By BRIAN CARSON

In Mount Union, Pa., where the coal mines once ruled, and the railroad whistles still echo through the valley, there lived a baseball coach who could quote Hamlet while teaching kids how to hit the cutoff man.

Nick Imperioli died last week. He was 81, and if you never heard of him, well, neither did most people west of Altoona or east of State College. But in Pennsylvania high school baseball, he was John Wooden in a windbreaker, Casey Stengel, with a master’s degree in English Literature. Connie Mack with chalk dust on his hands.

Born to Italian immigrants who believed in education as much as the American Dream, young Nick grew up in Mount Union when it was still a railroad town with aspirations no bigger than next week’s paycheck. He played ball at Captain Jack High School, class of ’61, then went off to Shippensburg University,where he discovered two loves – English Literature and baseball. He married both, and neither ever filed for divorce.

Imperioli grew baseball the way an old Italian nonna grows tomatoes—methodically, daily, never hurrying the sun yet always coaxing more fruit from the vine. He didn’t water with grand speeches or fertilizer made of slogans. He showed up, swung a bat, and let repetition do the preaching.

For 43 years, he taught teenagers about the game and life in a small town where Friday nights belonged to football and spring afternoons belonged to him. His numbers? How about 767 wins against 208 losses. In baseball terms, that’s like batting .800 for half a century.

You want championships? He collected them like kids collect baseball cards. Seventeen district titles. Three state championships. Two state runner-up finishes. But numbers were never his story. He was an English teacher who happened to coach baseball, or maybe it was the other way around.

He looked more like a professor than a coach – which he was. The kind of guy who could break down your swing mechanics while explaining the metaphors in Macbeth. His players didn’t know whether to expect infield practice or a soliloquy.

In Mount Union, they didn’t have million-dollar facilities or fancy training equipment. What they had was better – they had Nick Imperioli. He turned a small-town program into a dynasty with nothing more than fundamentals, discipline, and enough Shakespeare to fill a library.

When other schools got indoor facilities, Mount Union still practiced in the gym. When other teams got pitching machines, Imperioli’s boys learned to hit against live arms. “Baseball,”he’d say, “is played by humans, not machines.” Though some argue his 1995 state championship team played like machines.

His teams made it to the district finals 27 times. That’s not a record – that’s a real estate claim. He owned Pennsylvania’s District 6 like the Yankees owned October. Speaking of Yankees, he loved them almost as much as he loved winning district titles.

The miracle wasn’t that he won all those games. The miracle was that he did it in Mount Union, population small enough to fit in the bleachers of most major league ballparks. They didn’t have showcase tournaments. They had Nick, a batting cage, and enough determination to fill Three Rivers Stadium.

His former players became coaches, spreading the gospel of Imperioli across Pennsylvania like Johnny Appleseed with fungo bats. One of them, Tim Hicks, took over the program and kept winning. When Hicks won his first district and PIAA titles, there was Imperioli in the dugout, smiling like a proud papa.

He never left Mount Union, never wanted to. Married his sweetheart, Cinda, raised a daughter, spoiled two granddaughters, and built a baseball empire between English classes. He was proof you don’t need bright lights to do big things.

They say he ran practice like a military drill but with Shakespeare quotes instead of sergeant’s orders. His players learned to bunt, hit behind the runner, and appreciate iambic pentameter – though not necessarily in that order.

He retired in 2016 with more wins than most small towns have people. But he stuck around as an assistant coach, because baseball fields are better than retirement homes for old coaches who still have wisdom to share.

Last week, surrounded by family, Nick Imperioli rounded third and headed home. He leaves behind a legacy bigger than wins and losses – he leaves behind a small town that learned to love baseball as much as he did.

In Mount Union, they’re not just losing a coach. They’re losing the man who taught three generations that baseball, like life, is all about the fundamentals. And maybe a little of the classicsthrown in for good measure.

To coach or not to coach – that was never the question for Nick Imperioli. For 43 years, he did both, turning a small Pennsylvania town into his Field of Dreams. He built it, and they came – by the hundreds, with gloves and dreams and willing hearts.

The old coach is gone now, but somewhere in Mount Union, a kid is learning to hit the cutoff man. And Nick Imperioli is smiling, probably explaining to St. Peter how to turn the perfect double play while quoting “A Midsummer Night’s Dream