so long, you become, like, a baseball lifer. It’s in my DNA.”
So while others come and go, Coyle keeps coming back to play for Muskies manager Fred LeSage and his coaches, who now include Sippel, Wendell Thomas, Brad Meyer and Joe Malia.
“It’s more like a family-type atmosphere,” Coyle said. “So it’s kind of morphed from me enjoying playing to me enjoying being around these guys and also sort of mentoring these younger players.”
Like a lot of his current teammates, Coyle had dreams of playing pro ball. And he briefly made it happen, catching on with the Frontier League’s Schaumburg Boomers in 2012 and making it into one game.
“After I graduated (from Robert Morris), I just had a goal of playing professionally,” Coyle said. “I figured since I didn’t get drafted, I wasn’t going to be a guy who’s going to get money invested (in him) or anything. So it was more like a personal thing. I wanted to see if I could be told I wasn’t good enough.
“I ended up filling in for an injured guy for, like, 10 games. And my last game, I got one inning, I threw out a runner stealing. And that was my pro career.”
Playing semipro baseball hasn’t been Coyle’s only sports connection. An auto shop and wood shop teacher, he recently took a new job at Reavis High School after a stint at Hillcrest. He’s coached football at Bremen and baseball at Tinley Park. While Coyle is not coaching at the moment, he doesn’t rule out doing it again someday.
In the meantime, he’ll keep suiting up for the Muskies.
“I feel good, I enjoy the competition,” he said. “I think that’s really why I like it. I like being able to play with these young guys. But it is kind of strange. I think a lot of the 18-year-olds think … 36 is, like, decrepit.”
While most of the Muskies come into the season fresh off playing in the spring, Coyle prepares differently.
“I’ve always been kind of a workout warrior,” he said. “… I try to work out daily, I try to keep myself in shape. … It’s something I talk to these young guys about — man, you guys are lucky. They got 200 at-bats (coming into the season). I don’t even know the (strike) zone anymore. So it is trying, but it takes mental focus.”
And the desire to keep playing a kids game well into his 30s — a desire Coyle still has, obviously.