OLEAN, N.Y. — Matt Fidurko was supposed to be making the two-hour trek to Niagara Falls today.
Under ordinary circumstances, he and the Olean Oilers coaching staff would have welcomed their 30-player roster late last week. They would have held their first practices at St. Bonaventure over the weekend. They’d be traveling by caravan to Sal Maglie Field for their New York Collegiate Baseball League season-opener tonight against the Niagara Power.
Instead, they remain home — Fidurko behind a desk for his day job with the Western New York Flash soccer academy — resigned to a summer without baseball due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
For Fidurko, an Allegany native and recent St. Bonaventure graduate, the cancelation of the NYCBL season was especially stinging.
Since former coach Bobby Bell’s departure in 2016, Fidurko has taken up the task of constructing the Oilers’ roster, serving essentially as the team’s general manager in addition to the myriad other hats he wears. This year, Olean assembled what it believed to be a formidable group, one that was set to feature local standouts Lewis Pettit (Bolivar-Richburg), Chase Sebastian (Otto-Eldred), Howie Stuckey (Port Allegany), Garrett Boldt (Olean), Zach Hemphill (Allegany-Limestone) and Dylan Vincent (Olean).
“WE HAD an inclination that we were going to be pretty good,” Fidurko said.
That his efforts went for naught is just one of the unfortunate byproducts of not being able to take the field this summer.
“Recruiting is a year-round job,” he said, “so you work since early August to try to put together and build the best team possible (for the following year), and just to see it end the way it did … I just feel bad for the players.
“A lot of them (I had already met), but you get to know them through phone calls, text messages, social media. It’s disappointing because we may never get the chance to have those guys on the team again. You don’t know what next summer’s going to bring.”
In any other year, Fidurko and the Oilers would be living the fruits of their labor over the next two months.
Oftentimes, there’s been a meaningful payoff.
OLEAN HAS made the NYCBL postseason in eight of its previous nine years of existence, winning two league titles (2015, ‘16) in that span. In 2016, it boasted — almost inarguably — the greatest team in NYCBL history. It has become a model program in terms of ballpark atmosphere, attendance and competitive makeup.
Those things have made the hectic nature of being part of a small, break-even operation worthwhile.
Already, Fidurko misses making his rounds, delving into his own organized chaos, at Bradner Stadium on game day. More than that, he misses what has always accompanied these 60-day summer seasons: The friendships.
“It’s Oilers season,” he said. “We’re supposed to be at the ballpark, we’re supposed to be hanging out. Part of it, too, is you lose the camaraderie with the guys. We’ve always had a good time with them outside of baseball, whether it’s cookouts, hanging out or going (out for food). You really miss that part of it as much as the baseball part of it.
“You form a relationship with these guys. They come to Olean, they meet you, hang out with you, then all of a sudden you know them for the rest of your life.”
FOR THE first time since 2011, a year before Olean made its NYCBL debut and three years before it moved into a refurbished Bradner, there will be no live Oilers baseball. That doesn’t mean, however, that the league will be inactive.
Late last week, the NYCBL announced its plans for a virtual season.
As part of that project, the brainchild of senior marketing director Dave Meluni, the league will simulate its entire 2020 schedule using “industry-leading software provided by ‘Out of the Park 21.’” The 12 NYCBL teams, as they’d normally be doing, will battle for playoff spots, and a champion will be crowned at season’s end.
The idea, Fidurko said, is to provide NYCBL fans with at least “a little something.”
“We have league officers that are (active) throughout the year no matter what,” he said, “so we might as well do something to help increase our engagement on social media, that kind of stuff. You never want to just let your brand die for a whole summer …
“Basically, it’s like a video game software that they’re going to simulate the season on. It’s obviously not going to have our players on it; it’s going to have random video game players. But they’re going to post the results each day, they’ll keep the updated standings on the website, so it’s kind of a cool way to stay engaged.”
IN THAT way, the Oilers WILL be active tonight, taking on a virtual version of Niagara. Tomorrow, they’ll take on Geneva in what would have been their home-opener.
Olean, in addition to its on-field product, also has one of the league’s top social media presences, featuring over 1,500 Twitter followers while touting itself as “the best organization in the NYCBL (don’t question us).”
Will a virtual NYCBL season be something that its players or fans be at all interested in?
Fidurko, who also manages the team’s social media pages, hopes so.
“As soon as I was told about this, I told (owner/manager) Brian (O’Connell Jr.), ‘Let’s go all on in this,’” he said. “Let’s post this regularly; we may even start doing game day graphics … I call it ‘funny stuff’ to do, just kind of whimsical things to do for fans.
“We might try to get a little Twitter banter going, a little bit of engagement. We’ll see.”
(J.P. Butler, Bradford Publishing Company group sports editor, can be reached at jbutler@oleantimesherald.com)
