Just like her son, Louis Iannotti ’16, who was in the dugout when the baseball sailed over the left-field wall.

Iannotti, an alumnus of the Quinnipiac baseball team who earned a bachelor's degree in finance, who’s in his first year as an assistant hitting coach with Toronto after serving in the same role for the Los Angeles Dodgers, is headed back to Major League Baseball’s grandest stage to face his former team thanks to the late-game heroics of George Springer, the UConn alumnus and former World Series MVP whose three-run homer clinched the pennant. 



“We’ve been on this ride with [Louis] since spring training,” said Lisa, an administrative assistant in the Quinnipiac athletics department. “We’re friends with the parents of the players. It’s a family. It’s just like it was when we were rooting for Quinnipiac — the players feel like my sons. I don’t see the Blue Jays as professional athletes but as sons and brothers and fathers. And they’ve got a whole country behind them.”  

Iannotti will be vying for his third ring in six seasons when the Blue Jays host the reigning champions in the series opener tonight (8 p.m. on Fox).

And if it all sounds too good to be true, well, the Iannottis agree.

Lisa and her husband, Lou Iannotti ‘82, a member of the Quinnipiac Athletics Hall of Fame who also starred on the baseball team, were still buzzing about Springer’s blast — and the seismic celebration that followed — as they drove back to Toronto on Thursday afternoon.



It was especially sweet to watch Springer come through in the clutch, the Iannottis agreed, because he had bonded with Louis over playing college baseball in his home state. 

When Springer, the 36-year-old slugger from New Britain, Connecticut, connected on a 1-0 pitch from Seattle Mariners right-hander Eduard Bazardo in the bottom of the seventh inning on Monday, the Rogers Centre was quite literally rocking from the crowd’s reaction.

“It was like an out-of-body experience,” Lisa said. “It was so great that it was George and obviously it's a home run in a big spot — the place just erupted because you didn't have a lot to cheer for up to that point,” Lou added. “So it was all kind of stored up in you. The home run lands in the stands and the place just goes nuts. We were hugging, everybody all around us was hugging. It was just incredible.”

As a former catcher on the Bobcats baseball team, Louis Iannotti always took a studious approach to the game that mirrored his father’s. But conversations about the craft of hitting often leave his dad scratching his head, Lou conceded with a laugh.

“He always had a great baseball acumen. But compared to his knowledge base now, the stuff I taught him was vanilla,” Lou said. “He’s mixing vanilla with chocolate, with strawberry, with pistachio. It's so high tech and so above my thought process that I barely could have a conversation with him and understand what he said.”

The Dodgers recognized that baseball IQ when they hired Louis in 2018 — first as a minor league coach, then as a traveling hitting instructor. He remains especially close with the Dodgers’ strength and conditioning coach, Eric Yavarone, who was his best friend growing up in North Haven.  

As lifelong Yankees fans, the Iannottis are used to shifting their allegiances in support of their son. When Louis’ Dodgers dispatched the Yankees in five games to capture last year’s Fall Classic, it was easy to set aside those loyalties and revel in their son’s achievement.

“Last year everyone was calling us and asking us who we were rooting for,” Lisa said. “We just told them we were rooting for family. It’s kind of weird to be rooting for a team other than the team you’ve rooted for all your life. But it was all about family. We live by faith and by family.”