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MICHAEL SHEPPARD  '54   
2004 Alumnus of the Year

An ex-Marine tank officer, who when asked about his growing up quotes from his high school Alma Mater—one of the winning-est college baseball coaches around, who now has three sons carving their own marks on the New Jersey and national baseball landscape—an avowed son of the Seton Hall Family, who assumed the role of father to hundreds of players and thousands of students at the Seton Hall he dedicated his professional life to. That is Michael Sheppard, Sr., Seton Hall Prep's Alumnus of the Year 2004.

In announcing the award, Headmaster Rev. Msgr. Michael Kelly offered his own memories of Shep's influence. "When I first entered Seton Hall Prep as a freshman in 1953, one of the first seniors to greet me was Mike Sheppard, along with a few of his friends— Bernie Suttake, Phil Passalaqua and Rudy Katzenberger. At that moment I knew I was welcome and had made the right choice. Mike and so many of his classmates were role models for me then, and remain the same today."  [photo, left, courtesy SHU]

The idea of the young Mike Sheppard ever becoming a role model was not a sure thing in the early days. A conversation with Shep about growing up in Newark and Bloomfield conjures up old black and white images of the Bowery Boys scuttling through the streets or hanging out at the playground or on the Vailsburg corner late at night, with just a little bit of mischief in the offing. With an Irish cop for a dad, and a mother who passed away when he was two, Shep's early days would have earned him a spot right beside Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall. "It's not many people who can say at my age they've spent their entire lives within four miles of where they started," Shep noted. "With my father on the job or at the precinct house, with no mother around and with my older brother left to join the Marines, I was on my own a lot. It was tough. I learned 'no fear' on the streets." He quickly goes on to add, "But someone up there must like me. The priests and faculty at the Prep took care of me; they took personal interest in me. They smoothed the roughness of the streets off me. They refined me. The Prep was like the mother I didn't have, like in the Alma Mater."

[photo, left, by RCM]

As an acknowledged gym and playground rat, his early athletic abilities gave him easy entrée to Prep student culture, even as an eighth grader. But Mike remembered that it was in junior year that he discovered he needed to take his studies more seriously. "Finn Tracey pulled me aside and told me that I probably wasn't good enough to get signed, but I could probably get a baseball scholarship somewhere. But only if I started hitting the books." He turned from a student whose report card indicated "needs prodding" to one that he recalls had his history teacher Michael Nittoli marveling at the change. That developing appreciation for "hitting the books" would be inculcated in his own college players during his entire 31-year career as Head Coach at SHU and still is, in college classes like "Teaching Coaching," as he continues to teach in 2004.

Mike is quick to recall the fellow students, teachers and coaches that helped form his "second family," his home away from home. Legendary gym maintenance man Tom Sheridan, who had actually played baseball with Shep's father after WWI, watched out for him at school. And with his own house empty, Mike notes, "I was at everyone else's house a lot of the time, at the playground and on the corner. I was always eating dinner at someone's house. Frank Rinks taught me to do my laundry on the washing machines down in Walsh Gym." His football lessons in the program headed by Larry Sartori and the up and coming Tony Verducci proved invaluable. Senior gridiron star center Jim Reardon '51 also became his mentor, even as Shep had to play freshman tackling dummy to Reardon's blocking drills. Msgr. Joe Tuite provided a spring baseball program on the South Orange Avenue lawn where Shep, a ninth grade catcher, could show his stuff well enough that Head Coach Frank  Tracey would invite him up with the big boys on the varsity. ["I loved catching Verducci during batting practice. He could throw all day."] And he admits that it was often the thought of Pete Calcagno's workouts that later got him through the toughest times while in training at the Camp Lejune Marine base.

The toughness, directness and sense of order and directness that the Prep brought to his life carried through his entire career. Former major leaguer and SHU outfielder John Morris saw it right off the bat in Shep. "For me, it always comes back to that initial note from Shep. Here I'd been getting all sorts of glorious letters from all over the place—Arizona State, Miami, on gold-plated stationery, about what a great player I was. Then I get this note from Shep— it was simple and profound. Handwritten in his scratchy little writing, it said, 'I understand you're a good student athlete. Seton Hall will make you a better one. Never lose your hustle. Shep.' That was it. Right to the point. No BS."

Shep himself is quick to point out another key ingredient to his fortunes
over the years: "Sports, Seton Hall Prep and Phyllis have kept me straight." It's a rare sighting of Shep, at any of the scores of games he still attends, that he is not
in the company of wife and former high school girlfriend, Phyllis. A fixture in the stands while her husband coached the University teams to 998 wins, Phyllis is also mother to three Prep alumni and baseball coaches themselves: Michael, Jr. 20-year coach at the Prep and national high school Coach of the Year in 2003; John, Head Coach and AD at Morristown Beard; and Robert, who was Assistant for his dad at SHU, and interim coach in 2002 while Shep, Sr. recovered from a stroke that sidelined him for a year. Robert took over the University reins from his father this past fall.

The consummate family man, Shep, with Phyllis at his side, heads a clan that has Seton Hall and baseball running through its veins. Mike, Jr., a Sheppard acorn that has not fallen very far from the tree, noted from personal experience some similar qualities running through Shep the father, as well as Shep the Coach: "He can be the tough guy when he feels the need, and he can be gentle when that's called for. It's basically 'tough love.' That's how he coaches; that's how he fathers."

Msgr. Kelly summed it up: "Mike embodies all that Seton Hall Prep espouses as a Catholic preparatory school. Mike Sheppard is truly deserving of his selection as Alumnus of the Year."

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