The Wareham Gatemen retired the team's #2 jersey on Sunday, June 9, in recognition of a beloved pitching coach who died much too soon.

Coach Joe Walsh, who was most recently head coach for Harvard University, passed away suddenly at his New Hampshire home in July of last year, due to an apparent heart attack. He was 58.

Walsh had a long history with the Cape Cod Baseball League beginning in 1988, when he was head coach of the Brewster Whitecaps. He then worked with the Yarmouth-Dennis Red Sox before joining the Gatemen as a pitching coach in 1991. Walsh helped the Gatemen win championships in 1994 and 1997, and stayed with the team until 1998.

After his time coaching in the Cape League, Walsh for years continued to direct the annual Frank Finn Invitational Tryout at Spillane Field.

"Tonight we'll be honoring a true legend," said Pete Sheppard of Sports Radio Boston 1510, who emceed the ceremonies that preceded a scrimmage of the Gatemen and Newport Gulls.

Walsh won five Ivy League championships with the Crimson, where he was head coach for 17 years.

"This is a very poignant moment because all of you remember Joe with love, as would John," said Patty Wylde, wife of longtime Gatemen president and game announcer John Wylde, who passed away in 2009 after a battle with cancer.

Walsh's widow, Sandra, and three of his four daughters were on hand.

In thanking the Gatemen for recognizing her late husband, Sandra Walsh said: "The happiest times in our family were down here with the Wareham Gatemen."

The ceremony was also attended by Selectmen Peter Teitelbaum and Alan Slavin, as well as State Representative Susan Williams Gifford (R-Wareham) and Congressman Bill Keating (D-Mass., 9th district).

"I love baseball, but I wasn't very good at it, probably because I didn't have Joe as a coach," said Keating, who presented the family with a Certificate of Recognition from Congress. "He coached people, he produced excellence, but he really shaped lives."

Cape League officials shared stories about Walsh, as did former Harvard coaches Tom Lorrico and Chip Forest, and from Jim Nelson, athletic director at Suffolk University, where Walsh went to school and coached.

"One of the moments that I appreciate the most," Cape League Commissioner Paul Galop said, was when John Wylde, too ill to attend his own induction to the Cape League Hall of Fame, sent Walsh and Gatemen volunteer Dottie Tamagini.

Ethan Ferreira, who is playing this summer for the Newport Gulls — the Gatemen's opponents for the scrimmage — was one of Walsh's last recruits at Harvard.

"It was in [Walsh's] office that I learned to value family above all else," Ferreira said, noting that Walsh frequently told stories of his years in baseball.

Walsh told Ferreira: "Always tell stories, and be worthy of the ones told of you."

There was certainly no question on Sunday that Walsh was worthy of all of the stories told of him.