By Kevin Wigand
When Sal Mignano first drove out to Shoreham-Wading River in 1975, he remembers seeing farmland.
The 22-year-old had just graduated from C.W. Post and accepted a health education job at Shoreham-Wading River High School. At the time the district had only recently centralized, the high school did not have varsity sports, and its older students were still attending Port Jefferson High School.
It was hardly the setting of a future Long Island baseball powerhouse.
Nearly four decades later Mignano, now 73, retired from coaching after helping turn Shoreham-Wading River baseball into a program known for winning, consistency and tradition. Now years after his final season Mignano is being recognized with a lifetime achievement award from Axcess Baseball.
“It’s nice to be recognized for everything you’ve done,” Mignano said. “It’s surely not the reason you coach, but it’s nice to know that somebody paid attention.”
Mignano, of Patchogue, grew up in Oceanside and graduated from Oceanside High School in 1971. He continued playing baseball at C.W. Post graduating in 1975 before beginning his career at Shoreham-Wading River.
The situation he inherited was much different from what he had experienced as an athlete.
During Mignano’s first year in the district Shoreham-Wading River only competed at the middle school and junior varsity levels. When he began coaching baseball in the spring of 1977, the high school did not have any seniors.
The young program struggled.
“There was not a whole lot of talent,” Mignano said. “They really didn’t know much about being in any competitive athletics.”
Mignano had come from successful baseball programs at Oceanside and C.W. Post. Being part of a losing program was unfamiliar and he admits it was difficult for him at first.
“All the sports were terrible,” Mignano said of Shoreham-Wading River’s early years. “I was young and I was competitive and I had a tough time not being successful right away.”
Miller Place was one of the programs Mignano looked toward as an example of what Shoreham-Wading River could eventually become. As the community grew and the school became more established its athletic programs began developing with it.
Mignano developed too.
He talked with other coaches, learned what worked with high school players and became more comfortable managing the expectations he had for himself and his teams.
By around 1982 Shoreham-Wading River was becoming competitive. The Wildcats reached the playoffs in 1983 and returned in 1984 before missing them in 1985.
They wouldn’t miss them again during Mignano’s coaching career.
From 1986 until Mignano retired from coaching in 2014 Shoreham-Wading River made the playoffs every season.
“I always felt like each and every year, obviously a goal was to maybe win a league championship or contend for a county championship and eventually even Long Island or state championship,” Mignano said. “But you couldn’t do any of those things until you made the playoffs.”
Eventually simply reaching the postseason became an expectation.
As the streak grew longer each new group of players knew about the teams that had come before them. Nobody wanted to be remembered as the group that ended it.
“Winning feeds winning,” Mignano said. “Success feeds success.”
The program reached its greatest heights in 1987. Shoreham-Wading River won the Long Island championship and then the New York State championship. The team featured senior catcher Keith Osik who went on to become Mignano’s only player to reach Major League Baseball.
Osik spent 10 seasons in the majors primarily with the Pittsburgh Pirates before finishing his career with stops in Milwaukee and Washington. He later became a college baseball coach at Farmingdale State.
Mignano also coached numerous players who reached the minor leagues. Still, he doesn’t judge every team only by championships or professional players. Some of his favorite seasons were ones in which Shoreham-Wading River didn’t necessarily have overwhelming talent but found a way to go further than expected.
“That was really always my drive, was to get the team to overachieve,” Mignano said. “There are other years where maybe we didn’t have as much talent but we got to the Long Island championship or got to a county championship and even lost.”
For Mignano building a successful program involved more than putting together a strong varsity roster.
He wanted younger players involved early. Mignano viewed the middle school program as particularly important because getting kids interested in baseball at that age gave Shoreham-Wading River a better chance of keeping them in the program through high school.
“If you get them in middle school and you do a good job, you keep them,” Mignano said. Over time the program developed an identity.
Former players returned to practices and games. Crowds came to watch. Music played at the field and retired jerseys hung behind the dugout.
When alumni showed up for playoff games Mignano believed the current players understood they were playing for something larger than one season.
“They don’t want to lose that game,” Mignano said. “They had a lot of pride in what they did.”
Mignano retired from teaching in 2008 but continued coaching Shoreham-Wading River through 2014. Kevin Willi, who had worked within the program and served as a varsity assistant during Mignano’s final season, took over.
The Wildcats have continued to find success including a county championship in 2017 and multiple league championships.
Mignano’s involvement with baseball didn’t end when he left the dugout.
In 2010 while he was still coaching Brookhaven Parks Commissioner Eddie Morris approached him about running a Town of Brookhaven baseball league that had declined as travel baseball became increasingly popular.
Mignano said the league had about 35 teams when he took over. Within several years, that number had grown to around 150 during the summer.
Today the league includes players from ages 8 through 18 and runs summer and fall seasons along with multiple tournaments. Mignano said the summer league can feature between 20 and 35 games on a given night.
It has allowed him to remain around the sport he has spent most of his life involved with.
The lifetime achievement award gives Mignano an opportunity to look back on that life in baseball from Oceanside to C.W. Post from the difficult early seasons at Shoreham-Wading River to championships and decades of playoff appearances.
When Mignano first arrived in Shoreham there wasn’t much of a baseball tradition to inherit. By the time he left there was one to protect.
The field itself remains one of the places Mignano associates most closely with those years.
“Besides being home with my family,” Mignano said, “it was always the most comfortable place for me to be in my life.”
Kevin Wigand is a reporter with The SBU Media Group, part of Stony Brook University’s School of Communication and Journalism’s Working Newsroom program for students and local media.