‘The Crash Davis of Intercounty Baseball’

Reilly seeks evasive second Intercounty Baseball League crown

“I’ve been to five of them and won one.” SEAN REILLY STAR SLUGGER

TORONTO — When he stands in the batter’s box, Sean Reilly cuts the perfect figure of a slugger.

Big, wide, powerful … all the classic images of a sultan of swat, just like Babe Ruth, but from the right-handed side.

Reilly is the Intercounty Baseball League’s all-time leader in homers (204), hits (1,007), RBIs (812) and doubles (161), while ranking second in games played (780, behind London’s Arden Eddie at 846).

Reilly will be looking to make more history this weekend, when his Toronto Maple Leafs play in the championship bestof-five final against the London Majors. Game 1 was set to take place Friday night in London. Game 2 is 2 p.m. Sunday at Dominico Field at Christie Pits in Toronto.

Reilly is going for something that has evaded him since 2004 — an IBL championship.

“I’ve been to five of them and won one,” Reilly, who is in his 25th season in the league, told the Star in an interview this week.

Some call Reilly the “Babe Ruth of the Intercounty league” or the “Crash Davis of the IBL,” referring to Kevin Costner’s character in “Field of Dreams.” Reilly is a bit more than that, given that he — like many players in the league — also holds down a steady job.

The 44-year-old is a Toronto firefighter who lives in Guelph.

As the father of nine-year-old Aiden and five-year-old daughter Ryenn, Reilly and his wife, Lauren, also hustle their son to baseball games and, now, hockey tryouts.

“I wouldn’t be where I am without my family, they have had to make a lot of sacrifices,” Reilly said.

“Playing all these years, and I’ve know Lauren for 15 years now, I said you better know what you are getting into, because we’ll have a lot of friends going away to cottages and on trips, but we’ll be driving to Stratford on a Sunday night and you’ll probably be riding shotgun beside me.”

A native of Hamilton, Reilly is a self-made slugger who entered the IBL in 1997, following a stint in the Minnesota Twins organization.

Reilly wasn’t even dreaming of hitting records back then. He’d been drafted by the Twins in the 29th round of the 1995 draft as a left-handed pitcher, and rubbed shoulders with fellow Canadian Corey Koskie before an injury forced him out of pro ball.

Reilly remained a pitcher when he started his IBL career in 1997. He took the mound for his hometown Hamilton Cardinals for three seasons, but he had always been a hitter, somewhere in his baseball heart.

“When I was growing up, I was always in my backyard, and I tried to emulate my favourite guys … George Bell and Jose Canseco, and guys like that,” Reilly said.

“Being a left-handed pitcher, in Canada, that was kind of your ticket to go somewhere, whether in the pro ball, or on a scholarship. When I came back, I was playing for the Hamilton Cardinals, and we didn’t have the strongest team, so I got the chance to hit. I got better and I got stronger, and I always said I like to hit home runs over having sore arms, so I made that transition in the early 2000s, and stopped pitching.”

Some of Reilly’s best IBL seasons were in Kitchener, with the Panthers, from 2014 to 2017.

So, how did a minor-league pitcher become such a good hitter?

“I’ve been asked that many times but, I’ll be honest, I never took a hitting lesson in my entire life,” Reilly said.

Cardinals coach Dean Castelli played alongside Reilly before coaching him in Hamilton. Castelli remembers Reilly growing from a tall, skinny kid into a muscular slugger. “He was a quality pitcher in our league and he could have made his mark in our league as a pitcher,” Castelli said.

“But it was a process for him in becoming a hitter. When I coached him, I think he hit three homers one year and five the next. He kept himself in good shape and, once he figured out hitting, the rest was history. I still talk to him regularly, and he stays in great shape. He has a workout room in his basement, and it’s quite a nice setup.”

Reilly switched from the mound to the outfield, and kept hitting, and hitting, into his 30s and now his 40s.

He’s a 14-time IBL all-star, and his 2013 season — when he hit 21 homers and 60 RBI — still stands as the single season record in both categories.

The final shapes up as a battle between the Leafs, the top hitting team in the league, and the Majors, the top pitching team in the league.

Toronto boasts Reilly, the top hitter for average this season (.442), along with Justin Marra, who led the league in homers (12) and RBIs (38), and Garret Takamatsu, who finished second in homers with 11.

London’s top of the rotation features Pedro De Los Santos (2.19), and Owen Boon (2.33), who were the league’s ERA leaders this season.

Reilly hit three homers this year, and he also notched his 1,000th career hit. Entering the season, he needed 35 hits to reach the milestone.

He remembers the moment he did it.

“It was at (Dominico Field at Christie Pits) and, believe it or not, it was a crappy, seeing-eye single over the second baseman’s head,” Reilly said.

But “it’s a hit and no one knows the difference in the score book.”

While he does ponder the end of his career, Reilly is also unafraid to say that baseball “is all I’ve known.”

He started playing as a 10-year old in Hamilton. Growing up in a single-mom family with brother Scott, Reilly moved to Beamsville and, when his baseball future started looking serious, he played in Burlington while attending Aldershot High School.

He credits his mother, Gail Millward, for countless hours and sacrifices that went into shaping his career.

“At the time, you just see your mom, she’s your mom, and its like, ‘Mom, I got a game tonight, what time are we leaving?,’ ” Reilly said.

“You don’t see the other side of things, like when she was getting out of work early or, instead of maybe getting the family something that it needs, I got a new baseball glove.”

Reilly says “a lot of people” ask him about his stats, and, yes, about how much longer he will remain in the game. His answer is simple: he’s been playing since he was 10, and baseball “is all I know.”

The focus is always on the moment, and the moment now is the IBL championship.