Though Kevin Graber didn’t know it, his decision to get popcorn at the Amherst Fair one fateful day in the mid-2000s was one that would alter the course of his life.

Some more seasoned baseball fans may remember Graber, who came to Amherst more than two decades ago. Most notably, he took over Amherst’s Mickey Mantle team from 2005 to 2007, culminating in a Cinderella championship run in 2007.

But that’s not quite the full story for a man whose impact in the Amherst baseball community is still felt to this day.

Having grown up playing the game, Graber has always been a big ‘baseball guy,’ and he was good enough to go professional before a lymphoma diagnosis when he was 22 years old derailed his plans. After six months of chemotherapy and three months of radiation treatment, he was able to play for teams in in Australia, Minnesota, and upstate New York before hanging up his cleats as a player.

Not content to walk away from the game just yet, Graber thought maybe he could step into a role as a coach instead, and for a while that was exactly what he needed. He managed the Southern Minnesota Stars in the Prairie League and coached the Adirondack Lumberjacks in the Northeast League of Professional Baseball.

But coaching in those leagues was time-consuming and not as fulfilling as Graber had hoped. After spending so much time in baseball, he was burnt out, and he and his now-wife Tina were looking for some more stability after they had their first child, Katie. So Graber got a job as a sports information director at the University of West Alabama, and after two years, took the same position at Amherst College in an effort to move the family closer to Albany, N.Y. – his (and Tina’s) hometown.

So there was Graber, firmly out of baseball, with a wife and three young kids, and a comfortable job at Amherst College as an SID. It was exactly what he thought he wanted.

But while waiting to get popcorn at the Amherst Fair, Graber happened to get in line behind a man wearing a jacket emblazoned with the words “Amherst Little League” on the back of it. He could have ignored it, gotten his popcorn and just walked away without a second thought.

But something itched in the back of his mind. He couldn’t let him walk away just yet.

“Having invested so much of my life in the game and having grown up with it, having played baseball with my dad and having had all these experiences and the cancer treatments and stuff like that, baseball was still something that kind of tugged at me way, way deep down,” Graber said. “I had been suppressing it, to be quite honest with you. I’d been suppressing it for about five years at that point. There was just something about seeing that word on that gentleman’s jacket, it just made me tap him on the shoulder.”

That gentleman happened to be local baseball legend Stan Ziomek, and he was in fact looking for someone to coach the team’s Mickey Mantle team, a group of 15- and 16-year-old kids playing summer ball. Would Graber be interested?

Maybe, Graber said. What did it pay?

Nothing, Ziomek said.

Graber had no idea what the Mickey Mantle team was, and was still trying to make a buck to support his family. Plus, he’d been out of baseball for five years at that point. Was it even worth it?

He went back home and talked with his wife. Tina had been with Graber through the highs and lows of his life, and she knew him well enough to know that he wanted back in.

“That bug was always there for him, and I always knew he would be in baseball,” Tina Graber said. “We lived in Alabama for two years, and he kind of got back into it. Then we moved to Amherst, and he was coaching at Amherst College and then the Mickey Mantle team. We always knew baseball would be a part of our family in some way.”

Graber told Ziomek yes, but this was a much different job than he was used to. He would be coaching teenagers, not pros; but part of the reason Graber took the Mickey Mantle job was to experiment a bit – could he take all the lessons and knowledge he’d learned at the college and pro level and translate it to a rag-tag group of high-schoolers?

At first, the answer seemed like a resounding no. Peter Ziomek, son of Stan and father of Amherst pitching star Kevin Ziomek, remembered his son’s first practice with “KG” like it was yesterday.

“Kevin (Ziomek) attended this first practice and came home and basically said I don’t know who grandpa decided to name as this coach, but he’s an S.O.B., he’s a drill sergeant – a lot of negatives,” Peter Ziomek said. “At the time I lived really close to my dad. So I went over, I talked to him, I said, ‘you know, who is this guy?’ He said just give it a few days. I think Kevin’s gonna really like him.”

