Plummer is Colby baseball coach Former UM righty pitched in minors

Former University of Maine pitching standout Dale Plummer has been named the head baseball coach at Colby College in Waterville.

Plummer, a native of Bath, held the position on an interim basis last season while coach Tom Dexter was on sabbatical.

Dexter, who is the offensive coordinator for the White Mules football team, will stay on the baseball staff as an assistant coach.

Last spring, Plummer guided Colby to a 7-22 overall record, including a 2-10 mark in the New England Small College Athletic Conference.

“He is a proven coach and has a vast amount of baseball experience in the college and professional ranks,” Colby athletic director Marcella Zalot said when announcing Plummer’s interim appointment.

Plummer, 42, had served as the program’s pitching coach in 2006, helping Colby’s staff lower its earned run average by nearly three runs per game over the previous year.

He was a high school baseball standout at Morse High School, where he also was named to the BDN All-Maine Schoolboy Basketball Third Team in 1983.

Plummer went on to have a productive career as a pitcher at UMaine, where he compiled a 17-9 record from 1985-88, including a 7-5 mark as a senior in ’88. He was on the team that reached the College World Series in 1986, but did not make the trip to Omaha.

Plummer was a 23rd-round pick of the New York Mets in 1998. He spent several seasons in the minor leagues with the Mets and Boston Red Sox organizations, compiling a 38-19 record with 29 saves.

After a bout with testicular cancer cost him half of his 1992 season, Plummer returned in 1993 to post a 7-3 record for the Class AAA Tidewater Tides. His efforts earned him the Mets’ Class AAA Most Inspirational Player Award and he also was honored with the Webster Award for being an outstanding minor league representative of the Mets both on and off the field.

Plummer also has run the Professional Baseball Experience, which runs baseball camps in Maine. He has trained several pitchers, including Mark Rogers of Orrs Island, a fifth-round pick of the Milwaukee Brewers in 2004.

Before joining the Colby staff in 2006, Plummer was the head coach at Gardiner High School from 1996-2000 and then served as an assistant at Bowdoin College in Brunswick from 2001-2005.