This is the second in a series of five profiles this week on this year’s inductees in the Auburn-Lewiston Sports Hall of Fame.

AUBURN – The year of the Impossible Dream, a high school chemistry teacher accepted what has become the impossible task, and perhaps the ultimate chemistry experiment.

Dennis Sweetser didn’t have any sons or nephews playing Auburn Suburban Little League baseball, but the invitation to coach that spring and summer of 1967 sounded like a great way to get out in the sunshine and get out of the house.

“I thought I’d do it for a year or two,” said Sweetser.

Forty-two seasons later, if you believe that life is a game of trickle-down economics and that good deeds can be contagious, it’s safe to say that Sweetser’s love of a sport and a community have impacted thousands. His coaching tree, to borrow a term often associated with legendary NFL leaders Bill Walsh and Bill Parcells, is a forest.

Others excelled as players, applying his lessons to their already enormous talent and taking up permanent residence in local, collegiate or statewide halls of fame.

At last, in a pronouncement probably long overdue, Sweetser joins them. He is part of this year’s 25th anniversary class of five selected for induction into the Auburn-Lewiston Sports Hall of Fame. Sweetser receives his just desserts Sunday evening in a banquet at Lost Valley.

“It’s something I never expected,” said Sweetser. “I’ve got three players in there, the two Coutts boys (Mike and Mark) and Billy Reynolds. I was proud of all of them, but I never figured this.”

If a good man is recognized by the fruit of his labor, Sweetser’s produce speaks volumes.

“Other than John Winkin (at the University of Maine), Dennis is the greatest coach I ever had,” Reynolds said in a 2006 Sun Journal interview recognizing the 50th anniversary of Auburn Suburban.

Contacted for the same story, Mike Coutts acknowledged that Sweetser’s devotion to baseball and genuine concern for youth continue to inspire him in his career as proprietor of Frozen Ropes, a year-round baseball training center in Portland.

“You think about the impact those coaches have on you at that age, and you think about the things they did and said as you get older. You think of a guy like Dennis Sweetser who has been involved with that league almost his whole life,” said Coutts.

Sweetser’s teams – most notably his Senior League all-star squads of the 1970s and 1990s – were consistent winners in state and regional competition. The 1979 group, led by Reynolds, Mark Coutts and Gary Violette, traveled to Gary, Ind., and finished third in the World Series.

Auburn lost to eventual champion Taipei and dropped a 4-1 decision to a team from Florida. The complete-game winner: 14-year-old Dwight Gooden, five years shy of a National League Rookie of the Year award, six away from a Cy Young and seven from a World Series ring with the New York Mets.

“We came close to him. With a couple of breaks, we might have beaten him that night,” Sweetser said. “To finish third, I was very proud.”

The father of three daughters and no boys, Sweetser never entered a season with special interests.

His players say that it showed, noting his equal enthusiasm for teams whether they stood on the cusp of a championship or didn’t have a prayer of sniffing one.

“The commitment of Mr. Sweetser is amazing,” said Lewiston High School varsity baseball coach Todd Cifelli, who was an infielder on an undefeated Sweetser team in eighth grade. “Year after year, he’s there, and he understands it’s Little League but he’s serious about trying to make kids better. He has a who’s-who of kids he’s coached that have gone on.”

Sweetser said that one of his favorite teams celebrated only one win in an entire season.

“I had more fun that year. They were the nicest group of kids. And the next year we came back and won it all,” Sweetser said. “It just seemed to gel, the same group of kids, and they matured.”

Still active as a substitute teacher at Edward Little, Sweetser can be found almost nightly at the bustling ASLL complex off Garfield Road, one that includes a softball diamond dedicated in his honor. He still coaches while serving as league treasurer. In this day of declining participation in youth team sports nationwide, Sweetser beams when he reports that Auburn’s softball and senior baseball (now Babe Ruth) numbers spiked this spring.

Never one to seek the spotlight, Sweetser presented Reynolds at his A-L Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 1996. Sweetser jokingly said that Reynolds, an eventual Oakland Athletics farmhand whom he singles out as one player in his tenure who didn’t have much to gain from his coaching, will return the favor at Sunday’s banquet “because he owes me one.”

Most of Auburn would agree that the line of boys-to-men fitting that description is a hundred miles long.

“What I take from Mr. Sweetser is a love of baseball,” added Cifelli. “He’s not only a coach but an educator. It’s pretty special to have that kind of impact. He’s great, and he deserves this recognition.”