Chaney Sheffield: TV Stand-in Becomes Standout

“Captain Dana Joseph Paine Wingate ’14, of Winchester, Mass., short stop, entered College three years ago from Exeter where he captained the team and played third base. He was third base and captain of his Freshman team. Last year he played short stop and third base on the University team. He is 22 years old, is 5 feet 8 1-2 inches tall, and weighs 135 pounds…”

—The Harvard Crimson, June 17, 1913

Senior Chaney Sheffield is a good four inches taller and 50 pounds heavier than the Crimson’s description of Wingate, who played back when Babe Ruth had yet to don a Red Sox uniform, let alone get dealt to the Yankees. Sheffield’s resemblance to Wingate in the mind’s eye of a local Boston journalist—along with a timely milestone in Boston sports history—combined to alter Sheffield’s role on the Harvard baseball team and give the Crimson a much-needed boost at the plate.

Confusing? Baseball teems with such convoluted tales. This one happens to begin before World War I.

Dana and Me

It was on April 9, 1912, that Dana Wingate ’14, the third baseman for the Harvard baseball team, stepped into the batter’s box to lead off an exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox. With this game, the Red Sox christened their new facility, a still-unfinished structure called Fenway Park. Wingate became Fenway’s first batter, and the full significance of this was probably lost on him—Wingate died in 1918.

But Fenway’s status in baseball lore swelled with the decades, and the Red Sox’ 100th anniversary last year rekindled media interest in the park and its history. Steve Buckley, a baseball columnist for the Boston Herald who also does sports spots for New England Cable News, wanted to produce a segment on Fenway’s first at-bat. In search of a possible body double for Wingate as part of the spot, he visited a Harvard baseball practice run by Coach Joe Walsh.

“We were walking around the ballpark and [Buckley] said, ‘He looks like him,’” Walsh says. “And it’s Chaney Sheffield.”

Sheffield, then a junior, had not been one of the more heavily used Crimson pitchers that year. On a team with such standouts as classmates Ben Crockett and Justin Nyweide along with stalwart staff ace John Birtwell ’01, Sheffield saw limited action. He threw in seven games last year and started only one, picking up a win and a save in 16 total innings. Sheffield had seen even less time the previous season.

But something in Sheffield’s demeanor during that practice caught Buckley’s eye and made him think of the famed Wingate.

“I knew I wanted to get a kid that looked like him,” Buckley says of Sheffield. “He looked like him, had the right kind of trot, good smile, seemed the right kind of guy. He sort of looked like an old -timer. Then we put the uniform on and he was a dead ringer for him.”

Sheffield put on a vintage uniform, grabbed a bat and reluctantly swung at live pitching for Buckley’s cameraman. But as Sheffield kept swinging, the balls jumped right off the wooden bat Buckley had lent him.

“The best thing about this kid was that when I was introduced to him, he wanted nothing to do with it,” Buckley says. “It was only after we had him up there for a while and started swinging that he got into it.”

As the camera rolled, Walsh saw how the balls were flying and realized that Sheffield—who had occasionally been brought in as a defensive replacement in the outfield and on the basepaths—may have had a future in the lineup.

“Chaney gets in the cage and takes a few swings with the photographer snapping and he’s hitting line drives,” Walsh says. “We saw something that day and we’re looking at each other and we say, ‘You’ve swung the stick, haven’t you?’ And he says, ‘Coach, I think I can.’”

Walsh decided right then to give Sheffield a chance to win an outfield spot at the start of this season.

“Luckily the wind was blowing out that day,” Sheffield says.

So far, the move has paid dividends for the Crimson. With freshman outfielder A.J. Solomine slowed by a torn labrum, Sheffield won a spot in the outfield rotation. Sheffield has stepped into the box in 16 of the team’s 24 games, and is batting .308—good for second on the team.

“He’s a battler up at the plate,” Walsh says. “He’s one of those guys who could be up there and be fooled on two pitches and we’re saying, ‘Oh, boy,’ and next thing you know he hits a line shot in the gap. It’s been an exciting switch, one that we really made after that day they did the little workout.”

Look at me/ I can be/ Sheffield

It’s been an exciting switch for Sheffield himself, a senior few would have envisioned playing frequently back when he was primarily a pitcher.

“I can’t tell you how much fun I’m having this year, being part of the games,” Sheffield says. “Even if you’re the ace—if you’re Crockett—you pitch once a weekend and then you have to sit and watch. It’s a dream come true, to be playing this much.”

Sheffield was originally recruited by Walsh out of high school but did not make the team his freshman year. He played junior varsity that year, but his season was shortened by a few weeks after he rolled his ankle on first base.

Still, Walsh invited him to try out for varsity again his sophomore year.

“Because I had a pretty good curve, I got another chance,” Sheffield says. “Coach likes curveball guys.”

Sheffield had played the outfield and some shortstop in addition to pitching, and his sheer athleticism gave him a chance to play the outfield as a defensive replacement.

“I’d always wanted to hit and play in the field—whether or not I could would be something I’d have to prove to Coach,” Sheffield says.

As it turns out, the Buckley incident wasn’t the first time Walsh had seen him play out of his usual position in practice and seen something he liked.

“In practice, the pitchers shag balls for batting practice,” Sheffield says. “For me, it was the most fun part of practice, and Coach saw that I had good speed.”

Sheffield has an athletic versatility that has served him beyond baseball. Growing up in Woodland Hills, Calif., he was captain of Viewpoint High’s soccer team in addition to being a two-time captain of the baseball team. A few seniors on the Harvard team have taken to calling him “Country Club,” a play on his affinity for and skill at golf and racquet sports. Walsh attributes the sobriquet to Chaney’s overall athleticism, but Sheffield has another explanation.

“A couple of the seniors make fun of me,” Sheffield says. “I play golf, tennis, a little squash. My main problem is I’m real bad at basketball, [which] everyone else plays when they’re not playing baseball, so they make fun of me. It’s not that fun a nickname.”

That weakness aside, the rest of the team appreciates his myriad skills and love of the sport he actually plays most often.

“He’s Mr. Everything,” says teammate and fellow senior Mark Mager. “He really is.”

Chaney did a little bit of “everything” during Sunday’s doubleheader against Columbia. He started the second game and gave the Crimson six solid innings after high scoring games earlier in the weekend had depleted the bullpen. He struck out six batters, then moved to left field and proceeded to line a double deep to left, later scoring on a wild pitch to give the Crimson some insurance. In the first game, Sheffield nearly prevented a double with a sharp throw to second.

All this on a pulled hamstring that had aggravated Sheffield for weeks.

“You knew he was feeling every pitch,” Mager said.

Sheffield took injured sophomore Marc Hordon’s spot in the rotation this week, but this weekend proved that the senior will be a vital cog for the Crimson even after everyone is healthy.

“He’s inspiring,” Mager said. “Especially with what he’s done here, walking on as a freshman, he’ll probably end up being one of our key players this year. Just seeing him play, you know that he loves the game.”

Sheffield’s ability to turn a JV spot into a relief/spot-starting role—and then turn that into a fairly regular gig in right field—is enough to make one wonder how else he can surprise in this, his final season with the Crimson.

“If he turns into a big major league star, I want everybody to know it was my bat he was using that day,” Buckley says.

Considering the size difference alone, Buckley’s pegging Sheffield for Dana Wingate that day may have been a stretch. But perhaps Buckley had read a lot into his own research. In an April 29, 2001 Herald article about Wingate, Buckley quoted one of the paper’s columns from 1918. The column remembered Wingate as “that rare, clean athletic type,” someone who was “immensely popular.”