The 2022 FCBL Hall of Fame Ceremony is filled with Silver Knights, including the entire 2011 Nashua team. (Courtesy photo)

NASHUA – Fame will have a definite Silver lining when it comes to the Futures Collegiate Baseball League.

That’s because the second annual FCBL Hall of Fame Induction next month will be dominated by the Nashua Silver Knights.

Former Knights Mickey Gasper and Ryan Gendron, plus former VP and manager B.J. Neverett, former pitching coach and manager J.P. Pyne, plus the entire 2011 Silver Knights team which captured the first ever FCBL title will all be honored at a ceremony on Friday, Oct. 7 at the Leicester Country Club in Leicester, Mass.

Also being inducted with be former Torrington Titan player and North Shore manager Mike Odenwaelder.

Gasper, the former Merrimack High School standout currently with the Yankees Double A Somerset Patriots in Bridgewater, N.J.was the FCBL’s Most Valuable Player in his only Silver Knights season in 2016 – the first Silver Knight to win the award. He hit a whopping .421 with a .532 on-base percentage, top single season marks in FCBL history.

He slugged .726 with 31 extra base hits, 42 RBIs and 119 total bases.

Gendron’s individual success really came after his lone Silver Knights season, a title-winning year in 2012. He wound up with the Seacoast Mavericks and hit a league record 22 homers in 2015, a mark which still stands. He also set the record for total bases 9138), extra base hits (33) and slugging (.758). That 2015 season he also drove in a whopping 53 runs.

In 139 career FCBL games – fourth most in league history – he has 33 homers, 88 RBIs, 94 runs scored. He’s currently an assistant coach at New England College.

The guy who signed Gasper and Gendron, was, of course, Nashua’s Neverett. Neverett was in on the ground floor as the director of player personnel and assistant coach in 2011, and was promoted eventually to Vice President. He managed the Knights for five seasons, winning it all in 2012, 2016 and 2017. He is the winningest manager in league history with 147 regular season wins and 14 more playoff wins. He retired after the 2019 season, handing the reins to his longtime pitching coach, Kyle Jackson, who has won two titles in three years, including this past season.

Neverett’s first pitching coach was Pyne, the former Daniel Webster College head coach who took the managerial reins in 2013 and guided the Knights to the FCBL finals. He then went on to manage the Worcester Bravehearts to finals appearances in 2016-17 and a FCBL championship in 2018. In his three seasons in Worcester, Pyne, who also has been the head coach at Clark and is currently the head man at Amherst College, compiled 129 regular season wins and 10 postseason victories. This year’s FCBL Finals MVP Jack McDermott is one of his Amherst players.

Of course, the team that started it all was the 2011 Silver Knights team managed by Londonderry’s Mike Chambers, currently the head coach at Frankln Pierce. That team swept Torrington in two games, 12-0 and 8-3 winning the title on the road at Torrington’s Fuessenich Park while being welcomed home late that early August Friday night by fans at Holman Stadium. It finished with a regular season mark of 27-16, a half game ahead of the Titans. That year it was just a four-team league.

That team was led by FCBL Pitcher of the Year Eric Perrault, former Nashua North coach Logan Gillis of Merrimack who won the batting title, Defensive Player of the Year Rob Benedict, and Relief Pitcher of the Year Dylan Maki. All those players were signed by Neverett.

Odenwalder played three seasons for the Titans, winning league MVP honors in 2014 (.370, 49 RBIs, 20 stolen bases). He spent two years in the Orioles system after being drafted, and is now the head coach at Eastern Connecticut State, named this July after a stint as an assistant at Dartmouth. Before his arrival, ECSU won the Division III national title this past spring.

The dinner and ceremony will be held after the annual FCBL Golf Tournament set for noon that day. For information on the entire event, contact Silver Knights assistant GM Katie Arend at katie@nashuasilverknights.com.

(Material from the FCBL Media Relations Dept. was used in this report.)

Newsletter