Cape Cod League: John Schiffner, Chatham Anglers Hall of Fame Manager

John Schiffner, Chatham. (Courtesy of John Schiffner)

 

In 1993, with the Chatham A’s – later to be renamed the Anglers – mired in last place in the Cape Cod Baseball League, manager Rich Hill stepped aside to take a coaching job at the University of San Francisco, resulting in John Schiffner taking on the role of interim head coach. His positive effect on the team was immediate, with the A’s going on to win 16 of their final 23 games, culminating in an appearance in the league championship game. Schiffner not only lost the interim part of his title the next season but over the ensuing 25 years, he won over 500 games as head coach of the A’s, had his number retired by the team, was inducted into the Cape Cod League Hall of Fame in 2018, and even became immortalized both in the book The Last Best League, authored by Jim Collins, and in the 2001 film Summer Catch, where the role of Schiffner was played by actor Brian Dennehy.1

In total, John Schiffner spent over 34 years on the Cape coaching, mentoring, and earning the moniker by some locals as the “summer mayor” of Cape Cod. But he was best known for always having fun and being a player’s coach.

What are some of the unique challenges and blessings of managing baseball in the Cape Cod League? When asked this question, Schiffner began by reflecting on more recent events because, in his opinion, managing has “changed so much in the last five years because of NIL.” For those readers who are unaware, NIL stands for name, image, and likeliness, which pertains to student athletes in college who can profit from their name, image, and likeness as elements of their personal brand. This concept is rooted in the “right of publicity,” which gives individuals control over how their identity is used for commercial purposes. NIL became legal on July 1, 2021, when the NCAA introduced new bylaws allowing student-athletes to profit from their own NIL through endorsement agreements and business ventures.2 In addition to NIL, in 2018 the National Collegiate Athletic Association initiated the transfer portal, a database that permits student athletes to place their name in an online database declaring their desire to transfer schools. The transfer portal window for Division 1 college baseball is typically between June 2 and July 1.

In Schiffner’s own words, NIL is a major challenge for all managers because “the kids are leaving you and there’s no loyalty to the team any longer. It’s very difficult for the guys to manage. It’s part of the reason why I left. That and the opening of the [transfer] portal. … A kid would tell me, ‘Sorry, coach. I can’t pitch on Tuesday because I’m going to LSU [Louisiana State University].” Schiffner would reply, “Ok, we’ll switch you to Friday,” to which the pitcher would respond “Nah, I’m going to Florida State [University].”

Before the transfer portal and NIL, Schiffner said, the toughest challenge was simply to put a good product on the field, while the biggest blessing was the kids themselves. “They are front and center the most important thing with the Cape Cod League and it’s so neat to watch them come in and get better.” There were three things Schiffner told his players when they got to the Cape. First, “When you leave here, I want you to be a better player than when you got here.” Second, “I want you to help us win some games because the fans love winning games.” Third, “Have the best summer of your life.”

Schiffner felt that this recipe worked. As he put it, “[T]he [players] weren’t going to be embarrassed. I wasn’t going to bench a guy for 27 days in a row. I never sat anyone down for three games in a row. And everybody bought into that.” He went on to say that the true blessing comes years later when the kids still stay in touch. “One of the most gratifying things I can say is that five of my former players came back and got married in Chatham. You can’t beat that. They thought so much of their experience that they came back to get married. How cool is that?”

Schiffner understandably derives great pleasure when he gets a call from one of his players letting him know he was selected in the major-league draft. And just to emphasize how long Schiffner was on the Cape, two of his former players’ sons also played for him. By Schiffner’s count, he even coached 13 or 14 sets of brothers.

Unlike many other managers in the Cape Cod Baseball League, John Schiffner and his wife, Martha, lived on the Cape. They bought a house there in 1996 in which they stayed all winter, while John commuted back and forth to Connecticut during the school year due to his occupation as a social studies teacher and baseball coach at Plainfield High School, a role he served for 33 years. Schiffner was elected to the Connecticut High School Coaches’ Association Hall of Fame in 2017.

By being present almost year-round on Cape Cod, Schiffner and his wife became part of the fabric of the community, which is yet another blessing, he acknowledged. “I was part of the community. I would referee a girls’ basketball game or keep score at something. You’d go to the Stop & Shop grocery store and hear someone yell, ‘Hey coach!’ So-and-so just had their third baby.” With the turnover of players being so much greater than it used to be, John isn’t sure that the younger Cape Cod League managers will get to experience the player ties and kind of unity that brought him so much joy.

One of John Schiffner’s favorite people he had the pleasure of coaching was now-retired major-league baseball player Todd Frazier. Since retiring, Frazier has been doing baseball broadcasting work for ESPN baseball events such as the All-Star Game Home Run Derby as well as New York Yankees games on the YES network. Schiffner will text Frazier to tease him and try to get him to laugh during a live event that Frazier is broadcasting. In speaking about why Frazier was such a pleasure to coach, Schiffner told me that it was “his love for the game. Todd loved baseball and had so much fun doing it. And he’s just a fun guy, and funny and a great, great guy. I love him to death.”

