The common thread running through Pat Feury’s distinguished five-decade career in baseball is indisputable: winning championships.
Pat’s athletic pedigree was rock-solid. His mother was an All-State basketball player at Skowhegan High School, once scoring 45 points against Cony. His father played football for Portland High and Georgetown University where he butted leather helmets with Frankie Frisch, one of Fordham’s “Seven Blocks of Granite.” Pat’s introduction to baseball, however, came at the hands of Eric Kalkbrenner, a German immigrant carpenter who passed on his love of the game and a hand-made wooden bat to young Patrick.
Pat’s career in organized baseball was highlighted by playing on an extraordinary number of dominant teams. From Little League 2 in Portland, where he played for Chick Embleton, to Pony League under the legendary Leroy Rand, to Babe Ruth baseball under crusty Frank Archer and Walt Jordan, to Cheverus High School skippered by Jack Dawson and Hank Stillman, and to the Andrews Post Legion team under the incomparable Sonny Noel, Pat played on 15 championship teams by the time he graduated from Cheverus High School in 1962. He was a starting outfielder for two Telegram League championships at Cheverus and one American Legion state crown with Andrews Post, and, along with Stag immortals Dick Joyce, Paul Sullivan, Joe Cloutier and Tom Thornton, played during a 1960-61 two-season span for Cheverus/Andrews that won 66 consecutive games without a loss.
Pat continued his baseball career at the University of Maine Portland, where he compiled a .300 career batting average and was the school’s first four-year player. Pat was inducted into the Husky Hall of Fame in 2008.
Following his graduation from Cheverus in 1962, Pat embarked on a two-decade stint as player and coach in the Portland Twilight League. During his first year, while patrolling the outfield for Eddie Griffin’s Peaks Island ball club, Frank Nappi of Charlie Turner’s Yarmouth Townies launched a prodigious drive off Griffin that Pat miraculously snared a la Willie Mays 1954 World Series, and prompted the suitably impressed Turner to beseech Pat to join the Townies. The next year Pat began a 15-year association with the Townies as player, coach and captain. During the 1960’s Pat’s teams won six Twilight League championships and the first-ever Carlton Willey Invitational State Tournament at Lamoine in 1963.
Another state championship for the Townies in 1972 at Auburn’s Pettengill Park and two more Twilight League championships in 1975 and 1977 assisting Alan Livingston concluded an enviable body of work. By the time he hung up his spikes, Pat had played or coached on 25 championship teams.
Pat took up umpiring after his playing days were over and was a member of the Western Maine Board for 15 years.
Professionally Pat has been a teacher at Portland High School for over 30 years, specializing in cooperative education and creating incentives and opportunities for kids to find jobs, finish high school, and become productive citizens.
With a stellar career that included playing with or against some of the greatest players of his era and a productive record of contribution to the storied Twilight League, “Captain Pat” of the Townies is a welcome addition to the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame.
Here securing home plate