Seventeen. A number that haunts Lou Santos daily.
That’s Coach Lou for ya – always looking at the future. But his past is pretty impressive – so are his 483 career wins coaching softball, and baseball.
And yes, he is 17 wins shy of the coveted 500 mark. “I’d like to get that 500th,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle.
Coach Lou will celebrate his 65th year in coaching come September. “Coaching,” he continued, “has no borders.”
For Coach Lou, that’s certainly true. He’s the winningest baseball coach in the history of Queensborough Community College and has coached Archbishop Molloy High School’s girls’ jayvee softball team to the city title twice; with ten division titles, and a playoff appearance in each season he served.
“This was the ninth year I coached in the Friendship Series in Puerto Rico,” he says, “both baseball and softball. We played in the Dominican Republic and were set to play in Cuba against China and Finland back in 2020, but Covid cancelled us.”
Baseball and softball for Coach Lou are true love affairs. “If there’s a field in America,” he says, “I probably stepped on it. When you fly over a baseball field; you certainly can’t confuse that beauty with a soccer or lacrosse playing field.”
Coaching was in Santos’s blood when he was 16 – and he’s coached every year since. His career includes the Greater New York Sandlot Athletic Alliance, St. Raymond’s High School, St. Helena and Msgr. Scanlon High School, Christ the King High School, Queensborough Community College, St. Michael’s, the Flushing Tigers, Concordia College and the Stanners of Molloy.
“Besides my wife and kids,” he said, “The best relationships are my former players and their families.”
At Queensborough he scheduled 30 baseball games in the fall, and another 55 in spring. He took his players to Hawaii. “We sold candy bars twice-a-week to fund the trip,” he said.
“I was very demanding at QCC,” he says. “If you don’t have the passion, forget it. And we had great passion.”
One in particular, a six-foot-seven youngster by the name of Matt Conley.
“I went up to him at QCC and he told me he was going to Wagner College,” Santos remembers. “Two weeks before our season starts, he calls me and says, ‘Wagner only gave me $1,500, I can’t pay my bills.’”
Santos says he had 110 kids at his QCC tryout. As for Conley, the McClancey High grad, Santos says: “He can’t run, or hit the curve ball. If he wants to pitch, I’ll keep him. He can’t play first base or the outfield.”
Conley walked away from the pitching offer.
“He (Conley) calls me back in the spring. He says: ‘” My dad called me a donkey.’”
He comes out, and Santos says he becomes a premier Junior College pitcher. He got a full scholarship to New York Tech – and he was signed by the Chicago Cubs.
“He tore his elbow,” Santos says, “But he got the chance.”
At Concordia College – a Division II school – Santos won 70 games during his three-year tenure.
And this year his jayvee girls’ softball team at Molloy won 23 of their 27 ballgames; finished third in New York State – and lost a heartbreaker to Staten Island’s Moore Catholic in the state semifinals.
“What I’m most proud of,” says Coach Lou, “Our girls led the nation in Grade-Point-Average (GPA) last year with a perfect 4.0 – that’s 15 girls.”
On March 25, 2017, Coach Lou was inducted in Molloy’s Hall of Fame. He has a spot in the New York State Baseball Hall of Fame – but he wants that icing on the cake – that’ll be seventeen more career wins for an even 500.
Then he can celebrate with Matt Conley,
Oh, did we mention, Matt owns and operates Conley’s Corner Pub in Queens.
Andy Furman is a Fox Sports Radio national talk show host. Previously, he was a scholastic sports columnist for the Brooklyn Eagle. He may be reached at: [email protected] X: @AndyFurmanFSR
