Old School Softball

When PNC Field, home to the Scranton Wilkes-Barre Yankees, held a celebratory home run derby years ago, many local celebrities flexed their long ball muscles in a friendly competition. Included in the participants were New York Jets defensive great Joe Klecko as well as current Wilkes-Barre mayor Thomas Leighton.

The winner of that competition? Wilkes head softball coach Frank Matthews, who was launching bombs out of every part of the stadium.

“He was hitting softballs over the scoreboard,” said Wilkes’ assistant softball coach and longtime friend of Matthews, Tom Dunsmuir. “He was very powerful; a monster.”

Powerful indeed, as the centerfield fence is 408 feet away and the scoreboard sits behind it. It was that power that earned him a nickname that resonates in softball circles around the Valley.

“It’s Frank ‘Tanky’ Matthews,” said Dunsmuir. “No one knows him as Frank, it’s Tanky because he was built like a Tank. You could probably ask anyone in the Valley who the top player was and they’re gonna name Tanky.”

That power earned Matthews, who played for a variety of slow pitch and fast pitch softball teams around the Valley and in York, Pa., a place in the Amateur Softball Association of America’s (ASA) hall of fame in 1996, the first slow pitch player to ever be inducted.

“Now that’s something I can hang my hat on,” said Matthews.

He earned it. Matthews played on six ASA State Championship teams, five teams that advanced to the ASA National Tournament, three of which earned top twelve finishes, and was an ASA all-American as well.

He also belted around 1,400 career homeruns.

“That’s an estimate,” said Matthews. “Maybe a little more, maybe a little less. If you’ve been around slow pitch, you really don’t keep an accurate record of that. There were no scorebooks, so I would just estimate.”

That number would have been even greater had teams in one of his leagues chosen to pitch to him.

“There was a meeting with all the teams [in the league] and they [the other teams] said ‘Tanky, don’t even bring a bat,’” said Dunsmiur. “So he went out there every Tuesday for three, four summers and never swung a bat because they wouldn’t pitch to him, because they didn’t want him to hit a homerun.”

While playing softball was his passion, Matthews made a living in the education system. He served as an elementary education teacher for 30 years, five at Hazleton and 25 at Hanover Area, the latter of which he served as an assistant football coach as well as the weightlifting coach.

It was not until 1988, his 15th year at Hanover, that he decided to coach the sport that he dominated after school hours.

“When I became the AD [athletic director], the softball program was so bad that I felt we could have been better,” said Matthews. “So as AD, I hired myself as softball coach. At that time, Hanover had a policy where the athletic director could not coach, but that policy was waived for a couple of years.”

After a one-year stint with the varsity team, Matthews demoted himself to junior high. When his first group of players reached ninth grade, the head varsity coach became ill, so he swapped places and took over the varsity program for the second time in three years.

After relinquishing his duties as athletic director, Matthews revamped the program and took the team to supreme heights.

With the players Matthews had groomed since seventh grade, the Hawkeyes won an unprecedented five consecutive Wyoming Valley Conference championships and two PIAA District 2 titles, and Matthews was twice named the conference’s coach of the year.

After 11 years as head coach, and 30 years as an educator, Matthews decided to try something else, and ventured out into the college ranks.

Of all places to coach, Matthews wound up at Harvard University.

“I was already 50 years old and I wanted to get into college coaching,” said Matthews. “The opportunity arose and I was lucky enough to be hired by Harvard.”

During his one year at Harvard, the Crimson won just its second Ivy League championship in school history, and earned a berth in the NCAA Division I-A Championships, where they fell to eventual national champion Oklahoma.

But it was his job outside of softball that he likes to talk about the most.

“My claim to fame was working on a zamboni,” laughed Matthews. “Not many people get to do that.”

Not many people get to meet the people he met while there, either. During his tenure at Harvard, Matthews worked with the son of pro wresting superstar Jimmy “Supafly” Snuka and met numerous Olympic athletes, - all in the Alexander H. Bright Hockey Center, Harvard’s hockey rink.

“Everything was centered around the rink,” said Matthews. “On the softball field it was all ordinary people. You get in the hockey rink and it was all these celebrities.”

Among those celebrities was Olympic silver medalist and figure skating hall of fame inductee Paul Wiley. Wiley and his wife, a former goaltender for Brown, were attending Harvard Business School at the time, and would make routine trips to the rink throughout the week.

“Half of the ice was used for those who wanted to fool around for hockey, and the other half was for general skaters,” said Matthews. “Everyday they came in, and he would go play hockey, and she was doing figure skating. It was so funny.”