Capitalizing on the enormous successes of the Army Baseball Family Association (ABFA) and a string of six straight Patriot League Championships, we are embarking on a new campaign to revitalize and re-energize our support to Army West Point Baseball. It is an effort to transition and unify the combined effect from alumni, families and friends along three lines of effort – outreach, fellowship and growth. 

These three distinct developmental components we call lines of effort are fundamental to the future of Army Baseball and we feel that a concerted effort in each one of them is vital. In fact, we have intentionally ordered them sequentially to communicate our understanding (as well as firm belief) that outreach helps build fellowship, and the combined effects of both outreach and fellowship, will promote future growth. 

You don’t have to look any further than the last five years of the Stephen C. Reich Memorial Golf Tournament and its extraordinary impact on team fund raising to see that we have a committed, capable and small core of volunteers who are making an extraordinary difference in the health and success of this organization. The total amount of money raised just by the golf tournament fundraisers in this five-year period is astounding. This helped sustain and with dwindling budgets has been a lifesaving shot in the arm for our current year’s needs. However, the future stability and needs of the team are at risk without a commitment to long-term financial stability.    

In this and future issues of the newsletter we will describe and help to achieve understanding and build commitment from all three elements of our base – alumni, families and friends. For now, we want to define the components of the campaign and illustrate the tangible projects and programs that are already in progress to support each campaign line of effort. 

Although the Cambridge and Oxford dictionaries both convey the meaning of the word in the context of “bringing services to people in the community,” we are altering the traditional definition slightly to simply say that we are using information technology and media to TELL OUR AMAZING STORY.

The story of baseball at West Point dates all the way back to 1863 when Cadets submitted a request to form a team at the academy. It was eventually approved, and after a few years of intramural play the academy was fielding a competitive team in the 1890s. This remarkable legacy is one of the most unique storylines in America because our team’s history, the nation’s history and the history of baseball are inextricably linked, tracing all the way back to this prominent piece of military terrain on the west bank of the Hudson. 

Early in 2024 under the leadership of former pitcher Jeff Wright (’79), shortstop Kevin Batule (‘83), Dan Giachin (Anthony ‘21), Dave Talbott (‘06) and Sherry Friedrick (Ross ‘23), we carved out an initial plan to merge the non-profit ABFA with the official West Point Athletics Association of Graduates (AOG) fund-raising arm to form the Army Baseball Family (ABF). The entity going forward will continue ABFA’s spectacular work, nested under the official (and legal) mantle of the United States Military Academy. As an outgrowth of this early transition concept, we also devised a campaign plan that recognized our sequential thesis presented in the introductory paragraph.

So, with that in mind we just started throwing content into format and published the first issue of the ABF Newsletter in March, only 45 days after we wrote our ideas on paper! It has been received with overwhelmingly positive comments, and we continue to get numerous unsolicited compliments, as well as ideas for content and creativity – several from alumni and fans who have been inactive or quiet in the past. Additionally, we hosted a Zoom Update session on 30 July this year with 58 attendees dialed in. Coach Tracz summarized the team’s successful season, an outlook for the future and expressed his intent to “wrap our arms around the alumni.” We will continue the Zooms on a quarterly frequency, extending the impact and power of deliberate outreach.