Schiffner went on to tell this story about Frazier’s playing days with the Chatham A’s: “Every time we would circle to go out to the field before the game started, we’d chant ‘One-two-three A’s.’ Sometimes I’d have a player lead and he would have something to add to the chant. I asked Frazier to do it and, you know he’s got that New York/New Jersey accent, and so he says [to the team], ‘Let’s spectaculate for the scouts today. One-two-three A’s.’ Todd goes running out onto the field and the other guys say, did he just say spectaculate?”

What does a typical calendar year for a Cape Cod League manager look like? Luckily teams like the Chatham A’s have a housing coordinator, team president, and general manager, so managers like Schiffner can focus most of their energy on recruiting and coaching players. Schiffner believes the housing coordinator is the most valuable player to a Cape Cod League team because “it’s getting more and more difficult to find housing for the players. It’s getting expensive. Some of the parents who want to provide housing don’t have the money to feed an extra mouth. The housing coordinator has to do a lot of checkers and chess games [to make everything work]. Ten years ago, a host family would have a kid for the whole summer. Now host families are getting five, six, seven kids because of the rotations going on between signings, NIL, and kids who get their 20 at-bats then decide it’s time to leave the Cape and go back to college or home. We [managers] pray for a two-week notice [from a player] because that gives you time to find somebody to replace them, but you might have a player the day of a game say, ‘I’m done tonight. Thanks for everything.’” Schiffner very much hopes the Cape Cod League can survive scenarios like this, which – according to John – are highly influenced by player agents who tend to want to pull a player from the league who might not be performing well right out of the gate.

With over 500 wins as a manager in the Cape Cod League, what did Schiffner believe led to his success? It started and ended with keeping the players happy by keeping them playing as much as possible while staying positive. “Understand that you’re a stranger to these guys. They are going back to their college coach. Try to be a mentor to the kids because, for many of them, it’s the first time [in the Cape League] that they might experience failure. Some of the best college players have gone down to the Cape Cod League and played poorly.” Schiffner let his players know that they didn’t have to worry about hitting 12 home runs. They needed to learn how to use a wood bat and not get too down on themselves when things weren’t going well because they were facing the best hitters and pitchers among the college ranks.

Schiffner recalled watching one of his players wield a wood bat for the very first time and proceed to break three bats in the game. It was frustrating for the player, but Schiffner just had to laugh. When a player breaks three bats in one game, it tells Schiffner that his player needs to pick up his bat speed. Being the great coach that he was, Schiffner helped the player make the adjustments needed to get the bat through the zone. Of note, Schiffner stated that the Cape Cod League doesn’t get the same high quality of wood as the major leagues, so the bats do tend to break more often.

When it came to communicating with his Chatham players, Schiffner was able to leverage his abilities as a high-schoolteacher. If he had to criticize a kid, he always did it privately. He would never show anger at an individual publicly. Schiffner believes that everyone on his teams knew they were going to be treated fairly, which is important to a classroom because you are going to have so many different kids in the room. According to Schiffner, “It’s knowing the audience. Picking your spots. Know that the timing is so important. I had great mentors who were my prior coaches that I picked stuff up from. Most of them were teachers as well. A coach is a teacher first. You are teaching the game of baseball in every aspect you possibly can. You want people to have fun. You want organization and a little discipline. You mold all that together and let [the players] know when they have stepped too far. Every once in a while, I might have to bark a bit at someone, but I didn’t embarrass anyone, spit, or scream.”

Schiffner cited “patience” as the most important lesson to impart on his players. “[Success] is not going to happen right away.” Few players take the league over. Schiffner recalled former major-league ballplayer Chatham A’s (2005) Evan Longoria as an exception when he led the Cape Cod Baseball League in home runs, RBIs, and slugging in route to being named the league’s most valuable player.3 Other players, such as former major leaguer Mike Lowell, who played for the Chatham A’s in 1994, had to practice patience and work hard to improve. Stated Schiffner, “Mike Lowell had to work his butt off to get to the Cape League. He was an out-of-position second baseman with slow feet and hands, but tremendous intensity and work ethic.” That work ethic made Lowell both a Cape Cod Baseball League All-Star, eventual major-league All-Star third baseman, and 2011 inductee into the Cape Cod Baseball League Hall of Fame.

As Schiffner stated, “Trust your patience and yourself. You may have hit .440 at LSU this year, but this is the Cape League. If you hit .275, that’s pretty good. Kids playing in the Cape League have got to be humble. I tell the kids to run everything out hard because someone, whether it’s a little kid or a scout, is watching you.” Schiffner himself was a scout for the Montreal Expos for six years, so he would tell his Chatham players, “If I didn’t see a kid run hard, I would note that on my scouting card.”

