On Saturday, May 22nd, Tom Yankus retired as head coach of Choate Varsity Baseball after fifty-two years of coaching the team. Before the first pitch of the season home finale against Taft, Director of Athletics Ned Gallagher and Headmaster Edward Shanahan spoke to pay tribute to Coach Yankus’ impact on Choate athletics. As Ned Gallagher put it, “In addition to the class of 2010, Tom Yankus is graduating from the team.”

Gallagher added, “If you’re lucky in this world, you get to meet your heroes, and if you’re really lucky, you get to work beside them.” Shanahan announced that next year the varsity field would be named Tom Yankus Field and the new junior varsity would be named Burgess Ayres Field.

Although the Wild Boars led in the bottom of the sixth inning, Taft knocked in three runs, which led to the disappointing 6-4 loss. “You can’t win them all,” said Yankus after the game. Overall, “The day was emotionally draining, but a good day. It was moving to see the crowd and have the field named after me,” Yankus said. After forty-five seasons as head coach of varsity baseball, Coach Yankus heads to the locker room with 503 wins, 288 losses, and 11 ties, giving him a .627 winning average. Mr. Yankus was inducted to the Choate Rosemary Hall Athletics Hall of Fame in 1996, its inaugural year, and won Choate’s Touch of Gray Coaching Award in 2007.

Head Coach Tom Yankus entered Choate as a Third form day student in the Fall of 1947. Even before that, nine-year-old Tom Yankus visited Choate’s Winter Ex to watch the Boston Braves’ spring training in 1943. The Braves left some of their jerseys, which the team used as away travel uniforms for many years.  Upon joining the Choate varsity team almost a decade later, Yankus “put on [one of the jerseys] to feel the glow.” In his Fifth Form year he won the junior varsity baseball award for outstanding improvement and in the spring of the following year he made the varsity team. His coached described him as a “far from polished pitcher at start…[yet] always a hard worker.” After graduating in 1952, Coach Yankus attended Williams College where he played varsity baseball, for which he has since been named to the Williams College All-Time Baseball Team. Yankus became the only graduate at Williams ever to be elected President of his Class and member of the Discipline and Honor Committees for all four years.