Barker feels like a kid at Notre Dame College

By Bill Lubinger

Cleveland Plain Dealer

His team was down, 1-0, in the bottom of the fifth inning, with the opposing pitcher riding 11 outs in a row. As a seasoned baseball man, Notre Dame College’s new assistant coach knew just what the situation called for.

“He’s pitching a no-hitter,” Len Barker said matter-of-factly in the ballpark press box, where he was banished for being ejected from a game the week before.

And just like that, the next Notre Dame batter laid down a perfect bunt single, followed by a sharply-lined single to left.

The Falcons lost the close game, but 23 years after pitching his last major-league game, Barker and his 6-5 lumberjack’s build are back in uniform.

“When I get around these guys,” he said, “I feel like a kid.”

Leave it to baseball to make a 54-year-old with freshly replaced knees and a 5-inch scar inside his elbow feel 20-something again.

A magic night in May 1981 Barker was 25 years old on May 15, 1981, when 7,300 fans at old Municipal Stadium braved a damp, chilly Friday night to watch the Indians’ right-hander cut down 27 straight Toronto Blue Jays with a leg-buckling curveball. He was about as perfect as perfection gets, throwing just 19 balls the whole game.

By the time Barker retired in 1987, he had played for three other teams and lost two more games than he won. But the mere mention of “Large Lenny” still lights up the faces of anyone who stood by the Indians through decades when thrills were few.

For the past 16 years or so, Barker worked in remodeling as Perfect Pitch Construction.

But construction had taken a physical toll. He also missed being around the game.

The circumstances that led him back to the diamond, in a blue, white and gold No. 39 jersey for Notre Dame, seem eerily scripted.

In January, Barker was a guest speaker at the Falcons’ baseball fundraiser, where he learned that friend and former Indians teammate Joe Charboneau (who was to become a Notre Dame assistant) had to pass on the job.

Within days of the banquet, a friend whom Barker had met at an Indians Fantasy Camp called to see how he was recovering from knee-replacement surgery. Barker mentioned his interest in the coaching job to the friend, who told his brother, a Notre Dame vice president.

The word was passed along to second-year head coach Nick Weisheipl, who discussed the idea with pitching coach Bud Burkle.

“The transition was seamless, because Len was kind of hanging around the team anyway,” said Weisheipl. “It wasn’t just like, boom, a major-leaguer showed up, sound the call, ‘We’ve got Len Barker!’”

Large Lenny. Small school. Not many schools the size of the tiny Catholic college in South Euclid — enrollment 1,375 — can claim to have the pitcher of a perfect game on its staff. NDC, which competes at the NAIA level but is on course to become NCAA Division II in 2012-13, launched its baseball program just six years ago.

The Falcons, 27-19 overall and 12-10 in the American Mideast Conference, share outdoor batting cages with the softball team and have no field of their own.

Glamorous it’s not, but the coaching gig is no stepping stone. Barker has no visions of commanding a big-league team some day.

“This is it. I don’t want to deal with a lot of the big egos up there,” he said. “I’d probably get in a fight with one of them.”