Teammates for Life: Tony Delgado

“A teammate is someone with whom you strive for a common goal. In sports, it is a collection of humans that work together to score more points than their common opponent, an opponent that has the motivation to do the same against your group. On an individual basis, my teammates help make me a better performer and thus contribute to the greater team and common good. If I am a good teammate, I will do the same for them.“

In the course of playing college sports, I had the opportunity to develop close relationships with young men whose background was vastly different from mine. Growing up in Braidwood, a town of approximately 1,500, my world view was gradually extended to the Wilmington area where both parents were raised. 

Then for four years, Joliet Catholic High School exposed me to another brief world where I was merely a small fish in the pond. My classmates were pretty much like me: all white with basically similar cultural backgrounds.

Finally, the Braidwood kid’s world would be stretched at Lewis College where my first roommate was from the really big city: Chicago. My basketball teammates exposed me to “big city” talk and references that made my background seem microscopic. My roommate and teammate, Bob Thayer, was African American and another teammate, John Valaitis, was born in Lithuania and, with his family, had trekked across Europe during WWII. 

In my senior year, with Bob and John having graduated, I was fortunate to inherit another teammate who would add another important piece to my life. His name: Tony Delgado.

Who is Joseph Anthony Delgado?

Folks in the greater Joliet area would know “Tony” as the former baseball coach at the University of St. Francis. But I know him as a lifelong friend who, because of his uniquely different background and strength of character, helped me understand, learn, and grow in new ways.

Born in the Chicago Pilsen community, Tony is one of 11 children born to Frank and Margaret Delgado. Tony’s dad was from Mexico and entered the U.S. by walking across the Rio Grande River and “never looked back.” All 13 family members lived in a two-bedroom apartment which included a living room, dining room, and kitchen. In all, it was about 600 square feet. The toilet was outside and down the hall. 

There was no hot running water, so water for bathing was heated on the kitchen stove. A coal burning stove, later converted to oil, was in the living room. Tony was in charge of procuring 5 gallons of oil from a gas station on Blue Island Avenue during cold winter months.  

In an adjacent apartment building, Tony’s uncle, Tony and his wife, lived with their ten kids. Across the street, Uncle Lupe’s family had another seven kids. As Tony says, “The vanguard had arrived” into the mix of native-born Eastern Europeans in Pilsen.

Lewis College

I had not known Tony’s early history when I first met him at a Lewis tryout during the spring of 1961. He and Harrison High School teammate, Lee Lampley, arrived on a Friday night at the request of Coach Gillespie. Our Lewis basketball team would be losing 7 seniors and we had to rebuild quickly. About 10 other high school players participated in the tryout.

Lee was about 6’6”, quick, and could jump out of the gym. Tony, on the other hand, hustled, ran, and was the hardest working player on the floor. Both Tony and Lee were offered scholarships and became my teammates on the 1961-62 team. 

Tony became an outstanding basketball and baseball regular all four years, while Lee had academic problems and lasted only one year basketball season. (Lee had the talent to become one of the best players in Lewis’s history.) Our 1962 baseball team, with Tony at short, finished 3^rd in the NAIA World Series. In 1965, the Lewis basketball team, with the help of Tony and future NBA player Wayne Molis, went to the NAIA national finals.

Coach Delgado

As soon as Tony graduated, I hired him as soccer, basketball, and baseball coach at Roncalli High School in Aurora, Illinois. He left Roncalli after one year to become assistant basketball coach at Loras College, then assistant at IIT, and later to become head basketball and assistant baseball coach at Lewis. 

Tony and I worked together at Lewis and then again at St. Francis. We also officiated basketball games in order to raise money for an Alaska trip that we had discussed since Roncalli days in Aurora. That trip was a lifetime highlight for me.

Players from Tony’s teams would attest to his integrity and consistency regardless of the situation. His refusal to compromise his principles without equivocation earned him praise and as well as condemnation. These are characteristics and Tony trademarks that I have witnessed time after time.

Nobody Like Tony

Looking over the past 60 years that we have known one another, I can reflect on some of Tony’s unique traits that made me a much better person and teammate. He refuses to describe people ethnicity as anything other than “dark skin” or “light skin.” Everyone in the country is American with different skin shades, not different races.

Besides being a philosopher and extensive reader of history, Tony is never afraid to ask questions about everything and to be the lone dissenter in a group. His judgment on what is right and wrong leaves little wiggle room. I have never known him to equivocate or compromise his principles.

As his teammate, co-coach, travel companion, and friend for 60 years, I luckily gained a perspective on life that, without him, would have been missing. Our early lives couldn’t have been more different. But those differences, once harmonized and blended, produced a story of enriched human relationships. 

Couldn’t have predicted this 60 years ago. (Almost to the day.)