There’s a familiar hum around Fairfield Properties Ballpark this time of year, the kind that settles into the corners of dugouts and front offices long before the grounds crew rolls out a single fresh chalk line. Baseball teams don’t hibernate, not really — they recalibrate. They take the year’s bruises and laurels, stack them neatly on the shelf, and ask the oldest question in the game:
What’s next?
For the Long Island Ducks, the answer comes with three names. One, a staple brushing into his third year with the reins. One, a steady hand returning to tune a pitching staff that sang last summer. And one, new to the Island but carrying a résumé thick with resilience, road miles, and a kind of hard-won wisdom you can’t teach in a clinic.
Lew Ford, long-served, but still wearing that lived-in baseball soul like a comfortable glove, returns as the skipper.
“I’m looking forward to being back… and building off last year,” he says, which is the sort of understated optimism you expect from a man who has spent sixteen seasons threading himself into the fabric of the Ducks. Six championship appearances, three rings, more hits than most players dare to dream about. And — the quiet statistic — two straight winning seasons as the club’s manager.
Ford isn’t flashy. He doesn’t have to be. He’s the kind of baseball man who measures progress like a farmer watches the sky: with patience, memory, and an instinct for the long view.
At his side again is pitching coach Bobby Blevins, returning like a trusted lieutenant. Last season, while box scores buzzed about home runs and late rallies, it was Blevins’ pitching staff that quietly dominated the Atlantic League, leading in ERA, batting average against, and stinginess of nearly every statistical variety.
“We laid a strong foundation last year,” Blevins says, sounding more like a mason than a coach, “and I’m eager to build on that momentum… with the goal of bringing a championship back to Long Island.”
The man knows the weight of the postseason. In 2012 and 2013, during the Ducks’ back-to-back title runs, he was the kind of October arm that made managers breathe easier.
But every ball club needs a fresh voice now and then — a new rhythm to stir the old ones — and this year that belongs to Tim Battle Jr., the incoming bench coach. His path reads like something out of a baseball novel: drafted by the Yankees as a teenager, derailed by a diagnosis of B-cell lymphoma, stitched back together by six months of chemotherapy and a reservoir of sheer will, then fourteen years of professional baseball across small towns, bus rides, high-stakes innings, and the stubborn refusal to quit.
“I’m excited to join the Long Island Ducks,” Battle says, “and be part of an organization that represents the best of both baseball and community.” It’s the kind of line a cynic might brush aside — unless the man saying it has fought for both breath and baseball and won.
In State College, he managed a club that punched above its weight, reaching the 2025 MLB Draft League Championship. His teams played like their manager: with energy, grit, and the understanding that tomorrow is promised to no one, least of all in this game.
And so, the Ducks chart their next season with three men who, in different ways, have spent their lives proving something. Ford, proving that consistency can be its own quiet magic. Blevins, proving that pitching is not merely an art or a science, but the marriage of the two. Battle, proving that the line between adversity and triumph can be crossed if you refuse to lay down the bat.
The ballpark in Central Islip will look the same when April arrives — the archways, the green, the families carrying pretzels bigger than they are. But something new will hang in the dugout air: a blend of old reliability and fresh ambition.
Baseball, Red Smith once wrote, “is designed to break your heart.” But sometimes, if you’re lucky, it also gives you reason to believe again.
This winter, the Ducks believe. And in a game built on inches, hope, and the next man up, that’s as good a place to start as any.
Fairfield Properties Ballpark, the home of the Long Island Ducks, is located at 3 Court House Drive in Central Islip. The box office is currently closed for individual ticket sales but will reopen ahead of the 2026 season. Stay tuned for updates by visiting liducks.com. and the Ducks’ social media accounts.
