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07/06/2022 12:00 AMDan Gleason has served as an assistant coach with the East Haven baseball team for the past 22 years. Throughout the past two decades, Dan has had the opportunity to coach alongside some of his former teammates while helping numerous Yellowjackets’ athletes grow on and off the field.
Dan is an East Haven resident who attended East Haven High School before graduating in 1975. At East Haven, Dan was teammates with current baseball Head Coach Butch Johnson, who he refers to as Butchy, on the football team. The two later coached against each other in the Foxon Rec League.
Dan was serving as a freshman football coach for the Easties when Johnson asked him if he wanted to join his staff as Johnson was entering his first year as head coach of the baseball squad. Dan accepted the job and has been coaching with Johnson ever since.
However, before he ever thought of becoming a coach, Dan was an athlete. Dan started out by playing in the Annex Little League, East Haven’s Youth Football program, and Sal Tinari Biddy Basketball. He went on to play baseball and football for all four years of high school. After that, Dan played two years of football at the University of Southern Connecticut.
When he was competing in high school, Dan’s coach was the legendary Frank Crisafi. Dan took a lot of advice from Crisafi and always appreciated the way he ran his programs. Dan says that Crisafi taught him about respect for both himself and others.
“Always be prepared,” says Dan. “I graduated in 1975. If you could get us all together, we could probably still run the plays. We were prepared. I learned about respecting others and respecting myself.”
Dan coached his two sons, Sean and Daniel, during the early stage of his coaching career. He had some extra time and wanted to volunteer. Dan first coached his kids on a coach-pitch team, where he worked alongside Gary Brasile, a fellow assistant with the Yellowjackets; and later went on to coach against Johnson in the Foxon Rec League.
Dan also spent some time coaching Pop Warner football in Seymour. That experience came in handy when he saw Rusty Dunne at Joseph Melillo Middle School one day. The pair had been teammates at Southern Connecticut, and Dunne was now serving as East Haven’s football coach. Dunne asked Dan if he had ever coached football and if he was interested in joining his staff. Dan responded with an emphatic yes and began coaching the East Haven freshman football team in 1998.
Now coaching alongside Dunne at the high school level, Dan realized how serious coaching is and how much he liked it. He started spending time formulating gameplans and planning his offseason regiment. The fact that Dan was doing this at the freshman level helped him find his passion for the role of coach.
“When I started coaching with Rusty, it became real. I just got into the whole concept of getting ready for the offseason, getting my practice plans ready,” Dan says. “I was lucky, because I started on the freshman level. There’s a genuine love of the sport. It was refreshing. They ate up everything you put forward. That’s what made it easier. I learned how to deal with the kids.”
Now, Dan is an assistant coach for the East Haven varsity baseball team and the head coach for its JV team. In these roles, Dan has the chance to work with a number of talented baseball players from his hometown. Dan feels grateful for the opportunity to teach the Yellowjackets’ athletes about the game and says that his greatest joy comes from simply spending time with them.
“Just being with the kids. It keeps me young. It helps me keep up with what’s going on. I have grandkids now. It helps me relate,” says Dan. “I have been very fortunate. We’ve been very lucky with the caliber of kids that come through the baseball program here. They’re fantastic kids.”
As a coach, Dan wants his teams to have fun, but his athletes also understand that there is going be hard work. Dan says that the members of East Haven’s coaching staff take the approach that if you’re going to do something, you should do it right. One of the most important things for Dan is that his players enjoy their experience and take something away from it. When his players eventually walk off the Yellowjackets’ diamond, Dan wants to make sure that they’ve not only learned about baseball, but also how to succeed in life.
“You can have fun, but you need to put the work in. When we’re on the field, we’re here to work, but we can have fun. And we do have fun,” Dan says. “They learn a little bit about baseball, and they learn a bit about life, how to get things done.
Dan recently became a security guard at East Haven High School. Prior to that, he had been a New Haven police officer for 21 years and also worked for the state of Connecticut for 14 years. Dan says that he was elated to get the job as a security guard.
For the last 22 years, Dan has been guiding the young athletes that enter East Haven’s baseball program while fostering their love for the sport. Dan says that East Haven is the only place he wants to coach and that there’s nowhere else he would rather be.
“It means the world,” says Dan. “I honestly don’t know if I would go and coach anywhere else. I love East Haven.”