Local baseball community mourns passing of Holliston’s Harvey Krupnick – Boston Herald

The high school baseball community is mourning the death of former Holliston High School coaching legend Harvey Krupnick. The 71-year-old Krupnick passed away this morning while in hospice care at the McCarthy Care Center in East Sandwich.

“It’s sad to have to learn of this news, I heard he wasn’t doing well and actually just dropped a card in the mail to him,” said former North Reading baseball coach Frank Carey, who ran the MBCA clinic with Krupnick for decades. “He was very passionate about baseball, he just loved to play the game. I think he was still actually playing in some leagues down in Florida as recently as a few years ago. He’d love to tell us stories how about he did in each at-bat, he just loved the game of baseball.”

Krupnick coached Holliston High from 1974-2006 and his teams posted an overall record of 408-311. He won six Tri-Valley League titles and a pair of EMass championships (1987 and 1991). The 1987 team, which featured future major leaguer Mark Sweeney and Rich Cordani, captured the school’s first and only Division 2 state championship.

Not surprisingly, the team’s strength was hitting, something Krupnick was passionate about. He took great pride in it as he ran his own hitting school and released one of the first hitting cassettes.

“Harvey was way ahead of his time with his drills, technique and approach to hitting,” said Cordani, who went on to play at LSU and owns Baseball Unlimited Training Center in Waltham. “I remember every day at practice, we would have three or four stations and we would spend the majority of time hitting in there. We didn’t always agree with what Harvey was teaching, but he was so passionate about it and we saw it worked.”

Bellingham High athletic director Dennis Baker spent many years battling Krupnick while coaching at Ashland and later at Bellingham. He didn’t relish going up against the Panthers in their heyday, but had the world of respect for Krupnick and the passion he brought to the game.

“I hope people in the area really appreciate what he meant to the game of baseball in the Tri-Valley League,” Baker said. “He was so far ahead of his team when it came to teaching hitting that I would send many of my kids to his hitting school and he was great with them. He knew how to coach, he was never about small ball, his teams were always looking for the two- or three-run homer and they usually got it.”

Saugus baseball coach Steve Freker has known Krupnick for a decade thanks to his involvement with the Massachusetts Baseball Coaches Association (MBCA) as treasurer.

“He was a very detail-oriented guy, which probably explains why he was such a good hitting instructor and coach,” Freker said. “He was really dedicated to the game of baseball.”