Those players also remember their head coach, Pete Molinaro, enough to throw him a surprise party to show how much admiration they have for him.

“A Surprise Celebration Honoring Coach Pete Molinaro” was held a month ago at the Conewango Club in Warren, but the stories are still as fresh as 1977 when the Dragons finished 17-2 and advanced to states in the very first District 10 and PIAA baseball playoffs.

Admittedly, it took Molinaro, 88, a few moments to figure out it was a party in his honor. The elevator opened to the upstairs, and he spotted one former player, then another, and then a poster with his own picture on it. His family tricked him with what he thought was a normal lunch date.

Before his nine children were grown, Molinaro was head baseball coach at Warren Area High School for five seasons at a combined 63-27. He was an assistant for a couple seasons prior to that. But after the District 10 championship season, and through all four years of the 1977 senior class, Molinaro resigned. There were politics in high school sports then, just as now. Even so, it’s not the trophy these guys still talk about.

Submitted photos Then and now: Head Coach Pete Molinaro was recently honored by members of the District 10 championship Warren Area High School baseball team at “A Surprise Celebration Honoring Coach Molinaro” at the Conewango Club in Warren.

“Coach molded a lot of individual personalities and unique individuals into a team, a family, through his example and coaching,” said Joe Wozneak, who also played football at WAHS for legendary head coach John “Toby” Shea. Wozneak went on to play Division I football at the University of Notre Dame.

Like Shea to Wozneak, Molinaro was “another one of those people” who shaped his character.

“Coach (Molinaro) believed in honesty, being on time, hustle at all times,” said Wozneak. “Give 100 percent and look at each day and game as a new opportunity. Build on yesterday’s success or put failure behind you, learn from it, and start over again.”

Wozneak was contacted by one of Molinaro’s daughters, Amy Page.

“Greg Lyle, myself, and then Randy Thomas, Kelly Johnson, and John Paul from the ’77 baseball team,” he said, “(we) discussed the impact Coach Molinaro had on the young men at the time and the character he demonstrated, on and off the field. He demonstrated ongoing leadership, mentorship, character building, and solid integrity.

Submitted photos Then and now: Head Coach Pete Molinaro was recently honored by members of the District 10 championship Warren Area High School baseball team at “A Surprise Celebration Honoring Coach Molinaro” at the Conewango Club in Warren.

“A big Cleveland Indians fan, he admired Bob Feller and Rocky Colavito, who had similar life values that they displayed in the game of baseball,” said Wozneak. “(We) spoke of a strong sense of honor, graciousness, and generosity.”

A husband, father, teacher, and coach, Molinaro said he was “just doing what I was supposed to do.” A humble man, he’s been unaware he influenced so many lives in his coaching days.

“Pete and (his late wife) Karlene both went to Clarion to become school teachers,” said Lyle, “and school teachers don’t go into that to make millions of dollars. It’s about the kids and it’s about having an influence like he did with us while coaching.”

Lyle, nicknamed “Flake,” was a pitcher on the 1977 D10 champion Dragons. He attended the surprise party with four-year letter winners Kelly Johnson (“Spinner”), outfield; and Wozneak (“Woz”), pitcher/outfielder; as well as Ralph Chew (“Ralphy”), pitcher; Jay Duell (“Dunny”), shortstop; Tom Dunn (“Dunndo”), pitcher; Todd Frasier (“Rudy”); second base, Kelly Fredericks (“Herman”), first base; Robyn-Rob Harrington (“Ripper”), outfield; Kevin King (“Kinger”), third base; Larry Neal (“Slim”), third base/outfield; John Ord (“Ordy”), outfield; John Paul (“P”), outfield; Jim Scalise, second base; and Randy Thomas (“RT”), outfield.

Special guests included Bob Hovan, Jeff Passaro, Greg Wozneak, Ted Wozneak, Don Smith, and former Major League Baseball pitcher Tom Tellmann, as well as one of Molinaro’s ’77 assistant coaches, Mark Krumm.

“We had one player — Kelly Fredericks — fly in from California for this,” said Lyle. “Another player, Rob Harrington, came from Florida. John Ord came up from southern Virginia for this. That’s incredible. It says a lot.”

More than 70 people attended the surprise party, which also says a lot about Molinaro’s family with the time that went into planning this for their father, according to Lyle.

