Steve DiMarco received a letter in the mail stating that he was nominated for a newly formed award given to the top baseball player in Nassau County.
The award would be called the Doubleday Award. DiMarco, a senior at West Hempstead, was a finalist along with Desi Wilson of Glen Cove.
DiMarco was announced as the winner during the award ceremony at the Coral House in Baldwin. The Doubleday Award was later named the Diamond Award and is the highest honor for Nassau County baseball players.
His career would ultimately reach professional baseball, but first let’s turn the clock back.
The Early Days
DiMarco was born and raised in West Hempstead, NY. He is the youngest of three children – one older brother and sister. His father was a minor league player in the New York Yankees farm system. His mother was a dancer.
His older brother was a football and baseball player in high school before a gruesome knee injury cost him his athletic career and nearly his leg due to gangrene.
Additionally, his cousin Chris DiMarco is a professional golfer on the PGA tour and his nephew is Patrick DiMarco, a former NFL player that played in Super Bowl LI for the Atlanta Falcons.
In his youth, Steve played football, basketball and baseball. He stopped football after his freshman year but continued to play basketball and baseball.
While a member of West Hempstead Little League, he recalls winning the district one year.
Once he reached high school, he played on the Long Island Tigers 18u team.
“That’s how different it was back then,” said DiMarco. “There was about six travel teams and they only had an 18u team.”
DiMarco’s team had seven position players that played pro ball, and a few pitchers. Some of those players included Keith Osik, Ron Whitmeyer, John Frascatore, Tom Migliozzi, Paul Parsolano and Mike Gardella. They went 67-4 during one of his seasons.
“We would win every tournament – we made it to Ohio three of my four years.” In Ohio, they participated in the NABF World Series in Youngstown.
It was on the Tigers that he met Art Canestro, who he would eventually form a great coaching duo with at Calhoun HS. He recalls facing a loaded team from Michigan which featured both Ken Griffey Jr and Pete Rose Jr. He stated that Canestro struck out Griffey Jr three times in one game.
“We won one game where there was a runner on second in the last inning. There was a single in the gap. I took the cutoff, threw it home and the runner barreled over the catcher, he flew about 10 feet back and held onto the ball to end the game. The game was a little different back then.”
His former teammate, Paul Parsolano, now the head coach of St. Anthony’s had the following to say:
“On a team stuffed with Division-I players and the best of the best Long Island had to offer, he hit in the middle of our order. That should sum up the talent he had.”
West Hempstead HS
In those days, West Hempstead was a very competitive team under longtime head coach Chuck Giambrone.
DiMarco recalls reaching the postseason two of his four varsity seasons. He pitched and played shortstop, although he stated that he pitched due to team-need, he viewed himself as a position player.
In fact, when his senior season came around there was a Yankee scout at one of his games. Once DiMarco came in to pitch in relief, the scout left because he didn’t view his future on the mound.
In terms of the college recruiting process, DiMarco stated it was a complicated one.
He had received letters from schools all over the country; including LSU, Clemson, Old Dominion, Arizona and NC State. He was very interested in NC State and that was his intention.
He recalls the coach of St. John’s University watching him take batting practice, and DiMarco informing him that he wasn’t interested because he didn’t want to stay close to home. Somewhere along the line, word had gotten out that DiMarco had committed to St. John’s which caused all other interested schools to stop pursuing him.
In the pre-internet, pre-social media days, these things happened.
With his senior season fast approaching, he had to settle for a school close to him. Feeling that St. John’s was not a choice due to the miscommunication and their 400 foot fences, he opted to attend CW Post where he would start as a freshman.
Additionally, he was chosen to play for the East team in the U18 Olympics. The team’s pitching coach was legendary coach Doug Robins. DiMarco recalls the team performing well, although the tournament was won by the West team.
Channel 12 did a feature story on DiMarco during his senior season which was aired two weeks before the fall semester started.
“A bunch of my teammates saw it and they thought I came in with a big head so they didn’t make it easy on me. In one of our intraqsquads, they put our ace against me and I tripled off the fence. That changed everything. I let my play do the talking and kept my mouth closed.”
DiMarco started at third base and performed well as the Pioneers went 27-16 in 1988. He recalls their early season trips to New Mexico State and Georgia Southern as some of his best memories from that season.
His best stretch of baseball came during the summer following his sophomore season. He played in the Great Lakes League, which at the time was comparable to the Cape Cod League. He stated that he was teammates with future big leaguer Dave Mlicki, and his right fielder was the third best hitter in the country. His team won the championship and DiMarco won MVP and the batting title.
“That was the best season I ever had,” he said. At that point, he was very much on the radar of big league scouts.
He followed that up by hitting 16 homers during his junior season at Post.
He was selected by the Baltimore Orioles in the 20th round of the 1990 MLB Draft.
“They had come to my house and given me some tests so I knew I’d get drafted. I was hoping it would be sooner. I remember getting a phone call on day two of the draft. About a week later I was on a plate to Maryland.”
Pro Ball
DiMarco played two season in the Orioles farm system – with stops in Rookie Ball, the Midwest League, Appalachian League and New York Penn League.
“Don Buford was my coach and he would hit us ground balls for hours until your legs were dead. And I was in really good shape. So the game is the fun part. You get there around 1pm, you take ground balls, BP, infield/outfield. All the work is done before the game. It was pretty intense. But it was great. I got moved up a couple times. The only thing that left a bad taste in my mouth was the politics. You wouldn’t think there would be. But names bring people into the ballpark.”
When the clock struck midnight on his career, DiMarco recalls getting a tap on his shoulder when he was in the locker room and he knew what was coming.
“I saw down with the GM and he had all positive things to say. Then he said we don’t have a spot for you. Even though I was the only left-handed hitting third baseman in their entire system.”
Later on the director of player development told him he was just caught up in a number’s game.
“I’d rather they just tell me I suck than tell me it’s a number’s game.”
DiMarco made one more attempt to latch on with another organization. That was when the MLB had expanded to add the Florida Marlins and the Colorado Rockies. He went to a tryout for the Rockies at Rutgers University but was told he was too old.
He was 24.
The Next Chapter
After his career ended, DiMarco started giving lessons.
“I decided maybe my job is to help get guys to the pros.”
He met former big leaguer Dave Lemanczyk and started working for him. Eventually, they became partners. Then in 2003, he opened his own academy – the South Shore Baseball Academy in Freeport which closed in 2010.
His next venture was Fundamental Sports Training in Westbury, which was open until 2016.
After that he decided it was just too stressful to deal with the rent and overhead of a massive indoor facility. He worked at different indoor places such as Max Effort Baseball in Farmingdale.
He has also been involved with coaching for several years in multiple sports. He originally started with his own organization – South Shore Baseball. He has coached for Long Island Baseball and the Long Island Titans. He coaches middle school basketball, middle school girls soccer and has been Art Canestro’s assistant coach at Calhoun for 11 years.
“Art and I work together great,” he said. “Our minds think alike – we are two guys that played pro ball. We’ve given a lot to the program – we video every at bat for the kids.” Together they won the Class A Long Island Championship in 2022.
In his day job, he is the head supervisor at St. Joseph’s church.
He has been married to his wife, Terri-Ann, for 35 years. They have three children, two girls and one boy. His son, Dante, played baseball at St. Joseph’s University in Patchogue, NY for two seasons before deciding to focus on school. Additionally, he has grand kids that live with his daughter upstate. He enjoys visiting them, which is his priority at this stage of life.
Would he consider being a head coach at some point in his career? That is to be determined.
“Art’s got a few more years. We’ll see after that.”
