“Grinders, fighters and prepared.”
That is how Hofstra’s new baseball head coach, 14-year Major League Baseball (MLB) veteran Frank Catalanotto, describes his team. Catalanotto came to Hempstead after coaching just down the road at the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury and leading them to the NCAA Division II College World Series. He has replaced John Russo, the winningest head coach in Hofstra baseball history, who retired after the 2021 season.
“I enjoyed coaching at New York Tech while I was there for a year and a half,” Catalanotto said. “I wanted to stay in college coaching, and being from Long Island made this job very intriguing to me. I figured [coming to Hofstra] was an opportunity to help a program that’s been struggling lately reach their true potential.”
The Smithtown native was drafted in the tenth round in the 1992 MLB Draft by the Detroit Tigers and made his debut with them in 1997. He played in the Motor City for three years before being traded to the Texas Rangers prior to the 2000 season. Catalanotto played with Texas between 2000-02, and signed with the Toronto Blue Jays prior to 2003, playing for four years there. He then returned to the Rangers for the 2007 and 2008 seasons. He finished his career with minor league contract stints with the Milwaukee Brewers in 2009 and with the New York Mets in 2010, retiring on Mar. 6, 2011 .
“I had always dreamed as a kid about being a Major League Baseball player,” Catalanotto said. “I am very fortunate and blessed to have been able to live out my dream, and I have nothing but great memories of my time in the Majors.”
Catalanotto grew up a Yankees fan and idolized the great Don Mattingly, the current manager of the Miami Marlins.
“Him being a left-handed hitter, and myself being a left-handed hitter when I was a kid, I would always try to emulate his swing,” Catalanotto said. “He would change his swing and his stance from time to time, and I would do the same, whatever he was doing when I was in Little League.”
Those stances might’ve helped Catalanotto in the long run, as one thing that sticks out about him are his statistics. He finished his MLB career with a .291 batting average, and, in the 2001 season, he finished ninth overall in the major leagues for batting average, tied with Hall of Famer Chipper Jones.
“I guess it means you’re doing something,” Catalanotto said. “That was the year that I really knew, ‘Hey, I belong. I made it and I belong,’ and I’m putting up some numbers and statistics with some of the better players in the league. So, it was pretty awesome to be mentioned to be in the same breath with the Chipper Joneses and Roberto Alomars of the league.”
The new coach still holds two team records for hitting. He holds a Blue Jays record for most hits in a nine-inning game with six, which he set on May 1, 2004, in Chicago against the White Sox. The other record he set is most consecutive at-bats with a hit by a Texas Ranger with 10, setting that in a span between Apr. 21-May 18, 2000. Neither of these streaks has been broken to this day.
“It’s pretty cool,” Catalanotto said. “Whenever I go to a game and look in any yearbook, obviously my name is still there under those stats, and it tells me that I did some good things in my time in the majors and something [that] as a former player you can look back at and say, ‘Hey, I hold this record for this team.’”
Finally, Catalanotto has also represented Italy internationally in the World Baseball Classic, playing for Italy in both 2006 and 2009.
“I think the World Baseball Classic is great, I think MLB does a great job with that,” Catalanotto said. “It helps promote the game all over the world in different countries and to be able to represent Italy was pretty special. I’m very proud of my Italian heritage, and when they asked me if I wanted to play of course I took that opportunity and I was very excited about it.”
So how does this resume translate to what he’s going to do to lead the Hofstra baseball program starting this season? Well, he’s starting with the mentality that he’s instilling in the Pride.
“With every team it’s a little bit different, but with this type of team we have to do the fundamental things correctly,” Catalanotto said. “We don’t have a lot of guys on this team that are going to hit home runs, and we’re not going to score runs by hitting three-run home runs. We have to make sure we catch the ball in the field, the fundamentals. If we can throw strikes and make the plays in the field, we’re going to wind up winning a lot of games. That’s what we’ve been preaching since day one.”
Catalanotto and his coaching staff picked two of his players to be captains, and they are expected to be huge leaders for this team on the field, in the dugout, and in the bullpen. Those two are infielder Ryan Morash and pitcher Brad Camarda.
“These guys were selected because we view them as leaders, and we view them as guys that not only can be vocal, but they can lead by example,” Catalanotto said. “I expect them to kind of be the conduit between me and the rest of the team, and these guys are on top of everything.”
Hofstra’s baseball team has not been to the Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) tournament in four years. The last time that the Pride made it was under Catalanotto’s predecessor, Russo, when they made it to the championship before losing to the University of Delaware and College of Charleston. In the last three seasons, Hofstra has had an overall record of 39-63-1 overall, and a 18-30 record in CAA play. Despite these numbers, Catalanotto has high expectations for this team.
“I think we can make the tournament and do our best to win the CAA,” Catalanotto said. “I don’t think those are aspirations that are too high. Once you get into the tournament, anything can happen. If we get some well-pitched games, we can win. We’re going to start at [getting] to the tournament, that’s what I would like to see from this team.”
And, according to Catalanotto, his team has fully embraced him and his mentality going into the season.
“Since day one, they’ve bought into what me and the coaching staff have been preaching,” Catalanotto said. “We preach that everything matters, the way you carry yourself on the field, the way you treat people on campus. Every single thing that you do, just know that it’s important. And these guys have bought into what we’ve been instructing them on the field mechanically; we’ve been trying to help them mentally. Everyone seems to be on board, and they’re ready for this season.”
Finally, he instilled one piece of manager advice onto his players he got from one of his managers in the big leagues.
“I had Larry P
arish as a manager, and he always told me, ‘Don’t let anyone tell me you’re not good enough to do something.’”
Photo Courtesy of Hofstra Athletics
