Rick Lancellotti Turned a Magical Summer Into a Lifetime in WNY

During the Bisons’ first year in Double-A baseball, with the franchise reestablished in 1979 after a nine-year hiatus, the right-field short porch at War Memorial Stadium became Lancellotti’s personal stomping ground during a historic season.

Lancellotti was just 22 at the time and struggled early, but he broke out in May and never stopped hitting home runs for the Pirates’ affiliate. The left-handed outfielder finished with 41 home runs, tying the Eastern League record he still shares and winning the league MVP award.

That total remains the third-highest all-time on the Bisons’ franchise list since 1877, surpassed only by Ollie Carnegie (45 in 1938) and Bill Kelly (44 in 1926).

Lancellotti left Buffalo the following year and made 12 more stops in the major and minor leagues before retiring in 1992 after playing in Italy. But he made Western New York his home and coached baseball here for more than 30 years. The combination of his playing career and community service led to his induction into the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame in November.

After leaving Buffalo, Lancellotti’s career reads like a baseball road map: Amarillo, Texas; Honolulu; San Diego; Las Vegas; Wichita, Kansas; Oklahoma City; Norfolk, Virginia; Phoenix; San Francisco; Hiroshima, Japan; Pawtucket, Rhode Island; Boston; and Parma, Italy.

So how come we end up living in Clarence for decades?

“If you marry a local girl, you’ll stay,” Lancellotti said with a smile last month of his wife, Debbie. “That’s the golden rule. She was great during my career. She’d say, ‘OK, Rick. We’ll go here. We’ll go there,’ and all the while we were figuring out the master plan for Buffalo.”

“It was about finding a little place where we could settle down so that when our careers were over, we could go wherever we wanted to go. And that little place ended up with shrubs, a lawn, a driveway, a patio. A cute little place.”

Debbie Lancellotti is the daughter of Jim Ludtka, a former minor league baseball player who became one of Buffalo’s largest sporting goods retailers. The Lancellottis’ daughter, Katie, played college softball at Canisius, is in the Clarence Athletic Hall of Fame and works in sales. One of their sons, Joe, played baseball for Clarence and is a city engineer in the city.

Rick Lancellotti has run his Buffalo School of Baseball, now located in Williamsville, since 1993.

“The people here are just incredible, and when I played here, they were so passionate about their game,” Lancellotti said. “I found out that I thought I was a better teacher than I was a better player. And I don’t need to fire myself anymore. I don’t need to train anymore. I don’t need to be fired anymore, right?”

“I started going and I just loved it. I get to work with kids every day, teach them and have fun with them. Baseball can be a long, tedious journey, and you have to keep working.”

Lancellotti’s run in Buffalo got off to a rocky start in April 1979. Veteran manager Steve Demeter dropped him from the cleanup spot in the batting order to No. 8 before Lancellotti mustered the courage to challenge him.

“About a month goes by, I hit a home run and I think I’m going to leave,” he said. “I went into his office and said, ‘Steve, you’ve got to put me back in fourth. I need pressure. I don’t know why, but all I know is if I don’t feel like I’m useful at a position in the lineup, I suck.’ He told me to let him think about it and I said, ‘You’ve got to do it.’ I tell him what to do. It’s kind of crazy.”

Lancellotti then explained to Demeter that he had already spoken to teammate Alfred Torres, who did not want to play pinch hitter, about swapping spots in the lineup. Demeter spoke to Torres and showed Lancellotti the lineup for the day.

“He put it under my nose and said, ‘Here you go, are you happy?'” Lancellotti said. “I looked at it and I’m No. 4. I hit two home runs that day.”

Lancellotti said he wasn’t trying to go far and was just focusing on hitting the ball hard, and “all of a sudden it started going.”

Sure. By the final day of the season, he had tied the league record set by Hazelton’s Ken Strong in 1930. Lancellotti’s biggest regret of his career? Not giving the Rockpile fans No. 42 that day.

“We had a good crowd, and they were all singing for me,” he recalled. “I was caught up in it all and I can still see it today. A fastball up the middle. And I’m flying out to right field. I ran to first base and my head is down and I turned to go back to the dugout and they all stood up. My heart still bleeds from that moment. I wanted to give it to them because of what they gave me.”

Lancellotti hit 276 home runs in his minor league career, but only two in a major league career of just 36 games with the Padres, Giants and Red Sox. Both home runs came as a pinch hitter with the Giants in 1986, and they came in back-to-back games on September 21 at Atlanta and September 23 at Cincinnati. On September 24 at Houston, he had a chance to tie the major league record of three consecutive games with a pinch-hit home run, but he had to face Houston’s Nolan Ryan to do it.

Houston led 6-0 and Ryan was pitching a one-hit game when manager Roger Craig sent Lancellotti in with one out in the eighth inning.

“It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever done. I had Nolan Ryan baseball cards on the spokes of my bike when I was a kid,” Lancellotti said. “I’m in the Astrodome, they’re trying to win this game for the playoff race and I’m in the on-deck circle with every donut (bat) I can find. And there’s Ryan on the mound acting like a cowboy and saying, ‘Let’s go.’”

“I need to see his release point, so I take it. His swing is slowed down and it’s like a ball went my way. (Catcher Alan) Ashby laughed. You see guys throw 90-95, but this is another level. The next one, I’m going through it. I’m about a foot under.

“He just climbed the ladder to pass me. Thighs, waist, stomach, sitting. He was eliminated, but it was still a classic moment for me. I’ve been very fortunate in this sport to do so many things and play so many places.”

This is part of a series profiling the members of the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2024. The induction dinner will be held Nov. 12 at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center. For tickets, visit buffalosportshallfame.com.