WELD – Like many permanent residents of the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame, Neil Stinneford experienced multiple flirtations with the big leagues.

Regrets? Perhaps he has a few.

But saying no to a vague promise from the Kansas City Royals gave Stinneford regional stardom in two sports and a Colby College education.

The alternative to walking out on a tryout with the Pittsburgh Pirates was Stinneford’s chance to be a better husband and more involved father with his four children.

And now he still gets to celebrate a degree of immortality. Stinneford, 74, will enter the state hall of fame for America’s time-honored pastime in July.

Stinneford, who grew up in Oakland and Dixfield, becomes the 14th player with ties to Franklin or Oxford county enshrined in the Portland-based hall in the last 20 years.

“My last game was my last game in college. The ones who would remember me playing,” Stinneford said with a wry laugh, “are all dead.”

Learning from a legend

That’s not entirely true. During his three years of baseball at Colby (freshmen were not allowed to play varsity at the time), Stinneford’s coach was Dr. John Winkin, now in his 90s and only recently forced to retire from the Husson University program due to ill health.

As was the case with many of the players partially responsible for Winkin’s 1,000 career wins, Stinneford acknowledges a tumultuous relationship with his fellow hall of famer.

“Playing for John was a little bit of a mixed bag. You never wanted to be sitting next to him during a game. I love John Winkin. He was a hell of a coach,” Stinneford said. “I’ll never forget my sophomore year, the first year I played for him. I think we met in January. We went in and he started giving us handouts. Before we ever touched a baseball we had these sessions, and everybody regardless of what position they played had to be able to tell him what everybody did in any given situation. You had to know or you wouldn’t play for him.”

Stinneford, who moved to center field at Colby after playing primarily third base in his youth, was named an All-American in 1956.

It was a huge honor for a player from a small, liberal arts school in Maine. The lines of demarcation between NCAA Divisions I, II and III were not drawn as distinctly as they are today.

“One of my years we had a chance to play for the national championship, but our conference wouldn’t let you go in those days. You couldn’t play after graduation. It hurt,” Stinneford said. “In those days, we played anybody who would play us: Connecticut, BC, Harvard.”

Multi-sport star

There’s no active Maine Football Hall of Fame, but it’s easy to make the case that the gridiron actually was Stinneford’s best sport.

He shared in a six-man football state championship during his career at Dixfield (now Dirigo) High School. Stinneford actually followed his coach, Alec Richards, to Madison High School as a senior.

At Colby, Stinneford was an All-Maine defensive back and running back during all three of his varsity seasons. He still holds the oldest record in the White Mules’ book for a 102-yard interception return touchdown in 1955.

“We didn’t have a great team at Colby in those days. Of course we played the University of Maine every year, so that was a downer,” Stinneford said. “I always played 60 minutes. No substitutions to speak of.”

Football also interfered with one of Stinneford’s brightest baseball achievements.

Stinneford was still a high school student and the youngest player on the team when the Dixfield Dixies of the Pine Tree League earned a berth in an American Baseball Congress national tournament in Battle Creek, Mich.

With fall approaching and the first scholastic football sessions looming, Stinneford was forced to pass on the trip. Still, his time with the Dixies was pivotal in shaping his athletic future.

“Most of the other fellows were married and out of high school. They taught me a certain number of bad habits. Got me chewing tobacco,” he noted.

Brushes with fame

Those busy summers also put him on the radar screen of many talent evaluators.

Bill Bryan was director of admissions at Colby and a part-time scout for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Bryan helped steer Stinneford to a tryout with the Pirates after his senior high school season.

Stinneford sat down with Hall of Fame player and Pirates’ scout George Sisler and renowned executive Branch Rickey during the trip. It was at that meeting when Bryan first learned of Stinneford’s desire to attend college.

“I applied to MCI (Maine Central Institute, the prep school in Pittsfield), said maybe I’ll go, get a little recognition and maybe pick up an athletic scholarship somewhere,” Stinneford said. “I found out afterward (the Pirates) had talked some about getting me into Ohio State. Here I was, from Dixfield, Maine. I had never taken SATs. I had no money. When I got back, Bill Bryan said to come down to Colby. I arranged to go down and he put an IQ test in front of me. This was in August. I started school in September.”

Stinneford got off to a slow start academically and lost his scholarship after his freshman season.

He was prepared to join his brother in entering the military and was only a few days away from his physical when Bryan again intervened. He arranged a one-on-one meeting for Stinneford with philanthropist Harold Alfond.

“Harold said, ‘How much do you need to come back?’ I said $500 would get me through the year, which doesn’t sound like much today with $40,000 tuition,” Stinneford recalled. “He wrote out a check with one condition. He said, ‘If you’re ever in a position where you can help a kid the same way, promise me you’ll do it.’ That was the only reason I went back to Colby.”

Early retirement

Stinneford was tempted to sign with the Royals after a stellar junior season. Already married with a daughter, he eventually asked Winkin to chase away Kansas City’s pushy scout and chose to play for Kentville, Nova Scotia’s entry in the maritime league.

When the young family’s housing plans in Kentville fell through, the Stinnefords roomed with another family of five throughout the season.

“It was the last year of the league. The NCAA shut them down after that year. Each team could have four pros. I drew a check on a hardware store that I never saw, not once, all summer,” Stinneford said. “There were some good ball players up there. Kind of like the Cape Cod League now, only the Cape Cod is legal.”

Stinneford said that the Canadian experience opened his eyes to the minor-league lifestyle, ultimately convincing him to pass on a free-agent invitation to Pirates’ spring training.

“You say to yourself, ‘This is what it’s like in minor-league ball, living out of a bureau drawer with a baby.’ Being married with one daughter and another one nearly here, it didn’t seem like a real good gamble,” said Stinneford. “In those days you could easily kick around five or six years in the minors and not have anything to show for it.”

Stinneford moved the family to Fayette and began work at International Paper. None of the semipro teams in the area fit his schedule, and with that, his career ended.

Sports now occupy only a small corner of Neil and wife Jo’s beautifully preserved farmhouse in the shadow of Mt. Blue State Park. Next to his All-America plaque hangs a newspaper cartoonist’s rendering of Stinneford after his record interception return.

Across the room, though, there’s one hint of the competitive juices that still flow. It’s a golf scorecard mounted in wood, exhibiting Stinneford’s first career hole-in-one at nearby Wilson Lake Country Club in 2006.

“The best part,” Stinneford said, “was playing with my two boys, walking to the eighth hole and saying, ‘Anybody beat a one?'”

Ask if any of Stinneford’s contemporaries had an athletic career as diverse and successful as he, and the same, telling silence is bound to be your answer.