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Issue date: 3/1/07 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Bryan Kasm Michael Phelan gazes at his wall where a framed photograph of his college baseball team at Kent State University hangs. Forty years later Phelan is the head of Intermurals Recreational Sports at DBCC where he coordinates games for all sports.

Sitting behind his cluttered desk in Building 130 sits a man wise beyond his years. His door is always open and his advice is always available. He may be the Intramural Sports Director, but Mike Phelan loves nothing more than shaping young lives. It's something that comes with the territory. It comes from years and years of life experience, experiences that began early in his life as a baseball player for Kent State University.
As a two-sport athlete, Phelan enjoyed success in both football and baseball. It was only after a successful post-season run in his senior year of high school that Phelan decided to pursue baseball after being offered a half-scholarship to Kent State where he would eventually be the team's catcher.
Being the oldest of six children, it was an opportunity he couldn't pass up.
"In those days you did one of three things when you graduated high school, you either got a job at one of the factories in town, you went in the service, or you went to college," he says. "I didn't want to go into the service and I wanted to continue playing sports."
Baseball was Phelan's life throughout high school. In addition to winning the regional championship in his senior year he was also nominated to the all-state team. Even in the off-season, Phelan would compete on summer teams.
It was on one of these summer teams that he would eventually compete with pro baseball legend Pete Rose, who was a few years older than Phelan.
"He was the same way in those kinds of games as he was in the pros," Phelan recalls. "He was really dedicated to becoming a ballplayer."
Phelan could tell through Rose's work ethic that he would be the special athlete that would eventually hold the all-time Major League Baseball hits record.
Of course, Rose is banned from the Hall of Fame after being found guilty of betting on baseball when he was manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

Continued...

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