By Mike Gibson
For the Wire
As a history major at The College of The Holy Cross, Ryan Filipowicz probably has enough mental notes to write a compelling essay on baseball’s past, thanks to how he spent the last two summers.
Last summer, he played a few games in historic Cooperstown (N.Y.), home of the Hall of Fame, playing for the Watertown Wizards of the Perfect Game Baseball League.
This summer, he’s experiencing one of Bucks County’s best-kept secrets — the beautiful baseball stadium in Quakertown called Memorial Park. He is pitching there through July for the Quakertown Blazers of the Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League (ACBL). The league is composed of college all-stars from up and down the East Coast.
The Quakertown field looks like something from an old movie set. Memorial Park is a 600-seat stadium with fully enclosed bleachers to protect the fans against rain and sun.
“It’s very welcoming in terms of the fans are right there,” Filipowicz said. “It’s really one of the great fields of its kind anywhere. The fans are right there on top of you and you are able to feel them and hear them and the place as a great sense of history.”
The Holy Ghost Prep graduate has come a long way from pitching on the bare-bones field adjacent to the Bensalem school. The best college players from the Philadelphia area share the Blazers’ roster.
“I had the option of going back to Watertown but I told my college coach, ‘If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to play for this Quakertown if they would take me,’” Filipowicz said. “Watertown played in a league called the Perfect Game Collegiate League (PGCL) and the two leagues are quite similar in comparison but the difference for me is that it’s nice to be so close to home.”
After a home game, Filipowicz hops right in his car and drives the hour-long trip to his home in Yardley.
As a freshman at HC, Filipowicz made nine appearances, including two starts, and had a 3.29 ERA. He did not allow a run in eight of his appearances and did not allow a hit in four of his outings.
Filipowicz joins an impressive list of guys who have at played or practiced for the Blazers, including future Hall of Fame catcher Mike Piazza and San Francisco Giants’ pitcher Ryan Vogelsong. (Piazza’s time was cut short when he was the Blazers’ final cut of the 1988 season.)
“It’s great to play in the same home park those guys played in,” Filipowicz said. “Ryan Vogelsong played for them, which is a cool thing.
“This is the 30th anniversary of the (Quakertown) team and the league is going to hold its all-star game in Memorial Park,” he added. “It gets to represent the league and host a lot of great players, so I picked a pretty good year to be here.”
In 1988, the ACBL all-stars played the USA Olympic team before a crowd of 4,044 (almost all standing) at Memorial Park, a record that still stands today.
Still, despite the scenery and history surrounding him, Filipowicz has not lost sight of the primary reason he is there — to enhance his skills.
The Blazers started out the season 1–2 and Filipowicz assumed the “Mike Adams” (set-up) role during the one win, retiring the side in the sixth inning before handing it over to Reed Shuttle, the Blazers’ closer.
“Our games, at least the double-header ones, go seven innings and I got to pitch the sixth inning,” he said. “The neat thing about this opportunity is that they made it clear to everyone that the possibility exists that everybody is going to get a chance to start a game and I told them I’d like to do that.
“This year, we had 12 seniors at Holy Cross and I came out of the bullpen a good amount of time, but next year more is expected of me there. I expect more out of myself so getting to pitch in a number of different roles and situations is only going to help me prepare for next season,” he said.
