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Memory of Stratford Brakettes GM Bob Baird strong as son Rob plans for future
by Michael Fornabaio, sports reporter with Hearst CT Media Group
 May 21, 2023
Bob Baird’s beloved Stratford Brakettes begin their 77th season in two weeks. The Baird family’s beloved patriarch has been gone for four and a half months, laid to rest just this week, after a couple of cancer battles and interstitial lung disease.
“Big Bob” died on New Year’s Eve after running for 35 years the legendary team he’d once covered for newspapers, saving it at least a couple of times.
The old line about irreplaceable men hits a little harder at the moment, but to hear his son Rob tell it, replacing Bob Baird will take a whole bunch of people, many of them family, many more surrogate family, in a season of change in Stratford that begins the night of June 2.
“Dad did everything,” said Rob Baird, who has been acting general manager in his father’s place.
Now, Peter Baird will be the director of the golf tournament that’s now dedicated to the memory of Brakettes legend Joan Joyce. Patrick Baird and his family will help out at DeLuca Field in Stratford, the team’s home since Bob Baird moved them there in 1988.
Rob will be director of the WMS Tournament, the replacement for the old ASA Nationals that Bob Baird was instrumental in creating in 2009.
Kathy and Harlan Gage, who were already indispensable to the team in many ways including alumnae relations and media of all sorts, have helped ease the transition, Baird said. Brian Flood, dad of the Brakettes’ Kaitlyn, has helped find and renew sponsorships.
“We want to make sure that everyone looking to help in earnest can find a valuable role to fulfill,” Rob said.
Rob Baird has not been formally, permanently named GM; that needed approval from the team’s board of directors, who are to meet soon.
He also didn’t want the title too soon, out of deference to a man who had led the Brakettes off the field for over three decades and covered them long before that. Bob Baird was born the same year as the team, 1947, and had been a careful caretaker of its legacy.
“At times it’s daunting, if I think about it too much,” Rob Baird said. “I didn’t even know how much work he was doing. It’s like the iceberg, right? You don’t appreciate what happens behind the scenes, or under water.” Things like communicating with the town, renewing contracts, setting up hotel rooms, arranging tournaments.
Rob Baird, who'd been the team's media director, said he expects there will be some trial and error as they figure it all out over time.
“It’s not like any one person is doing this, which is a great thing,” Rob Baird said. “We’re expecting that things are going to continue on as they always have. The team’s going to be successful, (play) entertaining games. We’ll have opportunities for young players.
“We’re going to continue on in the Brakette Way. That’s the most important thing. Just because Dad is gone and John (Stratton, former field manager) is moving to a new role – he’s still going to be mentoring. He’ll be like the Godfather, overseeing everything.”
Lauren Pitney, the former St. Joseph High and Manhattan College standout, takes over as manager after two years managing the Select Brakettes 18U team. (Both the Brakettes and Junior Brakettes now have managers who are former Brakettes; Norwalk native Mary Sciglimpaglia runs the junior team.)
New Hall of Famer Stratton had been manager since 1995. His new title is coach and director of player development.
“He’s still going to be in the dugouts,” Rob Baird said. “He called me very excitedly about a 6-2 pitcher from Syracuse who’s coming to the team. He was pumped to get a potential stud pitcher at this late a date. It’s great to hear him excited about it at 84.”
Baird said the Brakettes plan to have a new scoreboard up at DeLuca Field sometime this season. The team will continue its webcast of every game at brakettes.com; Will Gallagher and Mo Scioletti have also been calling Stratford High softball games, and the Brakettes plan to stream the SWC semis and final.
“We’re trying to make sure everyone in Stratford knows the Brakettes are here to stay,” Baird said, “and also drum up interest. It’s a great opportunity for us to reach Brakettes fans.”
One potential future avenue for outreach is a long-discussed Brakettes museum and hall of fame that seems closer than ever to happening.
Joyce, the legendary Brakette and arguably among the best athletes ever, died in March 2022. A letter in August brought news that Joyce had bequeathed $50,000 to the Brakettes, and the team announced plans this week to use it to start a fund for that museum.
Rob Baird said the plan is to put the building on the site of old batting cages beyond the fence on the left-field side, which should make it accessible to the parking lot if the field isn’t open. But Baird envisions it open during games and maybe as a place where school groups could visit.
“We’re hoping to gain momentum from the announcement,” Baird said.
“It is a great gift.”
Baird’s goal is to have the museum open in 12-18 months. A prefab structure, 18-by-30-feet, would be about $150,000 and quicker to go up.
“If we could double that,” Baird said, “now we’re talking a more significant structure, solid, more permanent, more space for programs for kids,” maybe a picnic area.
Bob Baird had been talking about a Brakettes museum for decades.
“So many of these are Dad’s ideas,” Rob Baird said. “I take solace in knowing he was there to read the letter, was in on researching structures. ... And at the same time, he was terminally ill.
“He could see things were moving in the right direction, that the Brakettes were going to have a museum, and Joan Joyce made it happen.”
The Town of Stratford has been supportive, Rob Baird said.
And he was touched by several tributes to his father from Stratford High and others, and hearing that the CIAC planned to honor him during the state high school softball tournament as well.
July 8 will be the Brakettes’ own tribute to their longtime GM. They might add a third game to their usual doubleheader. There might be other attractions to throw the kind of circus that Bob Baird would’ve thrown himself.
“We’re all going to miss his candor, the jokes, the incendiary jokes,” Rob Baird said. “All the elbow-rubbing. It was epic, so amazing. The best thing I can say is that as his son I was able to witness it and get a look into his playbook.
“I’m gonna need it.”
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