AUBURN – A long, silent bus ride home from Vermont. A loud, nasty crowd in Massachusetts.

Jim Chaplin remembers the sounds of his baseball career as much as anything else. So often, it was the sounds, the voices, or even the lack thereof, that told him what he needed to do to be a better pitcher.

Many other great athletes hear the same voices, but so few listen. Chaplin listened and became a workhorse for the University of Maine, one whose accomplishments still stand out in a school record book loaded with Major League names, and have now landed him in the Auburn-Lewiston Sports Hall of Fame.

Night and day

Chaplin grew up in a skiing family. The oldest of four children, he might have led his brother and two sisters in distinguished skiing careers at Edward Little High School. But Chaplin’s body told him he should pursue other athletic endeavors.

“I loved skiing, too, but I got tall, and I played basketball instead,” he said.

He eventually grew into a lanky 6-foot-3 righthander for A-L Hall of Fame coach Artie Belliveau at Edward Little. From 1965 to 1967, he pitched in the shadow of another A-L Hall of Famer and future Major Leaguer.

“Larry Gowell was the pitcher in front of me all three years, so he got the ball all the time, and deserved it,” Chaplin said. “There was a side effect to that in that scouts would come to games thinking Larry was going to pitch and there I’d be. I got all of these cards from scouts and they’d tell me, ‘Get a curve ball and then come back and see us.'”

Chaplin again listened, but even though his rolling curve ball didn’t pan out, he still caught the eye of University of Maine coach Jack Butterfield.

He visited other schools with hopes of continuing his education and baseball career, but when Chaplin saw Butterfield put the Black Bears through their paces, he knew Orono was the place for him.

“The minute I saw the way they conducted practices, it was night and day. This was really a professionally-run organization,” he said. “It was different from anything I’d seen and I was in love right away.”

Butterfield taught Chaplin to throw a slider to complement a hard fastball. More importantly, Chaplin said, he also taught him that it takes some losing to decide how you want to win.

Lessons in losing

Butterfield turned losses into opportunities to teach. Following road defeats, he demanded silence on the bus so that players would reflect on what they could have done to change the outcome. Even if Chaplin threw a great game, he would still search for something he could improve upon for his next start.

“The lessons (Butterfield) taught me were better than any college education,” Chaplin said. “Figure out why you lose and figure out what you’re going to do about it.”

Chaplin truly took Butterfield’s lessons to heart after a particularly rough outing at the University of Massachusetts near the end of his sophomore season. The echoes of an abusive UMass crowd rattled around in his mind for a long time.

“That really irked me. It really motivated me,” he said. “I think that was the turning point. I spent the next year thinking about that.”

It spurred Chaplin to one of the most remarkable seasons in Black Bears history. As a junior in 1970, he posted a 1.02 ERA, still a school record.

His biggest win came in his final start against Vermont, which clinched a tie for the Yankee Conference title. Chaplin struggled early, but settled in for the long haul – as in, a 13-inning complete game.

As fate would have it, it was his bat and legs that finally made the difference.

“In the 13th, I’ll never forget this, I figured I’d get pinch hit. I was 0-for-5. Jack Butterfield looked me in the eye and said, ‘Nope, you can hit this guy,'” Chaplin said. “Sure enough, bam, right up the middle for a base hit. I figured they would take me out for a pinch runner. Nope. Around the bases I go. Scored the winning run. I was so tired, I couldn’t slide into home plate.”

Do the math

The self-deprecating Chaplin attributes his dominance that season to bad weather, good defense, wooden bats, no designated hitter and opponents taking long bus rides to Orono. But even he is amazed by his endurance on the mound.

“In the spring of 1970, I had eight starts, and the record books that I looked at said I pitched 75 innings. Do the math. That’s more than nine innings (per start). I know I pitched a 13-inning game, so that’s four extra, and I know I got taken out of one game,” he said. “But in those days, it was ‘Here’s the ball. See you at the end of the game.”

Chaplin went on to pitch in the Cape Cod League, where he threw four more complete games and made the All-Star team. The workload took a toll, though. He hurt his arm and was never the same.

“I think that was the end. I didn’t throw as hard my senior year. And I hurt my arm again at the end of my senior year,” he said. “I don’t know how I got on the All-Yankee Conference team. I missed three starts at the end of the year.”

The arm troubles scared off the pro scouts, so Chaplin stayed on at Maine as a graduate assistant. While there, he taught the slider to another EL product bound for the big leagues, Bert Roberge, when he was a freshman.

Chaplin worked 27 years in child welfare for the Maine Department of Human Services, then for the Spurwink School in Portland. He stayed in baseball as player/coach of the Auburn ASAs and as a coach with the Auburn Senior Little League teams that won the New England regionals in 1974 and 1975. For two summers in a row, he used up all of his vacation time “traveling around the country with these guys who refused to lose,” he said. “I loved these kids. They were teachable.”

Chaplin, who is now retired, stopped coaching after his son stopped playing Little League, though one gets the sense he still loves to teach. He now spends his free time golfing and fishing and still loves to watch baseball.

And listen to it, too.