To help his players cope with the pressure of the league and the many voices trying to exert influence, he would tell them to “close your ears. If you have a problem, you come to us [coaches]. We’re going to let you know if we think an adjustment needs to be made. Don’t worry about reading a stat sheet. If you’re still in the lineup, just relax. The scouts are looking at how does this young man handle himself while he’s not in college and while he doesn’t have the aluminum bat in his hands. Get rid of the noise. Work on yourself and have fun. Enjoy yourself. Go to the beach.” Schiffner believed the kids got enough pounding to win at their universities and so he and his coaches at Chatham didn’t need to add to that pressure. He stressed enjoying baseball and having fun.

Schiffner noted that in the past it was easier for kids to go out and enjoy themselves because there were more days off in the league schedule. He feels that fewer days off over the past decade or so mean that the more recent ballplayers haven’t gotten as much chance to fall in love with Cape Cod itself as he did when he played in the Cape Cod Baseball League for the Harwich Mariners from 1974 to 1976. “From the minute I got to Cape Cod, I said ‘Wow,’ when my [baseball playing] career is over, I want to come back here and coach, which I did. I was so lucky.” Schiffner felt it was so important that even if a player had a rough time playing in the league, he would still have fond memories of going fishing on the Cape with his host family. He said he would never cut a kid if he didn’t perform. He would call the kid into his office and ask him if he thought there was a better place in a different league. Schiffner and the player would then converse with the kid’s college coach. Together they would ultimately decide to move the player out of the Cape Cod League and into a different league.

The Cape Cod Baseball League evolved over John Schiffner’s 25-plus years in it. According to him, “Up until 2010, it was a developmental league. Now there’s more money involved. It’s become win over productivity. Win over development. Several franchises only care about how many championships they win. Coaches are sending kids home after they go 0-for-10 [at bat].” For these reasons, Schiffner found himself on a different page than Chatham A’s upper management and chose to resign. He firmly stood by his belief that the primary objective of the Cape Cod League isn’t to win championships. It’s to make the kids better so they can win in college and make the pros. John also believes that the push by franchises to win championships is aided by the bonus money awarded to winning teams, which then enables the teams not to have to take on the more difficult task of raising money for items such as nicer uniforms.

Just like in his high-school teaching career, Schiffner had to manage not just his players but their parents as well. It was routine for Schiffner, based on conversations with the player’s college coach, to remove a pitcher from the game when he reached his pitch-count limit. It wasn’t uncommon after the game, for a pitcher’s parents to approach Schiffner, armed with their own personal radar gun, to express disappointment and question why Schiffner removed their son when he was still throwing 95-plus MPH late in the game.

The 2005 Chatham A’s team is fondly recalled by Schiffner as a “dream team” he had the honor of coaching, though they didn’t ultimately win the championship. Many of the players on that team, like Todd Frazier and Evan Longoria, in Schiffner’s opinion, just “got it.” As John put it, “If you get it in life, you carry it into the game. They all knew they had to work hard to reach their goals because if you didn’t work hard, you’re not going to make it. You want to be around good people, good personalities, and you try to draw those personalities out. I didn’t have to say a word [to that team]. Anything that needed to be done was usually done by those two guys [Frazier and Longoria] and several others. I think we had 13 future major-league players, nine of whom were first-round draft picks, on that team.”

Regardless of the challenges and blessings faced as a longtime coach in the Cape Cod League or as a high-school teacher/coach, John Schiffner has always been steadfastly committed to and fueled by developing kids. He’s been gratified by the hundreds of young men who arrived in Chatham with a smile on their faces, earnestly wanting to play the game of baseball, willing to work hard, learn, and get better at their craft. And those kids have been equally as gratified for their experience in the Cape Cod Baseball League and, more importantly, their tutelage under coach John Schiffner.

RUSS SPEILLER is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in chemical engineering. He currently lives in Cincinnati with his wife and two children. Russ has spent over 27 years working in R&D creating consumer products for the Procter and Gamble Company. As a SABR member since 2023, Russ has contributed his writings to the SABR BioProject, numerous SABR books, and the Turnstyle baseball literary journal. He’s thrilled to be working on his first original SABR book proposal, entitled How We Played the Game: Baseball at Manzanar [1942-1945], slated for publication in the fall of 2026. You can find and enjoy Russ’s baseball writings at https://russspeiller.substack.com.

 

SOURCES

The primary source for this article was an interview between the author and John Schiffner on October 4, 2024. The author would like to thank Mr. Schiffner for his time and candor.

 

NOTES

1 Summer Catch (2001) – IMDb.

2 Max Forer, “A New Era: NIL and the Evolution of College Sports,” Oregon State Bar: Business Law Section, September 26, 2024, https://businesslaw.osbar.org/2024/09/26/a-new-era-nil-and-the-evolution-of-college-sports/ . Accessed June 22, 2025.

3 Benjamin Gainsboro, “Evan Longoria – 2005,” Infinity Pro Sports, March 28, 2020, https://ism3.infinityprosports.com/ismdata/2012030201/std-sitebuilder/sites/201801/www/en/news/index.html?article_id=2691/ . Accessed June 22, 2025.