Ryan T. Caulfield Foundation/Butch Caulfield Hitting Academy

Wood Bat Team Debut

By Jack Graves

(6/12/08)    When Diane Leaver, Rusty Leaver’s wife, was asked at Southampton High School’s varsity baseball field last week how her husband had come to have the idea for a collegiate wood bat league on the East End, modeled after the one that’s been on Cape Cod for more than a century, she laughed and said, “It was purely selfish — we wanted to figure out how to have our son [Gardner] stay home this summer.”

Jack Graves Butch Caulfield, the G.M., at right, handpicked the Hampton Whalers.

    Asked where on the varsity field — it was the first day of practice for the Hampton Whalers, the team that had materialized from the Leavers’ brainstorming — their son was, Diane Leaver said, “I think he’s the one out in left field. . . .” Then, excusing herself, because “I don’t have my glasses,” she pointed in the other direction. “No, that’s him, the one who just threw the ball, with that smooth motion.”

    Wrong again. The third time was the charm. “No, that’s him!” she said with finality as her 6-foot-2-inch, 180-pound son, wearing shorts, shirt, and a light blue cap, sprinted by, about six feet in front of her.

    The younger Leaver, a University of Rhode Island freshman who, according to his father, had recently pitched several successful innings of relief against the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, “the 18th-ranked Division I team in the nation,” is, like his new teammates, happy to be here for the summer. They’re embarking on a 40-game schedule in the eight-team Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League that was to have begun with two doubleheaders in eastern Pennsylvania last weekend and is to end with a four-game homestand divided between Southampton High’s recently revamped field and the one at Sag Harbor’s Mashashimuet Park in the last weekend of July.

    Butch Caulfield, the team’s general manager and an assistant coach at the New York Institute of Technology, who commanded the players’ full attention that afternoon, “handpicked this team, from Division I, II, and the N.A.I.A. — all based on ability,” he said. Seven of the 24 — one more slot had yet to be filled as of that day, June 3 — hail from Long Island, though the geographical distribution is broad, with Louisiana, Texas, Michigan, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Ohio among the dozen states represented.

    “Off the top of my head,” said Pat Shortt, who scouts college players on Long Island and in New England for a service that supplies reports to all the Major League teams, and who was asked by Caulfield to speak that day, “I’d say that 25 to 30 percent of the guys playing at this level wind up in pro baseball. Far fewer, of course, will wind up in the Major Leagues — you’re talking 30 teams with 25-man rosters — but this is where it begins.”

    Emil Norsic, described by Leaver as “an early godfather of this team,” inasmuch as he had been a major donor, said that when he first read of Leaver’s idea, he was reminded of “the fast-pitch softball played here in the ’60s,” and was beguiled. “Those games drew not just the locals, but summer people too,” he said. “People would bring picnics. Joe Romo played, Billy DePetris, the Fellinghams. . . . I called Rusty — I had known him since the time he put on those concerts out in Montauk. And he gave me a CD of the Cape Cod league, which I’d never heard of. It sounded like a great idea. You can stay for one inning or for an entire doubleheader, and it’s free.”

    Norsic, who had come to the first day of practice in a bright green 1932 Ford BB dump truck that was running a little ragged on unleaded gas, said, “I love the Yankees and the Mets, but to go to their games takes a lot of money and time. Here, you get to see kids who might one day be the next Henry Aaron or Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle.”

    Norsic has also donated a house in which some of the coaches and players will stay. Tom Gleason of Sag Harbor, a former basketball coach at the Kings Point Merchant Marine Academy, has assembled a group of other hosts who live between Montauk and Hampton Bays, including the Leavers, the Mirrases (Mike Mirras is the team’s business manager), Liz Granitz, Sandi Kruel, Ed Burke Jr., Prudence Carabine, and the Fellinghams. The players are to be matched up with part-time jobs, as well. “That’s something we’ll talk about tomorrow,” Rusty Leaver said.

    Another major benefactor has been Rawlings, through the good offices of Jon Mauchan of West Islip, who was also among the attendees that afternoon. While he demurred when asked for the dollar amount of the company’s contribution, Mauchan, the head pitching coach at Long Island University’s C.W. Post campus through last year, said, “It was sizable — all the equipment, the balls, the bats, the helmets, the uniforms, home and away. . . . The greatest thing about this is that they’ll get to be seen. As Pat [Shortt] told them earlier today, you never know who’s watching. There’s nothing on the scouts that says, ‘Major League Baseball.’ ”

    Julio Vega, a native of Shoreham-Wading River who played in the San Francisco Giants’ farm system and now coaches at St. John’s University, is the Whalers’ head coach. Pat Shortt’s son, Joe, is the pitching coach, and Eddie Bahns, the varsity coach at East Hampton High School, is also an assistant.

“It’s Rusty’s fault,” Bahns said when asked how he had come to be with the team. “Gardner looks good,” the younger Leaver’s former coach said, as Leaver pitched to his teammates. “He seems to have pretty good location. It’s a nice pitching staff. They’re all around the plate with some nice breaking stuff. . . . It’s nice to be around guys who are into it. They’re listening, they’re soaking up everything. It’s a good group of kids. It should be a fun summer. This is a nice field and Sag Harbor’s a nice setting. You know, this will grow.”

Indeed, it is the elder Leaver’s hope to have a Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League going next year, with teams from Sag Harbor (the Whalers), Westhampton Beach, Southampton, East Hampton, Riverhead, and Southold.
“We’re the newest entry in this league,” he said, “but, to our minds, we are going to be competitive right off the bat. The worst thing we’ll do is offer exciting baseball. We’ll be showing off some big-time talent in a small-time setting.”
“And when we pass the hat,” he added, “please give generously.”