MOUNTAINTOP LITTLE LEAGUE

Opening Day

By Michael Ryan

WINDHAM - It’s a different world we live in, many people will tell you, which was the unchanging charm of Opening Day at the Mountaintop Little League, on a recent Saturday morning.

The ceremonial first pitch was tossed by Greene County sheriff Pete Kusminsky, right down the middle if Stumbo the Giant was batting.

Otherwise, it was way too high for Yankees catcher Beau Landi to snag, even bouncing on a trampoline, although that was swiftly forgotten.

“Let’s play ball,” the kids shouted, setting in motion another season for the league which dates back to the late 1950’s.

Several folks were on hand who could pleasantly reminisce about when they suited up on the exact same field or a similar, pint-sized ballpark.

“When I first came to Windham, it was a Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn world,” said former Knights of the Road president Bruce McNab.

McNab didn’t play ball at the South Street diamond where a hundred or more kids have signed up this year for little league and t-ball.

He grew up in Brooklyn before settling here fulltime, working for the state police and, when he was off duty, serving with the Knights of the Road, longtime sponsors of the little league.

“This place is like home to me,” McNab said, gazing at the outfield grass, soft and green as it always is, and Old Glory waving gently in an easy spring breeze out beyond the centerfield fence.

Nothing different there, and there was much familiar too for Pete Varelas, a onetime little league all-star, on duty with the Windham police department for Opening Day.

Varelas got a faraway look in his eye, remembering the night he poked one over the left field fence at the same H.B. Moore Field, smacking the wall of the house that is still there.

His coach was Jere Baker, the reliable machinery-fixer guy In the hamlet of Maplecrest who these days measures his age in centuries, not decades, if that tells you anything.

Well, maybe Jere’s not quite that ancient but Varelas also recalls ripping a grand slam at Hunter-Tannersville school when he was playing for the Windham-Ashland-Jewett school nine.

“I hit it off Jerry Burns. Whenever I see Jerry, I remind him,” Varelas says, smiling, noting he still has the ball which rolled down to Main Street in Tannersville and was retrieved for posterity.

Tyrel Sherman is the Knights of the Road president and the fire chief for the Hensonville Fire Company these days. Back in his little league prime, he cranked 14 homeruns one season, clearing the fence by a country mile.

“There were a bunch of us who used to do it,” Sherman said, mentioning Matt Blanden, Justin Lonecke and Jean Aplin.

“Not true,” said Aplin, perhaps one of the first females to suit up for the Mountaintop Little League, before that became not different at all.

Aplin, the league vice-president and a coach on one of the four little league teams, goes by the married name Jaeger these days, saying, “I hit a few out in practice but never in a game.”

Billy Scarey never did either. He was on duty with Varelas for Opening Day, dressed in Windham police officer blue rather than the black and gold he wore when suited up with the little league Pirates.

Scarey was a singles hitter and, according to him, played the “best position on the field,” which in his mind was behind the plate.

Most kids hate it back there, given the control, or lack thereof, a 10-year old kid has over their pitches, but Scarey marches to his own baseball drum.

“I loved being the catcher because I couldn’t catch anything in the outfield,” Scarey says, passing what are affectionately called the tools of ignorance on to his son, William Jr., who, unlike his dad, could and did go yard.

Sheriff Kusminsky, meanwhile, was a down-mountainer, playing in the Palenville little league, later coaching in the Cairo little league.

Kusminsky says he was a second-sacker with no shot at the Big Leagues but adds, “I’ll do anything to support kids,” explaining why it was easy breezy, traveling to Opening Day where the joy of it never changes.