John Altobelli Remembered On Cape Cod As 'A True Baseball Person'
BOSTON (CBS) – One of the nine people killed in the helicopter crash with Kobe Bryant in California once coached in Massachusetts. John Altobelli managed the Brewster Whitecaps of the Cape Cod Baseball League.
"He really knew baseball I mean he was a really smart baseball guy," said Pastor Douglas Scalise, a longtime Whitecaps board member.
Altobelli, his wife, Keri and daughter, Alyssa, were killed in the crash Sunday that also took the lives of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter Gianna, and four others.
"You hate to think that life could be that fragile," Scalise said. "And yet tragedies like this remind us that it is."
John Altobelli was the longtime head coach of Southern California's Orange Coast College baseball team. He was with the Whitecaps from 2011-2014.
"John stood out like a million dollar bill," said Cape Cod Baseball League President Chuck Sturtevant. "You could see he was a true baseball person. And his biggest concern was the development of the ballplayers."
During Altobelli's first year as coach in Brewster, not one player left. "And that's really a credit to the environment that John created as a head coach," Scalise said. "People wanted to stay and keep playing hard and be a part of things."
Altobelli also spent time with his own children at Stony Brook Field. In the summer of 2011, he was assistant coach to his son, J.J., who is now a scout for the Red Sox.
"The Red Sox are devastated by the news of yesterday's tragic helicopter crash in Southern California," Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom said in a statement. "We are heartbroken for the victims and their families, including John Altobelli, father of Red Sox scout J.J. Altobelli, John's wife Keri, and their daughter Alyssa. John touched so many lives in his 27 years coaching at Orange Coast College, and we join the entire baseball community in mourning him."
