By:Tom Jordan
Bernie Havern, like the hero in the movie "Field of Dreams," built a baseball field with his very own hands, then watched as dreams came true all around him.
If you build it they will come?
Well, Havern built the Molloy College Lions' field of dreams. He built the team from scratch, built the entire program from nothing.
Twelve years ago, Molloy had no baseball team, just basketball. And now the Lions are champs, having won their first ever conference championship last month. They swept through the New York Collegiate Athletic Conference tournament, three straight.
Molloy has six competitive teams now, a place on the NCAA sports map and its own baseball stadium that will maybe someday be called Ernie Havern Stadium.
Havern was a coach in the Malverne Little League when Molloy athletic director Bob Houlihan approached him about putting together a baseball team. Havern had just created the Malverne Dodgers of the Nassau County Stan Musial League and was instrumental in getting several baseball fields built on Long Island. Houlihan knew Havern was a dedicated baseball man, so he asked him to run the show.
"I thought it was a nice honor, and I'd even get paid," Havern said. Molloy started out as a club team, with no affiliation to an NCAA conference. "We played anyone who would play us. We had no field, no equipment."
But by 1993 the Lions were up and running. They were admitted into the NCAA and the NYCAC. The team posted its first winning season a year later, going 21-17.
They played their home games at Lincoln Park in Hempstead then. A team without a home. But in 1997, Havern was given the go-ahead by then-president Dr. Martin Snider to build a field right on Molloy grounds. He got the concrete donated, laid the sod himself, right behind Kellenberg Hall. He still serves as head groundskeeper, and talks lovingly about the craft of maintaining the field.
"After games, we put the field to sleep in ten minutes. Everyone on the team has a job; maybe the pitchers will rake the warning track, the catchers lay the tarp. It gives everyone a sense of pride for the field they play on."
Finally, the Lions had a home, 335 feet down the leftfield line, 297 down the right, 420 to straightaway center, and with a big sign that says, "Welcome to Molloy Field."
Once the field was built, the players started to appear. Sean McGuire from North Merrick, Andrew Jackson from Far Rockaway, Michael Caputo from Valley Stream, Brendan Kalkau from Bellmore, Jeff Ryan from Oceanside and Lawrence Pette from Rockville Centre all played on this season's New York Collegiate Athletic Conference championship team.
Pette, who played a couple of seasons of Little League ball at Barasch Field, won co-MVP honors for the three-game tournament by batting .500 and driving home eight runs. Teammate Mike DeBlasio shared the award by going 11-for-14 with nine RBIs for the tournament.
Havern, a Malverne resident, is a retired Nassau County police officer. His tour of duty included a year with the homicide squad. Havern isn't your run-of-the-mill, gruff, tobacco-spitting baseball coach, either.
"The kids all call me Uncle Bern," he said while attending to a customer in his shop on Park Avenue, Custom Awards. The customer wore a Molloy baseball T-shirt. Havern, with his easy smile and lined face, looks like somebody's favorite uncle.
Custom Awards, which Havern has owned for about ten years, supplies the trophies and plaques given to the outstanding performers of the Rockville Centre police and fire departments. Last week, Havern was given a plaque of his own and a proclamation from Mayor Eugene Murray that June 4 would be known as Bernie Havern Day.
Havern thanked Murray for his support, for throwing out the first pitch of a game early this season that got the Lions rolling. Who knew the pitching performance that would turn the season around for the Lions would come from the mayor?
"He fired a strike. From that point on, we took off," the coach said the night he handed Murray a plaque and a team sweater.
"He really sort of bounced it up there," he said later, with a wink. "But it was great that he came out."
The Lions finished 31-19 and got hot just at the right time. They beat the University of Bridgeport on April 30 - their fifth win in six games - to claim a No. 4 seed in the playoffs, played in Holbrook. Then they beat Concordia once and Dowling twice to win it all.
"You could tell he was really happy," Pette said of Havern. "We were all smiles, too, but I think he had a little tear in his eye. He's a great guy."
After the final tournament game was won, Havern walked his team down the left -field line for a moment of reflection.
"I told them to enjoy the moment," Havern said. "Soak it all in, because you don't know if you'll ever get a chance to be there again."
