Macaluso Family bonded by literal lifetime of baseball

From fall to spring at King High, to summers on the Little League, AAU or Legion Fields, to family vacations to MLB parks or Cooperstown – baseball was forever a constant for the Macaluso Family. And the LOVED every minute of it. 

By Jarrett Guthrie, Editor

TEMPLE TERRACE – Childhood weekend nights spent beside a father’s knee watching the Major League Baseball Saturday Game of the Week on broadcast television could never of predicted the lifetime of dedication to which it would lead. To the long nights at the ballpark, the hours driving to and from practices, home and away games, fundraising, team meals – 50 seasons of running the ins and outs of a high school baseball program – giving everything of yourself.

A lifetime of giving freely of your time, your sweat, your family’s blood to a school and its generations of student-athletes.

But this isn’t the story of Jim Macaluso.

It’s Karen Macaluso’s story.

Karen Macaluso has spent 50 seasons behind the scenes dedicated to the King Lions Baseball program. Her tireless efforts to support the program, while raising a family and providing a welcoming environment for all visitors has been invaluable to the Hillsborough County baseball community.

And really, the story of Karen and Jim’s children Anthony and Gina, who were born into King High baseball, grew up at the ballpark that now bears their father’s name and will celebrate his final regular season week as the Lions head coach, beginning with the first of two home games tonight against Tampa Bay Tech (at 7 pm).
Born Karen Cobb in Brandon, she and Jim Macaluso met as friends of friends while attending Manatee Junior College.

Karen, while working for a local law firm after college, was invited to a couples beach event, but after a recent breakup found herself in need of an escort, and though Jim popped into her mind as an option, “I was raised in the south, and you do not call boys.”

Fortunately, fate stepped in and a perfectly timed call arrived from Jim on Karen’s home phone, and the two attended the party.

One of their first dates?

“We’d probably been dating a month, and he invited me to come to a game he was coaching at East Point Little League. He was the assistant coach of the 10-, 11-, 12-year-olds, and I went. I knew at least the rules of the game because my Dad was a big baseball fan,” she said.

“He was coaching third, and Bill DaCosta was the umpire. There was a bang-bang play,” she continued, holding back a laugh, “and that was the first experience I had with Jim’s temper with an umpire. He got thrown out and I remember thinking, ‘well, this guy is crazy.’”

Karen Macaluso, her daughter Gina Curry, and granddaughter Reese.

After a few years of moving around from school to school as an assistant at Florida College, Brandon and Hillsborough High Schools, Jim was offered and accepted a teaching and coaching position at King High, and the rest was legacy.

Anthony was born in 1978, a few years into Macaluso’s tenure as head coach, grew up first at Temple Terrace Little League, where King played its home games from the program’s first season in 1962 through 1984 when the on-campus field was built. Anthony played Little League, AAU, then for his father at King. He followed in his father’s footsteps, not just serving by his side as a King assistant coach for the last 23 seasons, but also as a teacher, working at Temple Terrace Elementary School.

“It’s all I’ve known, he’s been with me every step of the way,” Anthony said. “As far back as I can remember when I wasn’t at a Little League practice or some other sport I was playing, when I got home from school I was jumping in the car and making my mom take me to King. I wanted to be there every day. And that hasn’t changed.”

While Gina also has cherished memories of being a youngster, always at the ballpark. Always. A sacrifice, sure. But one she wouldn’t trade for anything.

“I wouldn’t change a thing,” she said. “It was, and is still an amazing upbringing. I was born in January of 1984, right when baseball season was kicking off and spent my life growing up there watching him.”

Gina Curry (right) sits next to her mother Karen and father Jim Macaluso, while older brother Anthony delivers a speech during King’s baseball field dedication in Coach Mac’s honor in 2022 (813Preps file photo).

Though she never played baseball for him, Gina said she learned many of the life lessons her father has instilled in hundreds of players over the years just the same, things she used in her time at King High, where she was captain of the school’s dance and auxiliary team the Lionettes; and things she uses now as the founder and CEO of NextPath Career Partners. Her leadership strategies are straight from the Macaluso playbook.

“I’m CEO of my company and my Dad has always been my role model as a leader. So many things I learned about leadership growing up were through him, even though I never played for him. Seeing the dedication, the commitment to the players, to the program, is something that has always stuck with me,” she said.

But that doesn’t mean they were his only commitments, and the only lessons she learned from her father.

“He had commitments to those young men and he stuck to them 365 days a year,” Gina said. “But family always came first.”

A sentiment shared by Karen and Anthony as well, baseball was what their lives ran around, but baseball was also what strengthened their familial bond.

“All our memories revolve around baseball,” Karen said. “People would ask me, ‘how do you go to all those games?’ and I’d tell them I wanted to, at first because coaching made Jim so happy, but then it became what made our family happy. Baseball kept our family together.”

With Karen Macaluso on the left and Anthony on the right, Coach Mac’s granddaughter Reese whispers to her mom, Gina, in the middle. 

“It’s been part of our family, it’s all I can remember,” said Anthony. “We planned vacations around it, back in the day we hosted the Saladino Tournament for the whole week – that was our spring break – and we loved it … I loved every second of it and I wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.”

Daughter-in-law Sharlene and granddaughter Presley Macaluso watch as Coach Mac delivers his speech during the field dedication in his honor in 2022 (813Preps file photo).

Both Macaluso children, are now raising their families at the ballpark – Anthony and his wife Sharlene are mainstays at games with daughter Presley, 7, and Gina and her husband Bobby Curry, have a baseball loving son Davis, 10, already regularly decked out in bat-boy Lions gear as well as daughter Reese, 8, there to give postgame hugs to her Nano.

“I think he’s content,” Gina said of her father as he approaches the end of his coaching career. “I don’t think Dad would make a decision if he wasn’t. I think he’s still going to be very involved in baseball in some way, whether that is through wherever Anthony is coaching, or for as long as my son is playing baseball.

“I joke with him, that as soon as you wrap up with everything in early May, that’s when (Little League) all-stars are picked and Davis has been on the last two years, and I’m sure those coaches wouldn’t mind you helping out a little bit.”

And for a son watching his father make a tough life decision, Anthony has had one more learning opportunity to glean from Jim – saying goodbye on your own terms. But the younger Coach Mac is confident his father is at ease with his choice to retire.

“I know he’s at peace, physically and mentally, he’s 100% good with the decision to walk away after this year,” Anthony said. “But there will be things that will hit him. Not so much the practices and the field prep, and I don’t even think he’ll miss the games. He’ll miss the camaraderie with all the other coaches. The pregame meeting, walking across the field, the ‘hey, how you doin?’ the ‘how’s the season going?’ with these guys he’s known and competed against for so long.”

Presley spends time with her grandfather after a game at Durant earlier this season.

It was undoubtedly a tough decision for Jim Macaluso to make, deciding that 50 seasons was enough. But baseball is what has made this family work. And it’s not going anywhere, and Karen, Anthony and Gina all feel pretty confident head coach or not, Jim Macaluso isn’t done with the game just yet.

Jim Macaluso, along with Karen, Anthony, Presley and Sarlene Macaluso prior to this year’s Saladino Tournament championship at the University of Tampa, where Coach Mac was presented with the Artie Vazquez Award by the West Coast Umpires Association.