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A former Major League Baseball pitcher who left the mound to become a Port Authority cop was killed in a wrong-way crash Sunday — while headed to work at Manhattan’s 9/11 service, cops and sources said.
Tragic Officer Anthony Varvaro, 37 — a Staten Island native who pitched mainly for the Atlanta Braves during his six-year MLB career — joined the Port Authority Police Department in 2016, starting out at the World Trade Center Command, according to American Police Beat magazine.
The married father of four eventually became an instructor at the department’s police academy, the mag said in February — and a Port Authority source told The Post on Sunday that Varvaro was headed to work at the commemoration of the 21st anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks at the World Trade Center when he was killed.
“He was a real sweetheart,” said a Staten Island baseball coach whose team had played against kids coached by Varvaro.
“He didn’t have an attitude. You would never know that he pitched in the Major Leagues,” the coach said of the cop.
The source said the cop helped children learn the game in his off time.
“He loved coaching and teaching the kids,” the man said.
Authorities said Varvaro was killed in a head-on crash near Exit 14-C in a Jersey City stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike.
The vehicle operator who struck him was driving the wrong way at the time, authorities told the Daily Voice of New Jersey.
In addition to pitching for the Braves, Varvaro hurled fast balls for the Seattle Mariners and Boston Red Sox, too — all between 2010 and 2015 before moving on to join the police force.
“We are deeply saddened on the passing of former Braves pitcher Anthony Varvaro,” the Braves said in a Twitter post Sunday. “Anthony, 37, played parts of six seasons in the majors, including four with Atlanta.
“He voluntarily retired from MLB in 2016 to become a Port Authority police officer.”
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