“I believe that Amy first contacted me in March of 2024,” said Johnson.

Molinaro was gifted an engraved Louisville Slugger baseball bat that read “Coach Peter F. Molinaro, 1977 District 10 Champions,” and a donation was made by the players to St. Joseph Catholic Church in memory of Karlene Molinaro.

Needless to say, their coach has been touched by the attention, including the team standing the test of time with only two other Warren baseball teams having won District 10 titles since.

In a demonstration of Pete’s compassion, Coach Molinaro quickly noticed in a team photo from 1977 the four deceased members of that team — Jeff Johnston, catcher; Bruce Park, catcher; Brian Weaver, shortstop; and Randy Weidert, second base, who were sitting in the exact same row in the photo.

That type of character and compassion is what his players remember most.

“One of the great things about this team, we all just gelled,” said Johnson. “Coach Molinaro just had a way with us, but what a bunch of misfits. I was in trouble all the time, you know, like skipping school. I’m not sure I would have finished high school if it wasn’t for Coach Molinaro. If you did mess up in school or on the field or something, he’d let you have it. And that was it. There were no running grudges. It was over with. He’d say it once, and it was done and over with. And, you know, he would have had a lot of reasons to either bench me or even kick me off the team.

“Okay, I did skip school one day, went trout fishing instead of going to school,” added Johnson. “When I got to practice that day, my father was there. And it was too early for him to be out of work. They were standing there waiting for me at the gate. Coach Molinaro, he could get this real sour look on his face — I described it when I spoke about this at the banquet. It was like I had just missed the bunt sign, that kind of look. ‘Where were you today?’ I think my father asked. ‘I went fishing,’ I said. Well, what was I going to do at that point, lie? Anyhow, the very next day, at eight o’clock in the morning, I’m in the principal’s office with my dad and Coach Molinaro.

“But like I said at the banquet, Coach would stick up for us guys,” said Johnson. “He kept me in school because he knew that’s what I needed. He kept me from getting suspended and getting thrown off the baseball team, and I was still in the starting lineup the next day, which was probably more important to me to be on the team than maybe even going to school. He knew that. He knew if I would have gotten suspended from high school, I probably would not have gone back. You know, it’s incredible how much one man’s influence can be.”

Johnson would go on to graduate from the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford with an associates degree in petroleum technology. He went to work for Shell and later returned to Warren and worked in the oil fields for various companies.

“A coach, you know, with nine children of his own, drives up to the high school, probably having to have someone cover for his sixth-grade class, probably his gas tank on empty, and he did stuff like that for, not just me, but other players,” said Johnson. “And that’s wonderful. A lot of people would have been telling this story now and saying, ‘he screwed me over and blah, blah, blah’ and never went back to school. Even though it would never have been his fault, they would look at the blame card. In this particular situation, it’s completely opposite. He knew when to look away and he knew when to address it. He just seemed to have that knack on how to handle us because, like I said, we were all different; we were from different parts of Warren and we had different backgrounds.”

Warren didn’t have a junior varsity team in those days, but “no one complained if they weren’t in the lineup that day,” said Johnson. “He knew what strings to pull, who to play, and who to sit that day. We had a lot of good ballplayers, but Joe was the only great one. Coach Molinaro molded us into a team, and I think that goes a long way through life, too. We had a job to do as part of a team. You have to pitch-in and sometimes do something you didn’t want to do for the good of the team. It was about how we all helped each other. Mr. Molinaro got us into that mindset of, you’re doing it for each other.”

Molinaro might not understand the gravity of the importance he had on young people as a teacher and coach.

“I think after that party he did,” said Lyle. “I think he understood that we were 16-, 17-, 18-year-old kids that made mistakes.”

Johnson added, “None of us were perfect, on or off the field, and he didn’t expect that. Two things he did expect: one is, we hustle and we play hard, and he drilled that into us. … The other thing he drilled into us was fundamentals. He hated strikeouts. We played a lot of pepper.”

That led to this: https://youtu.be/8UYItLkU2Hk?feature=shared . It is the first-ever District 10 baseball playoffs and Warren’s first ever D10 baseball championship, a 3-1 win over Iroquois, in a black-and-white YouTube video.

According to Wozneak, Coach Molinaro doesn’t have to rewatch it.

“He’s brilliant. He remembers it all,” said Wozneak. “He remembers it all.”