Andrew Amaro, like many of his family members, has a passion for baseball. Amaro is proving himself a valuable player for the University of Maryland Terrapins this year.
By Mike Gibson
For the Wire
Andrew Amaro remembers being a little guy and watching his most famous uncle, Ruben Amaro Jr., play baseball for the Philadelphia Phillies.
“I was real little, but I definitely remember him,” Andrew told the Midweek Wire. “He was a line-drive hitting outfielder, hit for a pretty good average and a guy who hustled and did a lot of the little things really well. He paid attention to detail. I definitely remember watching him play.”
Now Ruben is paying attention to details in a different way as general manager of the Philadelphia Phillies, putting together a team that has been to the World Series twice in the past five years.
Andrew Amaro does not remember his grandfather, Ruben Amaro Sr., playing shortstop for the Phillies. But a lot of Phillies fans who recall Connie Mack Stadium remember Amaro being the shortstop part of a double play combination with second basemen Tony Taylor and Cookie Rojas. (Bobby Wine also played shortstop for the Phils in that era.)
Fast forward another 15 years and Andrew Amaro, arguably Bensalem’s currently most famous baseball player, is the same kind of player at the University of Maryland. By the first week of April, Amaro worked his way into the starting lineup for the Terrapins and was hitting a blistering .348.
Although he had only 23 at-bats through the March part of the schedule, as Maryland won 15 of its first 27 games, the sample was small because he was fighting for playing time.
Now, with two starting outfielders injured, he looks to be in the lineup to stay.
“He gives us a good dimension and speed and athleticism in the lineup,” said John Szefc (pronounced “Chef”), the Maryland head coach. “He doesn’t hit for a whole lot of power but he does a lot of the little things really well.
“He’s a plus runner, which means he’s one of the best runners on our team, and he’s one of the better drag bunters on our team,” he added. “He does a good job at doing what he has to do to get on base.”
Szefc, a Drexel University graduate, is a first-year coach at Maryland, taking the job after working as an assistant coach at Kansas State University, before the entire Maryland staff left to take over the program at the University of Michigan.
That was before Maryland accepted an invitation to play in the Big 10 Conference, Amaro will get to experience that transition from the Atlantic Coast Conference in 2015. While there is some question about how the Terrapins will compete in football, Amaro has no questions about how the baseball team will do.
“I think we’ll go in there and compete for the championship right away,” Amaro said. “I think it’s been proven that the ACC schools are at least as good as the Big 10 schools and, in a lot of respects, better.
“The fact that the ACC has so many southern schools and good baseball weather helps in both recruiting and the level of play.”
The Amaro bloodlines have benefited two ACC teams and Penn Charter High School.
Amaro’s brother, Rob, is a redshirt junior catcher and infielder on the roster of the baseball team at the University of Virginia, but has not played this year due to an arm injury.
Both played at Penn Charter and Andrew Amaro caught up with his brother while playing an early-season series at Virginia, where the Cavaliers won two out of three games.
“It was really fun playing against my brother,” Andrew said. “It’s tough on him because Virginia is having a great season and he’s not able to play, but playing in the ACC I get to go against his team a few times a year and that’s a good thing.”
Another reunion is scheduled for the weekend of April 26–27 in Durham, N.C., when Amaro faces former Penn Charter teammate Ken Koplove, a pitcher at Duke.
“Ken Koplove can hit, too, in addition to being a good pitcher,” Andrew said. “Everybody at Maryland pretty much hates Duke but I don’t, not only because of him but because both of my parents (David and Jennifer) went to Duke. When we get on the field, it’s a pretty big rivalry, though.”
Off the field, Amaro is a communications major.
“I’m learning a lot about one-on-one conversations and listening, which is really a big part of communications,” he said.
Uncle Ruben is pretty busy during baseball season, but shows support when he can.
“He came to one of my games last year at North Carolina State,” Andrew said. “That was good. I want to play a few years in professional baseball and then go on and hopefully make enough money to run my own baseball team on some level.”
If that sounds familiar, following in footsteps has been a successful family formula.
