Ted Del Guercio, 78, top baseball prospect
Sunday, November 26, 2006
BY JOHN WIHBEY
Star-Ledger Staff
In 1945, Newark's own Ted Del Guercio signed an eye-popping $19,000 contract with the Boston Red Sox.
The 17-year-old pitcher and slugger from the North Ward seemed like he was on deck for the big leagues.
Mr. Del Guercio, a handsome, strapping 6-foot-1 Central High School prodigy, would hit .300 for the better part of the next decade in the minor leagues, playing against the likes of Hank Aaron, family members said. Aaron, baseball's future home run king, even bested him one year for a minor league batting title.
Some hard luck, though, stopped Mr. Del Guercio from making the majors. In the end, he was left with only salty stories from a decade in the scruffier rungs of professional baseball -- and a glimpse of what might have been.
"It hurt him a little bit," said his son, Ted Del Guercio Jr., 53, of Newton. "But we talked baseball every day. He would have you laughing all night. He was a pisser."
On Thanksgiving, Thaddeus "Ted" Del Guercio Sr. succumbed to long-term health problems at his home on Wakeman Avenue in Newark, his family said. A retired private investigator, Seton Hall University graduate and father of two, he was 78.
"He was just an all-around talented guy -- a world-class piano player, a history buff who knew everything about World War II," said his grandson, Robert Del Guercio, 31, of Queensbury, N.Y. He said his grandfather was a "proud and loyal man" who loved Newark and enjoyed dispensing tough advice to his grandkids.
Born on Dec. 29, 1927, Mr. Del Guercio threw Essex County's first no-hitter at the high school level and became a member of the All-State team, according to reports at the time.
"He was one of the top players the state produced during that era," said Sid Dorfman, who selected the best players during that period for both The Star-Ledger and the Newark Evening News.
Dorfman, who owns and operates Dorf Feature Service and still writes for The Star-Ledger, said that the $19,000 contract Mr. Del Guercio signed was an "extraordinary" amount of money at the time, the result of a bidding war among other professional teams.
Mr. Del Guercio was inducted into the Newark Athletic Hall of Fame in 1994 and made The Star-Ledger's "All Century Teams of the Decade" in baseball for the 1940s.
But the game's national annals list him as a footnote to one of baseball's biggest trades, a 17-player, multi-team deal in the mid-1950s that brought pitchers Don Larsen and Bob Turley to the Yankees.
After his sports career -- during which he moonlighted as a piano player at Victoria Castle, a Newark night spot -- Mr. Del Guercio worked at State Farm Insurance and then set up a private investigation business in Fairfield, family members said. He is predeceased by his former wife, Marie DeLuca.
Family members said he was an associate of longtime Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda's and a good buddy of Yankee catcher Johnny Blanchard's, among other big league greats.
"Johnny Blanchard told me, 'If I could hit like your father, forget about it. He was a helluva stick man,'" Ted Del Guercio Jr. said.
But Mr. Del Guercio Sr.'s hot temper -- he once punched his own minor league manager -- and some early bad press made it difficult for him to get a big break, his son said.
"My mother always said if he went 4-for-4, he was great," Ted Del Guercio Jr. said. "But if he went 0-for-4, he went nuts."
The expansion of the minor leagues also coincided with the beginning of Mr. Del Guercio Sr.'s career, making it difficult to fight through the bigger talent pool to a major league club, said baseball historian Bob Golon.
"In 1945, a lot of younger players were being signed because of the war," said Golon, an author who is writing a book about professional baseball in New Jersey. "But in 1946, the floodgates opened with all the guys coming back from the service. ... It was very tough to advance in that era."
In a way, Mr. Del Guercio Sr. would always stay in that lost past.
Family members said he died with a Tommy Dorsey big band recording playing on his stereo at his Newark residence. Next to Mr. Del Guercio was a freshly scribbled list of his favorite old tunes, they said.
Carol Del Guercio, 52, Mr. Del Guercio Sr.'s daughter-in-law, said the hard-nosed ex-ballplayer had a soft spot, and his piano brought it out. "He played beautifully," she said. "He was this big guy who'd sit at the piano and this sweet sound would come out."
In addition to his son Ted Jr., daughter-in-law Carol and grandson Robert, he is survived by his son Richard; his grandchildren, Lauren Bellamy, Kristen, David, Thaddeus J. III and Anthony G. Del Guercio, and his great-grandchildren, Blake Bellamy and Christopher Del Guercio.
Visiting hours will be 2 to 6 p.m. today at the S.W. Brown and Son Funeral Home, 267 Centre St., Nutley, and the funeral service will be held there Monday at 9:30 a.m. |
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