1975 Hopkins Baseball Team Returns to Celebrate Anniversary of Championship Season

In 1975, opportunity knocked, or rather rang, and there was no way they could pass up a chance to come together one more time. 

Then, 50 years later, they did it again. 

Alumni Weekend in May 2025 brought Hopkins' 1975 varsity baseball team back to New Haven, a 50th reunion within a 50th reunion to celebrate an improbable championship. The team's coach, Bill Porter, got them together again, just as he had that same weekend 50 years earlier when they became champions. 

In the Stone Lounge of Hopkins House, a half-century dropped away as the men reunited with their high school teammates. 

"We loved each other," said Frank Forgione ’75, the team's captain. "We sweated and bled for each other." 

Of 15 players, 12 came for Alumni Weekend, though one could only make the alumni golf tournament on Friday at Orange Hills Country Club, bulldog catcher and de facto pitching coach Bill Shannon. Classmate David Doyle ’75 noted that the two of them and two classmates were the last to leave the golf course.

The other three had prior commitments they couldn't miss. Still, 11 of 15 teammates plus a coach for that Saturday was quite a turnout.

There was Scott Darling ’75, who had, as Porter quipped, a "heavy fastball" of a not-so-fast 50 miles an hour. "Gravity took over," Doyle joked. 

Bill Butler ’75, who Porter said "completed that team" as a leadoff hitter and an infielder who had a knack for drawing interference calls on opposing baserunners. 

Michael Frechette ’75, who snuck off to ring Suffield Academy's victory bell after a win there. 

Neal Johnson ‘75, who'd hurt his knee playing football in the fall and couldn't wrestle in the winter. "The only thing I could look forward to," he said at the reunion, "was healing and getting ready for baseball. I got more support from my friends... to get ready for baseball."

Stu Gamm ’75, whose first time on a plane was the team's preseason trip to Florida, where he hit a home run over a short fence and came home as the cleanup hitter (which he called Porter's worst decision). He recalled meeting Roger Maris, then only seven years retired from pro baseball and only 14 years since he hit a then-record 61 home runs for the New York Yankees in 1961. 

"He was a Budweiser distributor," Porter said. 

"That's how we met him," Doyle quipped without missing a beat. 

The drinking age, in Connecticut and Florida, was 18 in 1975, one player hastened to note for the benefit of the handful of current varsity players who joined the reunion, along with Head of School Matt Glendinning, current baseball coach and athletic director Rocco DeMaio ’86, and several classmates from the 1970s. 

The Florida trip was a new wrinkle back then. Porter, a teacher fresh out of college, began coaching when Doyle and Forgione were ninth graders. (Forgione led the team in batting average.) After a couple of years, the coach realized that the Hilltoppers struggled early in seasons against teams they'd beat later in the schedule. Then he realized that those teams had worked out their kinks with exhibition games down south during spring break.

Hopkins joined them and built camaraderie, living dormitory-style, picking fruit in nearby orchards and playing ball. 

And they worked, too. They worked on the field to become a team that Porter remembered as just about flawless in its fundamentals. 

Back home, they worked in the classrooms as well. 

"When I got to college," Frechette said, "it was a four-year vacation. 'Write a paper, take a test, the rest of the time is mine? This is going to be a great four years.' (Hopkins is) a foundation you can't get anywhere else."

David Levy ’77, who was the team's lone sophomore in 1975, said the seniors were "probably the best athletic class in the history of the school." Gene Torrenti ’76, who was one of four juniors, remembered how much fun those 10 seniors had together. 

"It was a wonderful mix. It was old New Haven," Porter said. “There were Italian Americans, Irish Americans, a bunch of Jewish kids, a kid from Korea, an African American kid. They all fed off each other and the momentum and the enjoyment that came, I think, from being with each other."

It was while they were having fun together that a nice season turned into one they'd commemorate 50 years later.

Hopkins lost to Choate early in the year, but that was its only loss in the league. The Hilltoppers finished with 14 wins against three losses. The last game was a victory at Taft, after which the players tossed Porter, who was about to leave for graduate school, into a pond. Of the 15 players, 10 finished with a batting average over .300.

The season was over, and second place in the league, against a schedule that included boarding schools with post-graduate athletes, was an accomplishment. 

A few days later, the following Wednesday, the team was hanging around after classes when athletic director Bud Erich ’38 HGS found Porter and told him he had a phone call. 

It was Choate coach Tom Yankus. His team had just lost to Taft, so Choate and Hopkins were tied for the league championship with one loss. And he could reserve Yale Field on Friday for a playoff game. Porter wondered why he should risk a share of the title to play a playoff game against a team Hopkins never beat. Yankus, Porter said, knew the Hilltoppers well: He told Porter to go ask the kids. 

"Are you kidding?" they responded, perhaps slightly more colorfully. Of course they wanted to play. 

They practiced Thursday to shake some of the rust off for five days. Forgione got the team together and said "there is no way we are losing this game." 

"I remember when you said that," Frechette whispered at the reunion. 

May 30, 1975, was a Friday, just like May 30, 2025. 

Senior Paul Pickett ’75 pitched a strong five innings. Finishing up on the mound was Hoon Mo Chung ’76, a junior from Korea about whom Porter had several larger-than-life tales. Hopkins turned three double plays, got timely hits and a good break or two, and defeated Choate 7-2. 

There was no pond at Yale Field, so the players picked Porter up and ran him around the field awhile. They came back to Hopkins and gave the game ball to John Doughan, who worked in the equipment cage in the old gym and whose name is on Hopkins' award for outstanding contribution as a team manager. 

"If they had been the football team or the basketball team, we could have had a special dinner, an assembly," Porter said, "but, you know, it was the last day of school." 

What Porter hadn't told his team at the time -- not until just recently, 50 years later -- was that his wife was set to be Maid of Honor at a wedding in Baltimore that weekend. Instead of driving down that Friday, they had to depart Saturday morning. 

"All the way down she's saying 'I hope we make it,'" he recalled, "and I'm saying to myself, 'I can't believe we beat Choate!'"

The players finished up their schoolwork. Porter went to Manhattan to look for an apartment for graduate school at Columbia that fall. He returned to Hopkins a year later and stayed into the 1990s as a teacher and coach and, at different times, athletic director, director of admissions and, for the last few years, once again varsity baseball coach. He went on to jobs at independent schools in Florida and Westchester County before retiring and coming back to Hamden. 

"I think about you guys all the time," Porter told them. "You've been an indelible part of my life."

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Click here to browse and download images from the reunion of the 1975 Baseball team at Alumni Weekend 2025