'He was extraordinary': Remembering Bruce Wheeler, longtime SMU/UMD baseball coach

Bruce Wheeler coached men for four years. He impacted them for life.

The Southeastern Massachusetts University/UMass Dartmouth baseball coach for 33 years, Wheeler, 78, died on Tuesday morning. He had been battling lung cancer.

Wheeler coached baseball on the North Dartmouth campus from 1972 to 2004, with his teams posting a record of 746-530, gaining nine NCAA Division III postseason berths and four appearances in the National Association of Interscholastic Athletics (NAIA) national tournament from 1972 to 1975. Wheeler remained close to many of his players for many years after they last wore the Corsair blue and gold.

“A sad day. We lost a hero,” said Norton resident and former major league infielder Rod Correia, who played for Wheeler at SMU from 1986 to 1988. “He was a mentor to a lot of people. He had a way of teaching mental toughness.”

Tony Szklany of New Bedford, a city firefighter, played his senior year (1986) at SMU after transferring from UMass Amherst. He next served as a Corsair assistant coach for three years, and remained close friends with Wheeler.

“Mr. Bruce Wheeler was so much more than a legendary great coach and teacher to the game of baseball. He was a father figure and friend with an open door to all his players,” Szklany, a New Bedford High School graduate, wrote in a text. “He made his players not only better on the field, but more importantly off the field. As a player you left his program a better person. We all have truly lost one of the greats.”

Wheeler was also the men's head basketball coach at SMU, from 1972 to 1983, with his 1976 team qualifying for the NCAA tournament. In years of coaching both sports, Wheeler would sometimes coach a basketball game or practice at the Tripp Athletic Center and immediately switch hats and run a preseason baseball practice in the same gym.

Though he would be inducted into the Little East Conference, the UMass Dartmouth and the New England Intercollegiate Baseball Hall of Fames, Wheeler was not in baseball coaching for the glory. Division 3 baseball in New England isn't conducive to that.

After notching a career landmark win in a home game, on a typically gray, cold spring day, Wheeler, with almost everyone else having already left the field area for the the comforts of car or the Tripp Center, stuck around to be interviewed about the landmark win by one (1) reporter. (Full disclosure: Friends, family ex-players and co-workers were waiting inside to celebrate with Coach.)

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A native of Vermont and a longtime Dartmouth resident, Wheeler was blessed with a distinctive voice, one that carried long and clear at normal volume. He was distinctive in another way for a college head coach. Wheeler did his own scorebook, with his own system, while coaching. He wanted game information clear, accurate and detailed at his fingertips.

For about a decade, he had as his assistant the late Jim Sullivan, the former Somerset High baseball coach. “I'm used to being home in my pajamas and robe at this time,” Sullivan told former Herald News sports writer Tim Geary one winter night at a home basketball game, just before the start of a preseason baseball practice.

Bob Curran of Fall River, a Durfee High graduate, played for Wheeler for four years, served as an assistant coach from 1989 to 2004, and then succeeded Wheeler as head coach.

“He certainly was dedicated to his players and to the program, making men out of us,” said Curran, who had been planning to visit Wheeler later on Tuesday. “He taught us how to get on with our lives. He always stressed personal/family first, then education, then baseball.”

Jim Mullins of Westport, the former UMD sports information director, remembered Wheeler for his humor, his wit, his infectious personality, and for how much he cared about his players during their days as Corsairs and long after. Wheeler was a strong believer in the fraternity of the baseball team.

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Mullins said former players would help form groups of 20 or more to join Wheeler on golf outings in New Hampshire and Vermont.

Correia, a Dighton-Rehoboth Regional graduate who as a member of the California Angels was 3-for-3 in his career against Randy Johnson, loves to share his first meeting with Wheeler. It was at SMU and Correia was accompanied by his father. Wheeler, Correia said, told his father that after a game he was welcomed to come down to the dugout to talk life, talk baseball, to have a cigarette.

Wheeler, Correia said, then clearly established parental boundaries, telling the elder Correia, “If you ever ask about your son's playing time relative to another player, your son will never see the field again.

”After retiring from UMD, Wheeler worked as a starter and ranger at Allendale Country Cub in Dartmouth, where, Mullins said, friends would drive their golf carts a hole or two out of the way just to chat.

"He was extraordinary,” Mullins said. “He had a beautiful family. And he had a life after baseball. He had a second life at Allendale.”Wheeler, Mullins said, was a collector. Of beer cans. And of golf balls, which he had a remarkable ability to find on the course. Both collections were meticulously organized. That's the way Bruce Wheeler was.

“He had it all,” Mullins said. “Family, friends and fun.”

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Remembering former SMU/UMass-Dartmouth baseball coach Bruce Wheeler