News Item
"NorthJersey.com" featured Pace baseball in "Michael Salmonese playing his best baseball as a Pace University senior"
Pace University baseball coach Henry Manning’s first impressions of Michael Salmonese were ever lasting.
The summer before his senior year at Waldwick, Salmonese was playing for the Wladyka travel team program when his future college coach took in a game in North Brunswick.
“I was drawn to his actions at second base,” said Manning, a Rutherford native and Bergen County resident who is the winningest coach in the history of Pace, his alma mater. “He had ‘happy feet,’ as I put it, for an infielder and was always active.”
And there was a lot more.
“Halfway through the game,” Manning remembered, “this 5-foot-6, 140-pound kid hits a long home run with a wood bad (which is what our Division II league uses) and I was really intrigued. For a small guy, he swung hard in every at-bat I saw that day.”
Salmonese has never stopped swinging.
The senior has been the full-time starting second baseman and lead-off hitter at Pace since his sophomore season. He’s never hit below .300, batting .300 as a freshman, .310 as a sophomore, and .303, with a team-high 47 hits, as a junior.
Salmonese has saved the best for last. As a senior, he’s hitting .389, with team highs of 51 hits, 12 doubles, and a .504 slugging average. He’s driven in 11 runs and stolen seven bases in eight attempts.
After a slow start, Pace (24-12) has regrouped and is in the running for an invite to the Northeast-10 Conference Tournament for the fifth straight season.
Listed as 5-9 and 170 on the Setters’ roster, the little man has never allowed his small stature to work against him.
“He was never going to be a high-ceiling player like (Derek) Jeter or Ryan Sandberg in terms of his body filling out as he matured,” Manning said. “With Mike, what you see was what you got. He was a baseball player, but for me that was OK.
“He has developed and refined his game in many ways over the years, but size was not a limiting issue for me.”
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