Steve O'Grady loved his Reds
By TOM DALTON
News staff

SALEM -- The license plate on Steve O'Grady's car spelled "REDS." The sight of the plate brought a smile to anyone who knew O'Grady, the executive director of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Salem, who was killed in a car accident Sunday night on Route 95 in Boxford.
O'Grady lived and breathed Reds baseball. He was the manager of the Major League Reds, the Salem Little League team that became a dynasty in the 1990s, winning a slew of City Championships, including the last four in a row.
"I told him to start losing so my company could finish in the black," kidded Mike O'Brien, a close friend and the owner of Corporate Design Insurance Agency, the team sponsor. But it was not the winning that they remember. It was the manager.
O'Grady touched so many lives in so many ways. And what was incredible about O'Grady, they all say, is that he was so young. He turned 30 last month. "He's done a lot in a very short time," said Dave Wentzell, Salem Little League president.
"The kids just loved him, and he loved the kids," said Scott Grover, whose son played for the Reds.
"He was a great man," said Joyce Gendron, whose son played on several Reds teams. "If you ever wanted to have a role model for your son, Steve would be it." Other parents spoke of the "Reds family," and of team trips to New Hampshire, the ride on the red fire engine float in the Heritage Days Parade, and the annual party under the Reds tent, when every player received an autographed baseball in a plastic case and a special award. "He wanted them to play hard, but he wanted them to play for the right reasons," said Barbara Maier, whose son, William, played for O'Grady. "He'd take a team that wasn't supposed to be anything and, all of a sudden, they would be champions. ... This year I overheard parents from another team say, 'It's not that they had the best kids. They had the best coach.'"
"He knew the right mix of discipline and compassion for the kids to motivate them," said Grover.
Many parents recounted watching O'Grady as he talked to their children, his voice conveying strength and kindness at the same time. It was the lessons O'Grady taught, about hard work and fair play, that they will remember most, parents said. And they will never forget the sense of humor and the smile.
In his unspoken way, O'Grady reached out to the players who needed him most, friends said. If a player couldn't afford to go on the team trip, O'Grady quietly took care of it. Carol Perry, whose two sons played for the Reds, remembers O'Grady coming to her husband's wake and telling her he had just selected one of her boys in the Little
League draft. "He followed that up with a letter," she said. "He wrote that he knew what it was like to grow up without a dad because his own father had died in a car accident when he was a baby. He said, 'I'll keep any eye out for the boys.' "He kept an eye out for my kids," she said, "but also for everybody else's."

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