#Baseball’s absence leaves void for other sports, entertainment stars

Their legendary careers were formed in businesses other than baseball, but their love of the game has them joining millions of people rooting for some sort of big-league season.

Bill Parcells, John Calipari, Bob Hurley, Mary Hart, Gary Williams, Ernie Accorsi and Dick Vitale shared with The Post what baseball has meant to their lives and how much they have missed it since spring training vanished on March 12 due to the coronavirus.

John Calipari

“It is what summer is, it’s summer,” said Calipari, the 61-year-old University of Kentucky basketball coach, said from Lexington, Ky. He grew up in Pittsburgh rooting for the Pirates of Willie Stargell, Bill Mazeroski and manager Danny Murtaugh. Later in life Calipari acquired a taste for the Yankees because of the fiery Billy Martin. That led to a friendship with Yankees GM Brian Cashman, who grew up in Lexington a Wildcats fan, and to an annual summer trip from a Lavallette, N.J., where he spends his summers, to Yankee Stadium.

Like so many others, Calipari is rooting for the players and owners to forge a path to some kind of season.

“My hope is that they somehow, it’s almost like the nation needs it. But the first thing is the players and their families and the staff and their families,’’ said Calipari, who guided Kentucky to the 2012 NCAA title and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2015.

Bill Parcells

Parcells is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame for his coaching prowess and for leading the Giants to two Super Bowl titles. But baseball has been in the 78-year-old North Jersey native’s blood forever.

“Baseball was it for me when I was young. That was it. I loved all the sports, but baseball was it,’’ Parcells said from Florida’s east coast, where he attends spring training games and plays golf with former major league pitcher Jim Kaat. “I miss it a lot, I love basebalI. I am a diehard baseball fan, have been my whole life.’’

And old enough to clearly recall the vastness of the Polo Grounds, which was home to the Giants, his favorite team.

“I would sit in the left-field bleachers with my mitt. There was nobody else, you could have your own two sections,’’ Parcells said of the original home of the Mets that had 56,000 seats and a center-field fence 483-feet away from home plate. “My first game was the Giants against the Pirates. It got rained out after two innings. I wanted to throw up. I had to be 9 or 10.’’

Bob Hurley

The legendary New Jersey high school basketball coach is in the Basketball Hall of Fame for leading Jersey City’s St. Anthony to four national titles and 26 state championships. The school closed in 2017.

But baseball, well, it is the rhythm of the game.

“We all look forward during the winter about getting ready for baseball by reading about it and talking about it and then by February, since I retired, two of the last four years we would go to spring training and just enjoy that baseball is coming now,’’ the 72-year-old Hurley, a Yankees fan, said from his Jersey City home. “You would start talking to people about the preseason, [Domingo] German’s suspension, what [Jordan] Montgomery is going to be like.’’

For Hurley, the coronavirus hit close to home.

“This is something where I get a phone call every three days about someone I know who has died,’’ Hurley said. “One of my former players called me and said, ‘I can finally get outside and I will see you in Liberty State Park.’ I saw him and he said, ‘My brother died.’ Then I get a phone call from somebody else and one of my former players died.’’

Mary Hart

Hart, 69, made her career in television and is the former long-time host of “Entertainment Tonight.” However, the LA resident’s life revolves around her beloved Dodgers whom she watches from her season-ticket seats directly behind home plate at iconic Dodger Stadium. With help from former Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda, Hart sang the national anthem at Chavez Ravine in the early ’80s.

“I have missed it so much. I wear my Dodger hat around and I wear my Dodger mask in LA, where we are still required to wear masks. I have actually resorted to, we always have old games up on MLB. I don’t find much pleasure in that, however,’’ Hart said Saturday from Idaho, where she and husband Burt Sugarman took a break from LA.

Hart has been staying connected with her team via Zoom chats with players provided by the club.

“It’s nice because you feel you are in touch with the players,’’ she said.

Yet, the void hurts.

“It’s hard. Like everybody else we are binge-watching things that we wouldn’t have had time to watch because we would be watching ballgames. Even when we are traveling we are watching the games. We love our Dodgers,’’ said Hart, who believes people require baseball for sanity purposes.

“We need it for our mental well-being. Even if we can’t go for the first couple of months of games I am hopeful we will have a season and by October and November, we will be able to go and sit in the stands again,’’ Hart said. “It is sad and depressing to a lot of people that we don’t have our baseball. I pray every day we have baseball. A return to normalcy will happen quickly when we can see baseball. I keep hoping the Dodgers and Yankees are in the World Series.’’

Ernie Accorsi

As Giants GM, Accorsi orchestrated a brilliant 2004 draft day trade that delivered two-time Super Bowl winning quarterback Eli Manning to East Rutherford and spent years working in football. But it is baseball he craves.

“Of all the things I miss, that’s the thing I miss the most. I like all sports, but baseball has been my first love. I was 10 in 1951, the golden era of baseball when baseball was by far the biggest sport in the country. I have always loved baseball. It is every day, like a companion,’’ Accorsi, 78, said from his Hershey, Pa. home, after leaving his New York City residence on March 12 because he was at risk for the coronavirus.

