Mike Billoni is pictured presenting a late birthday present to Russ Dietbrick during a recent Rotary Club of Jamestown meeting.

Michael Billoni, president and chief operating officer of Billoni Associates, spoke recently to members of the Rotary Club of Jamestown.

In the mid-1990s, Mike also helped in the effort to relocate the Single A Niagara Falls professional baseball team to Jamestown after it was announced that the Jamestown Expos were leaving for Vermont. That effort resulted in a new professional team, the Jamestown Jammers, playing in the city for the next two decades. The effort also led to Billoni meeting and developing lasting friendships with many local individuals, including Russ Diethrick. Billoni came to Jamestown last fall to celebrate Diethrick’s 90th birthday but was unable to present him with a gift due to a production delay. However, during a recent meeting of the Rotary Club of Jamestown, Billoni was finally able to present the belated birthday gift – a customized baseball bat with Diethrick’s name inscribed on it. As part of presenting the gift, he thanked Diethrick for his years of community service and dedication to keeping baseball alive in Jamestown, including making it a regular location for the annual Babe Ruth World Series.

Billoni is a longtime as a long-time Rotary Club member, a Recovery Options Made Easy and Boss BeCause Foundation board member, as well as a volunteer at several organizations and churches, including his primary philanthropic entity, St. Luke’s Mission of Mercy on Buffalo’s far East Side.

Billoni is a graduate of the State University at Morrisville with a degree in journalism and spent 12 years toiling in the newspaper business as an award-winning sports reporter and editor for the Tonawanda News, Buffalo Courier-Express and the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle. He practices his storytelling craft as a free-lance writer for several publications and as an author and book publisher. Most recently, Billoni was associate editor, writer and publisher of “The Seasons of Buffalo Baseball 1857-2020.” In 2000, he wrote and published “Robert E. Rich: Memoirs of an Innovator”, the biography of the Rich Products Corp. and in 2017, he managed and published “All In,” the biography of local businessman Ronald Zoeller, who helped keep the Buffalo Bills in Buffalo in the late 1990s.

Billoni lives on Grand Island and is a devout Christian. His wife passed away Aug. 22, 2024, and upon her death, he began the “Deb Billoni Food Fund” to support St. Luke’s Mission of Mercy’s free daily meals to those in need.

Billoni may be best known in Western New York for his connection to the sport of baseball. In 1983, he began a 13-year career with the Buffalo Bisons, working with the Rich family in developing and constructing a downtown ballpark and helping promote the team to the elevated status of the only franchise in minor league baseball history to sell more than one million tickets in six straight seasons. Upon retirement from the Bisons in 1996, Billoni was inducted into the Buffalo Baseball Hall of Fame. He also is a member of the Cardinal O’Hara High School Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame.