Greg Conley was an all-around athlete who stood out at Deering High School on the football and basketball teams, but his true passion was on the baseball diamond. After playing Little League ball from 1975-78, Greg spent three years playing in the Portland Babe Ruth League. He played on the 13 year old state championship team in 1979, and ended his Babe Ruth career with a bang in 1981 when Coach Ron Lemieux’s Portland All Star team won the state tournament and the New England Regional tournament before placing fourth at the National tournament in Mobile, Alabama.
Conley caught for Maine state championship teams in 1982 (Caldwell Post; state legion champs), 1983 (Class A Deering High School), and 1984 (Caldwell Post’s second legion title in three years). All three teams were coached by Ed Flaherty, a MBBHOF inductee himself in 1993. Greg was the varsity catcher for three seasons for Coach Flaherty’s Deering Rams, and after his graduation in 1984 the three sport captain (baseball, football, basketball) headed to south to Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida to play college baseball for coach Boyd Coffie. Conley was starting catcher for all four of his seasons at Rollins, and made the All-Sunshine Conference team in both his junior and senior years there. In his final year he was named to the Division II All-American team; two of the others similarly honored that year were future major leaguers Tino Martinez and Jeff Branson. Twenty years after graduating from Rollins Conley is still on the Tars’s top ten list for career games played, at-bats, total bases, hits, triples, and extra base hits. He was deservedly admitted to the Rollins College Sports Hall of Fame in 1998, his first year of eligibility.
After graduating from Rollins in 1988 Conley was selected by the San Diego Padres in the 26th round of that June’s Major League Baseball amateur draft. He was the regular catcher for the Northwest League champion Spokane Indians that summer. The following year he earned a promotion to the Padres full season class A team in Charleston, South Carolina, where he again played for a team that qualified for the league playoffs. Conley was invited to big league spring training in 1990 and shared the locker room with Tony Gwynn, Fred Lynn and other big leaguers. Conley played two more years in the San Diego organization, advancing to the Las Vegas Stars, the Padres top minor league affiliate at the time, prior to finishing his professional career with the Cleveland Indians organization.
Greg lives with his wife Nancy, son Bryce (14) and daughters Rachael (12) and Melanie (9) in Alpharetta, GA. Greg’s proud parents, David and Joanne Conley, currently live in Casco.
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