Before the scorcher summer of 2022 fades to a warm memory, these champions, present and past, deserve three cheers. You may recognize them.
In August Nancy Johnson Chaffee further secured her status as champion of golf champions at Rhode Island Country Club when she won her 22nd women’s club championship. She posted a dramatic victory over Barrington High School sophomore Lily Dessel, an All-Stater last spring.
Chaffee has been winning titles at RICC since the 1960s, when she won her first two championships. Between 1972 and this year she won 20 titles. Twenty! Count them: 1972, 1979, 1984, 1986, 1989, 1993, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2019, 2020, 2022. She also won the senior club championship, named in her honor, in 2016 and 2020.
There’s more. Chaffee was the Rhode Island Women’s Golf Association state champion in 1971, 1981, and 1999. She has played 25 USGA national tournaments.
Oh, Nancy Chaffee is 78.
Nobody at RICC comes close to her longevity and consistency. The late Julie Greene won 11 times, Martha Kirouac nine, and Kibbe Reilly six. Chaffee enjoyed spirited and friendly rivalries with each of them. That quartet won 46 of the 53 women’s club championships played since 1970.
“I still talk to Martha. Julie and I were very close. She grew up across the street from my husband. She was fantastic in every sport. Kibbe came from Texas. Julie and I helped her out, and she became very good,” Chaffee told me when I caught up with her last month.
“I’ve had a great run. It’s been fantastic. The people I’ve met. The places I’ve been,” she said.
Nancy Johnson grew up at RICC. Her father Thomas played until he was 96. Her mother Jean played. Her sister Ann played until she started having nine children. Her husband David and son Mark play. Nancy plays every day. “I’m usually the second one out. Dan Cregan is usually first,” she said.
During the winter Chaffee plays in a men’s group at a club in Avon Park, a small central Florida town about 10 miles north of Sebring. She has won the Florida Super Seniors Championship.
When she was running her own communications shop, she would practice two hours before work and play 18 holes after work. Her handicap is 5.2 today. She has coached girls and boys during her career, enjoys playing with anybody, and really enjoyed walking the course with Lily Dessel, who is young enough to be her granddaughter. “We had a great conversation,” Chaffee said.
Nearing the end of her eighth decade, Nancy Chaffee plans to continue swinging her golf clubs as long as possible. “I’ve been blessed,” she said.
Stuart McNay of Providence traveled to Cork, Ireland, this summer and returned home a world champion. He and partner Caleb Paine of San Diego won the 505 Class title with McNay at the helm. They won five of the seven races out of the Royal Cork Yacht Club and finished second and seventh in the other two. Under regatta rules they were able to discard that seventh-place finish and end up with only seven points. The second-place crew had 15 points.
Similar to Nancy Chaffee’s growing up on the fairways of RICC, McNay grew up on the water out of the Beverly Yacht Club in Marion, Mass. That’s Buzzard’s Bay for all you landlubbers.
McNay, 41, was an All-America sailor at Yale and has competed for the United States in four Olympics. He and his partner, Graham Biehl, finished 13th in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012. He and Dave Hughes finished fourth at Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and ninth at Tokyo in 2021. Stu was the helmsman in the 470 Class in each of those Olympics. The 470, like the 505, is a small boat with a helmsman and one crew.
When he is not racing here and abroad, McNay is the assistant coach for the Brown sailing team.
Earlier this month, Dennis Eckersley left baseball after a 50-year career as a starting pitcher, reliever, World Series champion, All-Star, MVP, Hall of Famer and television commentator. It will be a long time before we see the likes of Elk again.
On the mound he was high energy personified, vigorously pumping his arm after striking out a batter. He won 20 games, his career high, for the Red Sox in 1978, the year the Yankees beat them in a one-game playoff at Fenway Park. He finished his career 20 years later with the Red Sox.
As popular as he was as a player, creating his own lexicon as he went along, Eck, 68, might have been more popular in the NESN TV booth through his last game at Fenway on Oct. 5. Relaxed, informed, insightful, honest and humorous, Eck was always worth listening to, whether in the studio or at Fenway Park. Like his legion of fans, I will miss him.
Home run champion Aaron Judge deserves high praise for the manner in which he went about breaking the American League home run record held by another Yankee, Roger Maris, for 61 years. Judge hit his 62nd in the penultimate game of the regular season against the Texas Rangers. All summer he remained calm whether on a home-run tear or a home-run slump, as he was in the last week of the season. His focus was always winning first, homering second.
Also impressive was the support and encouragement Judge received from the Maris family as he challenged the record, unlike the nasty treatment Maris received in 1961. Baseball purists disdained the Yankee slugger for daring to erase Babe Ruth’s record of 60 home runs in a season. And many favored teammate Mickey Mantle as the pair engaged in a home run derby most of the summer. Mantle finished with 54.
Fortunately, Judge was in a league of his own in 2022. Check out the great New Yorker magazine cover from Oct. 3.
