Sussex County Sports Blog

By Dan Cleary

7/6/2008 - Wolf, Nottle Find Winning Ways

Working in sports journalism for close to 20 years has afforded me the opportunity to interview a wide array of personalities, athletes and coaches, from legendary Penn State football coach Joe Paterno to various Little Leaguers who helped lead their teams to victories.

But I have never interviewed two sports figures in the same day on such opposite ends of the spectrum when it came to their personalities until this past week.

I had the pleasure and the honor to interview Warren Wolf, the all-time winningest high school football coach in the state of New Jersey Tuesday morning at Don Smolyn’s Delaware Wing-T football camp at Lenape Valley Regional High School, while capping my day by chatting with Ottawa Rapidz manager Ed Nottle, a legend in independent baseball circles, before a Sussex Skyhawks game at Skylands Park.

Talk about a change of pace.

First off, interviewing Coach Wolf was a definite honor and something I looked forward to once I found out I would be covering the camp for the Sports Beat. The 80-year-old Hall-of-Famer has an astounding 355-118-11 record in 50 seasons at Brick Township High School.

He is the only football coach the Green Dragons have ever had and he has led the squad to 24 league titles and 13 sectional championships since starting the program in 1958 after serving as an assistant to another legend, Joe Coviello, at Memorial High School in West New York in Hudson County.

The soft-spoken Wolf has been most definitely a man for all seasons at Brick, serving as mayor of the town, an Ocean County Freeholder and state Assemblyman, while holding deep his religious convictions and being very active in his local church.

Speaking with Wolf, like Smolyn said, was like talking with your grandfather. He was gracious and humble and he told me it was a pleasure to meet and talk with me. Now here is a man who has been interviewed probably over 1,000 times and he still had the class to treat me like I was from ESPN. Quite a gentleman.

He listened intently to every question and gave extremely thoughtful answers as his bright, alert blue eyes glistened in contrast to his white hair, which by the way would make a man 40 years younger jealous.

We covered several topics, including his relationship with Smolyn, which he enjoys very much, he said, to the ever-changing landscape of high school sports. Wolf likes to keep things simple, and in this day-and-age of hi-tech football, he broke football down to its basics—the teams that can block and tackle better will win ballgames. That is it.

It may sound cliché, but how can you argue with a man who has stuck to that mantra for 50 seasons and has the numbers to back it up?

As our time wound down, I asked him about realignment, the hottest of all topics today in high school sports in New Jersey. I was expecting the veteran to say that the system in place is good enough and there is no need for change. Once again, I was wrong. He said change is good and maybe now is the time to shake things up, so he is all for it.

As Coach Wolf walked away, I said to Tyler Adkins, the outstanding producer of the Sports Beat, who was working the camera, that I was gushing a little bit because it was such an honor to talk to Coach Wolf.

I thought to myself, what a cool way to start the day. But little did I know that I would be conducting an equally as enjoyable interview, for different reasons, less than 10 hours later.

One of my duties for the Sports Beat is conducting player or manager profiles for our Sussex Skyhawks show. I decided to do a little research on Nottle and I found a story right out of a Damon Runyon article.

The Philly-bred Nottle never played organized baseball until he was in the service in the mid 1950s and he kicked around the minors for 12 years. After his playing days, he joined the coaching ranks and had several successful stints in the Oakland Athletics chain before serving on the A’s major league staff in 1983 under Billy Martin. It was at that time he cut an album entitled, “To Baseball With Love,” which almost left him homeless due to the cost.

He cracked, “Everyone has a house. I’ve got an album.”

Nottle then went to coach in the Red Sox organization and was the International League Manager of the Year in 1987 for the Pawtucket Red Sox. But Nottle, who desperately wanted to become a big league manager, never got a shot. He eventually joined the ranks of independent baseball in the early 1990s and he has never left.

Most men in his position would be bitter. Not Nottle. He enjoys everyday that he is involved in baseball and there isn’t a better storyteller around. While Wolf is the type of man you would look to for some fatherly advice, Nottle is the type of guy you would ask who he likes in the fifth race at the Meadowlands. And I promise you would receive great answers from both men.

Nottle had me laughing the entire interview; his rapid-style answers had all the great timing of an old-time comic who would be killing an audience in the Catskills in the 1950s and 60s.

But Nottle is no joke. The man knows baseball and he knows how to win. He won a championship with Brockton (Mass.) in 2003 and he was added to the city’s list of champions along with Rocky Marciano and Marvin Hagler. Pretty good company.

He is so well-liked in Brockton that when the Rapidz came to town in June it had an Ed Nottle Bobblehead Night. It is not too often that an opposing team’s manager is honored. But that is Ed Nottle. To know him is to love him.

So as I drove home from Skylands Park that night, I just smiled. I said to myself what a contrast in styles and approaches. But in the end, both men are winners and leaders of men. It just goes to show, there certainly are several ways to skin a cat. But I bet Nottle’s way would be just a little bit funnier.

That’s it for now, see you on the sidelines.

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Sussex County Sports Blog

By Dan Cleary

7/6/2008 - Wolf, Nottle Find Winning Ways