Kids Get Big League Boost

Does Mike Porzio know baseball? Does Meryl Streep know a thing or two about acting?

Porzio put his left pitching arm to work in 387 professional games spread over 16 seasons -- including 51 relief appearances in the major leagues with the Colorado Rockies and Chicago White Sox (1999, 2002-03).

Now, at age 37, the Fairfield Prep graduate is putting his expertise and life’s experiences to work as the owner-instructor at The Clubhouse, a sprawling facility with batting cages and pitching rubbers, which opened Jan. 23 at 2245 Black Rock Turnpike. Don’t fret if you can’t see his new business from the busy street; it’s located at the rear of the shopping center, directly behind the Gap.

“When I was younger, I always wanted to be the best player I could be,” Lawrence Michael Porzio was explaining on an unseasonably cool spring afternoon. “Now that I’ve been through baseball at all levels, I see there’s still a need for it. Players want to become as skilled as they’re looking to be.”

At The Clubhouse, young people of all ages will learn both fundamentals and the finer points of the game – batting, pitching, fielding, baserunning. For girls, there is an coach for softball. Appointments are required, but are available seven days and evenings a week.

Porzio has hired three former major league players to provide one-on-one instruction with attendees -- Willie Upshaw, now the manager of the Bridgeport Bluefish, who spent 10 seasons in the American League, primarily as a first baseman, with the Toronto Blue Jays and Cleveland Indians; Bridgeport native Angel Echevarria, an outfielder with seven seasons at the top with the Rockies, Chicago Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers, who honed his skills at Bassick High School and Rutgers; and Matt Merullo, another Fairfield Prep alumnus and a former catcher who played with the White Sox, Indians and Minnesota Twins.

“This is a place where kids can interact with baseball’s best,” Porzio stressed, “not take one step forward and two steps back.”

The softball instructor is Amber Radomski, head coach at Manhattanville College and an accomplished pitcher with the Brakettes.

Porzio, whose wife, Kristen, oversees the business end of The Clubhouse, thought for a moment and recalled a truism he’d picked up along the way. Somebody, he said, “once asked Ty Cobb how he became such a great player. Cobb told him, ‘Somebody put the teach on him.’”

It is Porzio’s intent to “put the teach” into every student of the game at The Clubhouse. To make an appointment or for information, call (203) 292-8700.

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