Antonio LaBarbera, shown here in 2016, says the pressure of being a varsity athlete helped him adjust to the heat in the kitchen. (Courtesy of NT Baseball Booster Club)
*** As seen in Twin Cities Sun, July 31, 2020 edition ***
By Joe Kraus
During his three seasons on the mound, North Tonawanda native Antonio LaBarbera dealt with plenty of chaos.
And when he started his cooking career at The Country Club in Chestnut Hill, Mass., last spring, he knew his time as a varsity athlete was time well spent.
“In the kitchen, it can get crazy,” said LaBarbera, a 2017 NTHS grad. “It’s a Friday night and you’re serving 200 people, let’s say, and you can lose it real quick. And I feel it’s the same way on the baseball field. You give up hit after hit, you start to lose it. I feel like that aspect of it helped me in the kitchen, where it helped me stay calm like, ‘We’ll get through this. It’s going to be tough.’ Sports is, life is, your career is, you know?”
A memorable moment on the mound for LaBarbera came on April 27, 2016 in a road matchup against Niagara Frontier League rival Lewiston-Porter. The Lancers always seemed to have the Lumberjacks’ number, but on this day. Using his two-seam fastball and a breaking curveball, LaBarbera struck out six batters and allowed one run on three hits in six innings in an 8-1 victory and part of a 10-win campaign for the program.
In 10 career appearances and 39 innings pitched, LaBarbera finished with a 4-2 record, a 1.97 ERA and 58 strikeouts. He was a game-changer at the plate also with a .266 batting average, 16 RBI and 5 stolen bases.
“There was nobody more consistently hungry to win on game day than Antonio,” said former teammate Collin Rambler. “It doesn’t matter if he’s playing baseball or tic tac toe, he (was) trying to dominate his opponent at all times. When he was on the mound, he was (at) a level of ‘locked in’ and fearlessness that nobody could offset.”
That fearlessness stayed with him when he represented the Northeast Region in the Student Chef of the Year event in February 2019 held in Atlantic City.
LaBarbera’s salmon dish and work ethic made such an impression that the head judge, Joseph Leonardi, Director of Culinary Operations for The Country Club, offered him a job.
Two weeks after graduating from the Niagara Falls Culinary Institute last spring, LaBarbera relocated to Malden, Mass., about 10 minutes north of Boston. Soon, he moved his way up from preparing hors d’oeuvres for wedding banquets to cooking for smaller parties. Then, due to Covid-19, The Country Club closed this past March and didn’t re-open until June 1.
“For a while there, I feel like you get almost complacent and you’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t have to do anything and I can just sit around and play video games and watch TV,’” said LaBarbera, who was living with family in Buffalo during this time. “So it’s nice to become more productive (again.)”
His love for sports and cooking came down from his family – especially from his parents, Joe and Lori. His interest in cooking came after watching his father, who worked in the restaurant industry, make meals in their kitchen and would answer his young son’s numerous questions. He regularly bought Antonio a knife or a cutting board or other cooking equipment for Christmas.
“I’d just be in there talking to him about food and asking what he was doing – kind of in an annoying way, at first, ‘Why are you doing this and this?’” said LaBarbera. “And then, it ended up just falling in love with cooking.”
His earliest sports moment came in bowling when he accompanied his older brother, Sal, for a Saturday bowling league and practiced on the farthest lanes at just 3 years old. He later rolled a 300-game for NT in 2016 and was a six-year letterman under Bill Rohring.
But LaBarbera enjoyed baseball more and wanted to follow in the footsteps of his brother and his cousins on the diamond.
“I liked the idea of baseball more because you’re outdoors and the smell of the fresh air and chewing bubblegum,” said LaBarbera, a Chicago Cubs fanatic. “The whole experience of baseball to me was a little bit more exciting than I feel like bowling was. But I loved them just as much as the other.”
Today, LaBarbera looks back on the lessons taught by all his coaches, Neal Turvey and Dan Hannon in baseball and Rohring in bowling.
“Coach Rohring cared a lot about the little things, like single-pin spares, 7-10 pins,” he said. “I think that kind of helped me concentrate and focus on every shot and making sure every shot was right. With Turvey, it was totally different sophomore year compared to freshman year. Just the first day of try-outs, ‘No messing around, we’re here to win.’ He focused a lot on the mental game of baseball. Because Turvey was so serious, I think it also helped having Hannon because he was a little more lighter. They were a good ‘yin-and-yang’ with each other.”
Turvey knew LaBarbera was a special player when he came out of the bullpen as a sophomore for NT’s 2015 Senior Night game against Bishop Timon, an eventual 8-7 victory in 11 innings. In his two innings, LaBarbera fanned three batters and did not allow an earned run on three hits for his first varsity win. Turvey called his outing “lights out,” and that it was a rarity for an underclassman to have a solid first outing.
“There’s no doubt that he was a guy that was going to help your program in multiple ways,” Turvey said. “For Antonio, it was as a hitter, a guy on the mound, as an outfielder. He was an asset for us for two full years on varsity, and really, the end of his sophomore season as well.”
LaBarbera hopes to travel and work at various restaurants across the country before eventually returning to Buffalo to become an executive chef of a restaurant.
In the meantime, LaBarbera encourages current Lumberjacks to embrace their years in high school and take some risks. The biggest risk he took was enrolling in the culinary program in the Erie 1 BOCES CTE program as a junior – and it’s paid off.
“For anybody out there, if they want to be a nurse or a personal trainer, I would say go for it,” he said. “You can do it your junior year and not do it your senior year. But I think, if you’re interested and want to do it, then go for it – because for me, I think it paid off immensely.
If I had to do it again, I’d want to be a Lumberjack all over again… I’m definitely grateful to be a Lumberjack.”
Antonio’s Cinnamon Roll Recipe
For Dough:
1 Tablespoon instant yeast
1 Cup warm milk ( 110 F)
1/3 Cup Granulated Sugar
½ Cup Butter. Softened
1 Teaspoon Salt
2 Large eggs
4 Cups Flour
For Filling:
2 Cups Brown Sugar
3 Tablespoon Cinnamon
1 stick melted butter
Cream Cheese Icing:
1 Package of Cream Cheese
¼ Cup Milk
¼ Cup Confectioner Sugar
Procedure:
- Mix warm milk yeast and sugar together. Let yeast activate for 5 minutes.
2. In another bowl place flour and salt in bowl. Pour milk mixture, eggs and butter in bowl and mix. Once the dough comes together, knead for about five minutes. Once done. Place dough in a greased bowl and cover with a towel. Let rise for about an hour.
3. While dough is rising, Mix together brown sugar and cinnamon and store.
4. For the cream cheese icing, make sure cream cheese is softened. Using an electric mixers, mix together all ingredients until well combined.
5. Once dough has risen, punch dough down and begin to roll out dough. About ¼ to ½ inch thick. Brush dough with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar mixture. Roll dough into long tube shape and cut rolls about two inches thick.
6. Place on greased baking sheet about ½ inch from each other.
7. Bake at 350 F for about 15 minutes until golden brown.
8. Once slightly cooled cover with icing and enjoy!
Joe Kraus is a Canisius College 2020 graduate and Journalism major whose work has appeared in the Twin Cities Sun and other local publications in Western New York. If you have any comments or an idea for a future story, please send to joekrausnt@gmail.com
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