SACRAMENTO MEN'S SENIOR BASEBALL LEAGUE
Sacramento's Premier Baseball League since 1984
Home of 72 World Series Championship Teams
Mark was born in Placerville, California, the oldest of 4 boys. Mark and his brothers loved baseball from an early age, inspired by our grandfather who grew up in Boston as a young Red Sox fan. Mark’s first experience playing organized baseball was as a catcher with the Orioles in the Timber Little League in Placerville.
Mark’s family moved to Sacramento in 1968 and he continued to play ball as a Freshman at Encina High School, where he learned how much he didn’t know about the game from his freshman coach Rich (Moose) Musillami. Moose went on to coach Rio Linda High to 14 conference championships during his 26 years as head varsity coach. Mark played all 4 years at Encina, the last two under Coach John Smith, who went on to have a storied career as the head coach at Sacramento State.
During Mark’s senior year, Coach Smith, a native of Siskiyou County, took the Encina team on a spring road trip to Weed, California to play a game vs. the College of the Siskiyous junior college team, and after graduating from Encina Mark played 2 years of JC ball in Weed under head coach Dennis DeRoss.
After graduating from UC Davis Mark’s baseball career appeared to be over until he had a chance encounter with Brian Pearson, an old high school teammate. Brian was organizing a team for a new Stan Musial Adult league in the early 80’s. Mark played Stan Musial ball for 3 years, then real life took over, marriage, a family and a lot of beer league softball games.
In 1993 Mark ran into Brian Pearson again at his son Craig’s first T-Ball game. Brian was starting another Team in a new league called SMSBL. Mark played for several years with the Marlins, then in 2002 he joined former Marlins teammate Mike Baker on the Auburn Braves team. Mark has been with the Braves now for 23 years and has played on 20 Arizona MSBL World Series teams with the Braves, winning back to back championships in 2015 and 2016.
Mark has been married for 40 years to his wife Lauren, who he met while attending College of the Siskiyous. Mark and Lauren are the proud parents of son Craig, a firefighter with the City of San Francisco and a 5 year Veteran of the US Army’s 2nd Ranger Battalion with 6 combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan during the Global War on Terror. Mark feels extremely fortunate to be a member of the Sacramento MSBL. The founders and leadership of our league over the years have much to be proud of and our league is second to none.
