Media Little League run has a familiar ring to Flyers legend Don Saleski
Read the Original Article Here: https://www.delcotimes.com/2023/08/14/mccaffery-media-little-league-run-has-a-familiar-ring-to-flyers-legend-don-saleski/
Don Saleski spent the weekend in Delisle, Saskatchewan, with Dave Schultz to his left, right next to Orest Kindrachuk, somewhere in between. As they all promised 50 years ago, they were walking together forever. It’s how championship teams are supposed to work.
They all grew up near Delisle — the Hammer, Little O and the Big Bird — and so they were back for a sports celebrity dinner, honored for playing on the same line as the Broad Street Bullies were winning back-to-back Stanley Cups.
That was three generations ago.
And, yes, Saleski was counting.
That would have been the Bird himself Monday, hustling back from his boyhood town of Regina, bound for the family home in Media and ready to pack a car for a drive to the Little League World Series in Williamsport. There, his son, Adam Saleski, will be an assistant coach as the Media team engages Needville, Texas, in the opening round Wednesday night at 7. And there, his grandson, Nate Saleski, will be a Media catcher — the one rocking No. 11, as his grandfather did for the Flyers through eight of his 10 NHL seasons.
At 73, the feeling is all so familiar for the right wing on a club that once took on the world — or at least the Soviet Red Army — and never doubted it would win.
“This equals competing for the Stanley Cup for me,” Saleski was saying, by phone from Western Canada. “To see your grandson and your son involved with this and to see how excited they are, I haven’t been this pumped up since I was playing for the Stanley Cup or against the Russians. This is huge for me at this point in my life, to be able to sit back and watch this, to see the excitement, the enthusiasm and how much fun they’re having, and to see how they have come together as a team. Quite frankly, it’s amazing.”
It’s not easy to capture a championship, whether it’s shutting out Bobby Orr and the Bruins in a Cup-clinching game or winning a little league title with a walk-off home run, as Media did in the Mid-Atlantic final. Saleski realized that in 1974 and 1975, and he was reminded of it while in Delisle as he squinted at the streaming video of that victory over Washington, D.C. on Friday.
Championship-team characteristics are the same, whether it is youths playing for the joy of baseball or grown-ups punching opponents in the nostrils to make sure they didn’t hockey much at all.
“What’s amazing for me is how these kids are just taking it one day at a time,” Saleski said. “They are not looking forward to the next game. They are just enjoying the moment. I give a lot of credit for that to the coaches and managers of the team, to keep the kids that focused and in the now and not dreaming about, ‘Oh, we want to win the whole thing.’ They are just enjoying the moment.”
So is Saleski, who with wife Mary Ann has called Delaware County home since the two-parade era, with two children and six grandchildren.
“We have lived in Media for 50 years and this is so exciting,” said Mary Ann, long a driving force behind the Flyers Wives’ charities. “These kids are well coached and they practice a lot, but they are kind of spunky and having fun at the same time. It’s the way Little League is supposed to be. We kind of lose that sometimes in sports. Most of these kids are pretty little, but they are trying to get there, which is just great.”
Don Saleski played baseball, and played it well, as a youth in Regina, which — what are the odds? — will be sending its Little League team to Williamsport, too, representing Canada in the international bracket.
“Everybody in Canada was asking him, ‘What will you do if Media plays Regina?’” Mary Ann said, laughing. “What do you mean, ‘What do you do?’ But that would be funny.”
Saleski, who did not play in for that Regina program as a kid, would be pulling for Media either way, of course. And he would expect to have Schultz and Kindrachuk at his back, no matter how close to Regina they once all were raised.
That’s how the Flyers of the ’70s have been for 50 years. That’s how the players on the Media Little League team of 2023 may be for the next 50.
“That, I will guarantee,” Saleski said. “You could just see how jacked up they were for each other when they won that last game. And that camaraderie is going to be with them forever. It’s amazing. And you know what? These kids are representing Delco proudly, I’ll tell you that.”
Saleski and his linemates represented Saskatchewan proudly 50 years ago, and they just spent a weekend being reminded they were never forgotten. Competing for championships never grows old, whatever the generation.
