This is the team photo of the Nashua HIgh School 1991 state baseball championship team, coached by Charlie Mellen, far right. Mellen passed away last week in his home in Florida. (Courtesy photo)

NASHUA – Charlie Mellen had some good advice for a young, up and coming JV coach at Nashua High School.

“He would tell me to make the umpires like you,” B.J. Neverett said, “because there’s going to be a 3-2 pitch in the seventh inning that you need, and you’ll probably get it. The umpires are human, too.

“He was a true gentleman on the field, the umpires loved him.”

Mellen, whose head baseball coaching career spanned the better part of three decades with the Panthers, passed away last week in his winter home in Bradenton, Fla. He guided Nashua to state titles in 1976, 1979, 1991, 1993 and ’94 and was inducted later in ’94 into the Nashua Hall of Fame as he had retired as baseball coach – handing the reins to Neverett, who coached for 17 seasons.

Neverett has a unique perspective on Mellen, because he not only coached under him, he also played for him at Nashua.

“Playing for him, he never got mad,” Neverett said. “He let us be players, he let us play the game. He was a very good high school coach, and he had some great teams.”

Especially in the 1990s, when the Panthers, with a host of players who ended up playing in the minor leagues, made it to five straight Class L title games from 1990-94 and won in ’91, ’93, and ’94.

The final win in ’94 over a powerful Concord team was fairly improbable as Nashua entered the tourney with a .500 record. It was after that win that Mellen told Neverett he had resigned and that he heavily recommended him for the job as his successor.

“He had a big impact on things I did after I took over there,” Neverett said. “He had a lot of impact on me, on guys I played with and those after I played. He had a big impact on baseball..”

“He would say to me ‘I don’t care how you did,'” Neverett said, ‘because you win when we win. He was so correct. All he wanted me to understand was that as the JV team, you’re developing them for us.'”

Mellen, who would have turned 90 this July, was also extremely loyal to his players. Neverett recalled that his JV team one year that had six future Division I players. “It had nothing to do with me, they were really talented,” Neverett said. “But (Mellen) wouldn’t take them because he had a senior group on the varsity. He was very loyal. … ‘They’ve been with me for three years, I’m going to roll wth them.’

“I remember how loyal he was to his players, especially the seniors. If they put the work in – he wanted them to play in the summer – and if they did that, he was extremely loyal to them.”

One of those talented players was catcher Greg Coy.

“I loved Charlie,” Coy, a ’92 Nashua grad, said. “For me, it was good, we played on some great teams. He had some great players, great assistant coaches – you can’t say enough about Buddy Hughes. But (Mellen) was great to play for. Super kind. Very knowledgeable. And ‘Gotta get the job done guys. Gotta get the job done.’

Mellen was all business, hated distractions. He liked to the team to practice and play at the lower field at Nashua, which miffed some of his players, including Coy.

“When we were seniors, finally, we asked Charlie, ‘Hey why do we have to come all the way down here?’ And he said, ‘Because I don’t want to talk to anybody else (except the players). So we would truck all the way down there so we could be all by ourselves.”

Coy said one of the bigges things he learned from Mellen was exactly what Neverett did – keep your cool.

“He would say ‘Coy, you have to keep your head,'” Coy said. “Because I could lose my head very quickly. He allowed me to calm down and keep my head. That was the best thing about Charlie.”

Coy last saw Mellen about 10 years ago when the former coach was watching a Junior Legion game in Salem, and Coy was coaching. “He said, ‘Coy, is that you?’ After the game we sat and talked for an hour.”

Charlie Mellen coached Nashua High School baseball for the better parts of three decades, and was a math teacher as well. (Courtesy photo)

Ed Lecius broadcast the Nashua games on local radio.

“He was a purist,” Lecius said. “He knew baseball inside and out. A very unassuming kind of guy. Great classroom teacher (math) and a great coach. He touched a lot of lives when he was here in Nashua, and made his mark. People still remember him today.”

Lecius enjoyed watching Mellen the strategist.

“He did what you’re supposed to do in certain situations – suicide squeeze, sacrifice, and he knew how to handle his pitchers, too,” Lecius said. “Great guy. He was part of that era. (Ken) Parady (football), (John) Fagula (girls basketball), (George) Noucas (boys basketball) and him. All those guys.”

“He was a very quiet coach,” Neverett said. “He just put us out there, and told us to go play. Again, after an inning was over, he didn’t say much, he’d usually just clap a couple of times and say ‘C’mon, let’s go, let’s go!’ And that was about all he’d say during a game.”

Mellen was assisted by another coach who lived and breathed Nashua baseball, the late Buddy Hughes. Mellen had the plan, and Hughes would often relay it.

“They were great partners,” Neverett said. “They were great together. You learned a lot from (Hughes). That’s what coach Mellen did – he’d put (Hughes) on the bench while he was out (coaching) third base. If you didn’t listen to him, you were crazy, because you’d always learn something.”

Neverett remembers losing in the state finals his junior year in 1977, thanks in part to an error that allowed Trinity’s Mike LaValliere — who went on to a Major League career — an extra pitch and he cleared the bases for the winning runs.

“I know that really devastated (Mellen),” Neverett said. “We used to talk about that on bus rides. He said, ‘Don’t worry, in your career, you’ll see that happen – a play that should be made won’t be. That’s high school baseball.”

That was Charlie Mellen, a coach who his players will tell you kept it all in perspective.