“Baseball never disappoints you. It gives you a game every night and there is always something going on. I always loved the regular season more than the postseason because of the pattern and drama of the whole summer and it changes every day. It is a tremendous void. I read a lot, like to read history. But like everyone else, you can’t fill that void. To me it is not just something to watch. It’s my passion. The first thing you did every day was read the box scores and I bought the baseball package when it first came into existence. I planned my day that way. Early in the day I planned what game I was going to watch and when. It is a tremendous void.’’

During his first six years of retirement, Accorsi attended spring training and often was spotted at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa. And like Calipari, Accorsi considers Cashman a friend.

Like so many other baseball fans, Accorsi’s father introduced him to the pageantry of the game.

“My dad said, ‘Why don’t you sit down with me and listen to this game.’ It was the last game of the ’49 season and the Yanks had to win that game to win the pennant. We got a television in 1950, but [there was] very little baseball [on TV]. There was a guy in town who was the GM of a radio station in Harrisburg and he was a Yankee fan and he contracted for Yankee games,’’ Accorsi said. “There weren’t many night games, so I listened to Mel Allen every day except when they were on the road. I grew up being able to listen to my favorite team. It’s funny, you would scan the dial and picking up you would get the Cubs and the Cardinals and the White Sox. It is kind of what I do now with the baseball package.’’

Accorsi recalls those two colossal 1949 games between the Yankees and Red Sox like they were yesterday.

“They were tied for first and it was a two-game series for some reason. The Yankees won Saturday to force a showdown on Sunday. I think [Vic] Raschi pitched. [Jerry] Coleman had a big hit in that game, I think he had a triple. [Phil] Rizzuto had a hit early and they almost blew the game,’’ Accorsi said. “I just listened to it the other night on the XM channel. Curt Gowdy and Mel Allen. I remember listening to that game with my dad. I didn’t know a lot. I saw my first game in 1951, saw the Yankees, saw [Joe] DiMaggio that year.’’

Dick Vitale

Vitale has filled winter nights from coast to coast with his passion for college basketball. Now the baseball fan sits and waits.

“Yeah, I miss baseball big-time. I have been a [Rays] season-ticket holder for over 20 years. They won 96 [games] last year and I think this team can be really special,’’ said Vitale, who was born in Passaic and switched allegiances from the Yankees to the Rays when he moved to Sarasota and has seats at Tropicana Field next to the third base visitors’ dugout. “In fact, tell the Yankees, move over. I don’t care they got [Gerrit] Cole and they got [Giancarlo] Stanton and plenty of payroll. When it is all said and done, if they play this year, the Rays will be No. 1. The Rays are going to win the division, absolutely.’’

Having coached in high school, college and the NBA, the 80-year-old Vitale ranks safety for players, coaches and everybody else connected to teams as the top priority.

“I am a sports nut, but being without it, you have no choice,’’ said Vitale, who went into the Basketball Hall of Fame and the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2008 and has turned to early-morning television concerts without baseball. “Let’s hope and pray when they start playing games, that the testing is all valid so that everybody is safe.’’

Gary Williams

Williams coached Maryland to the 2002 NCAA title and went into the Basketball Hall of Fame and College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2014, but like Parcells, baseball came first early in life. He also was the head coach at American, Boston College and Ohio State.

“Growing up and playing Little League you always imagined yourself as a major league baseball player. At my age, baseball was huge,’’ said the 75-year-old Williams, who lives in Maryland and saw how the area was galvanized by the Nationals winning last year’s World Series. “Baseball was the thing. Any kid that played anything wanted to be a major league baseball player.

“You think about this, too, how many people, one [baseball] keeps them going and gives them structure. How many families, the father and the son, that’s how they grew, being a fan and talking about the game and talking about stats. There is so much of that that goes along with baseball that kids are going to miss out on and fathers are going to miss out on.’’

Williams used baseball to transition away from the intensity of the basketball season.

“The greatest thing about baseball, especially as a basketball coach when the season was over, the pace of the game was completely different. You can really get into it without having to completely focus,’’ Williams said. “Growing up … you had your team, I had the Philadelphia Phillies. I went to Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium because they had the A’s and the Phillies there for a while. I saw Willie Mays play, I saw Frank Robinson his rookie year and Stan Musial.

“My grandfather worked on the railroad and was a semi-pro baseball player and … he really wanted me to be a baseball player so he would take me to games and things like that.’’

As for the Nationals beating the Astros in last year’s World Series, Williams recognized the difference among the teams’ fans.

“It is really interesting to see how that galvanizes an area, what a successful team can do and baseball certainly gives you that. You get to feel like you know the players even though you don’t. You feel they are part of the community. I went to school at the University of Maryland so very much an Orioles fan. I got to see Cal Ripken’s record-breaking game. Those things you always remember.

“Baseball, especially for my generation, that was the game. I think if any kid could have had a choice and said you can play major league in any sport you would have said baseball. That interest carried on as you got older.’’

Williams grew up in South Jersey dreaming of being a big-leaguer. Today that dream still lives in kids. The adults who fell in love with baseball at a similar ages? They want a big part of their lives back nine innings at a time.

And if Hart’s wish for a Dodgers-Yankees World Series come true, all the better.