Kevin Ziomek remembered it slightly differently, but when asked about his first impressions of Graber, one word comes to mind: intense.

“I felt like he was intense, in a really good way… I remember (my grandfather) sitting me down and saying, ‘look, you’re gonna have a new coach and he really knows what he’s doing. He’s been doing this for a long time, he played at a high level and you better take him seriously.’ I didn’t really know what that meant until I met him for the first time and I definitely took them seriously,” Kevin Ziomek said. “It got me really excited. I was very passionate about the game and to have somebody who took it really seriously, and wanted to push all of us to take it seriously, I think was a huge turning point for me in my career, but also for our whole team.”

Graber was a tough coach, that became apparently quickly, but he cared about his players. He trusted that they could rise to his expectations, and after a few days of practice, the whole team bought in.

“By day three, [Kevin] was coming home and said ‘dad, we love this guy,’” Peter Ziomek said. “We’re learning so much and he’s no-nonsense, but he also has such a great skill set that he’s teaching all of us new things in just a couple of days. They were all disciples very quickly.”

During his three years, all of the teams Graber coached excelled with his style, but it was the 2007 team that put it all together for a championship run. That memorable season culminated in a face off against Holyoke for the title. Amherst went undefeated in the playoffs, which meant Holyoke had to best them twice in the double-elimination final.

Amherst dropped the first game 4-3 and was down 3-0 in Game 2 before Graber grabbed pitching ace Glenn Stowell from the bullpen. Stowell locked things down defensively while the Amherst offense found its stride, knocking out 17 hits and propelling them to a 15-3 win to clinch the championship.

As the years have gone by, the memories of that championship game have faded for players, coaches and fans alike. But while the win was part of the story, the more memorable and meaningful part of those summers were the relationships forged at the ballpark. Tina Graber remembers how much of a family the team and their families were; her three kids grew up around the ballparks, playing with the Mickey Mantle ballplayers and cheering them on during the games. Tina always brought sweet treats for the players and reminisced fondly on the close bonds everyone formed. Peter Ziomek stayed involved with Amherst baseball after Graber left, but said that the bonds formed during the ’05-’07 years were special to him.

For Graber himself, those years in Amherst re-lit the fire he had for baseball. He eventually became Amherst College’s assistant baseball coach, and then he took a job at Phillips Academy Andover, where he helped build the program into a powerhouse over the next 14 years. Graber, also a passionate educator, got to work with young high-schoolers and help them become better athletes and people during their most formative years.

Some of Graber’s players followed him even after he left Amherst. When he took the baseball coaching job at Andover, one of the first players he recruited was one of his Mickey Mantle players, Fred Shepard. Shepard, like many players and families who knew Graber, stayed in touch with his former coach even after he graduated. Graber helping him get into Andover was one of the single most impactful things that has happened in his life, Shepard said.

“I think he is one of the most influential people in my life. And I think it does start from my interactions with him on the Mickey Mantle baseball team,” Shepard said. “He is one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. He’s so willing to help everybody become the best person they can become.”

Some thought he’d stay at Andover until his retirement, but the great baseball adventure beckoned again when Graber caught the eye of the Chicago Cubs. He was initially hired to be their complex coordinator, overseeing day-to-day baseball instruction at the Cubs’ spring training facility in Arizona. One thing led to another, and now Graber is managing the team’s Double-A affiliate in the Southern League, the Tennessee Smokies, teaching the next generation of great ballplayers.

From the popcorn line at Amherst Commons to the Chicago Cubs organization, it’s been a winding and bumpy ride for Graber and his family. But through hard work and a little bit of luck from the baseball gods, Graber has found his way back to the game he loves. More important than winning, though, has been the meaningful relationships he forged with those he met along the way.

“It just seems everywhere I go, good things tend to happen,” Graber said.

Hannah Bevis can be reached at hbevis@gazettenet.com. Follow her on Twitter @Hannah_Bevis1.]]>