The Inside Press

Magazines serving the communities of Northern Westchester

Softball

What Keeping a Gratitude Journal Taught Me

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The Dirty Mac Team
Front row (L-R): Barry Kratz, Mark Ametrano, Jon Nissman
Back row (L-R): Charlie Levitz, Jackson Spilka, Eric Kratz, Josh Lurie, The Author Dan Levitz, Len Meshberg
PHOTO COURTESY OF DAN LEVITZ

The assignment sounded easy enough. For one month I would keep a “gratitude” journal where I’d make note of things in my life that I feel grateful about. I’m a relatively positive person and I assumed this would be a walk in the park and now that I mention it, something like a walk in the park is the exact type of thing I should show gratitude towards! This was going to be fun and, perhaps, even enlightening. And then I started the actual journal.

The day I began the journal I was ending a summer trip with a few friends in the great American southwest. We were all going our separate ways and at the airport I found myself sitting alone in the terminal people-watching and taking in the mall-like environment. With the concept of gratitude on my mind, especially after a few days with long-time buddies, I took out the journal to, presumably, write about my good fortune in having these relationships. However, before I could jot down a single thankful syllable I saw something that explicitly made me feel gratitude. My first entry went like this: At this moment I am extremely grateful to not be a mid-western gentleman struggling to eat a slice of airport pizza with a plastic knife and fork.  This journal entry was simple, accurate and pathetically insubstantial. However, my first thought immediately was that I wished my just departed friends had seen this because they’d find it funny too.

A few days later I was with my family in Chinatown about to order a feast in our favorite restaurant there. Charlie was headed back to college the next day and hitting this restaurant pre-departure had become a nice tradition. I knew going in that it would be an admittedly lightweight no-brainer for me to write about my gratitude towards the remarkable crab/pork soup dumplings we were imminently going to devour. Yet after perusing the menu and making our choices, like the proverbial light bulb, a moment I was grateful to experience occurred: After ordering what we sincerely believed, was a reasonable amount of food the waiter looked me in the eye, paused and simply said “too much food.” I told him that we knew what we were doing and to please carry on. This humorous moment immediately made me think of my father, a great gourmand, and how proud he would have been of his very hungry family. What a sweet moment!

Later that night, journal in hand, I was thinking about the evening and considering how it was just filled with things I am thankful for. Just the mere fact of the four of us being together was now a special thing. Not even to mention my daughter’s stunning inner and outer beauty, my gorgeous wife’s remarkable intelligence along with my son’s ongoing evolution as a scholar and compassionate human being. However, the journal entry I ended up with was: Charlie drove us to Chinatown this evening and he was incredibly proud of his well-executed, under pressure, Manhattan parallel park. I re-read this entry and admittedly it may sound slight in the context of an exploration of personal gratitude. However, I felt fulfilled, grateful even, noting that my boy has embraced the ability to find beauty, meaning and humor in the mundane acts of daily existence.

Upon reviewing my journal entries, I was initially disappointed in how flimsy they seemed. I never considered myself shallow but there sure seemed to be a lot of entries that involved food, humor and way too many about playing softball on the newly crowned New Castle “B” league Champions, The Dirty Mac! OK, perhaps that one is just a tad shallow. So, I reviewed every journal entry and quickly realized, with some relief, that upon closer examination all the entries, even softball, were connected to those things one would assume they’d be thankful for: Family, health, love, relationships, etc.

I whole-heartedly recommend keeping a gratitude journal even if it’s a finite endeavor. A daily pause to consider what we are grateful for can be insightful and somehow just feels appropriate in these trying times.

Q&A with John Re about Chappaqua’s Dusk to Dawn

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Mike Wolfensohn (center wearing Dawn’s Team shirt) with John Re (kneeling)
Mike Wolfensohn (center wearing Dawn’s Team shirt) with John Re (kneeling)

By Grace Bennett

1) Describe the Dusk to Dawn mission. I know you and Mike Wolfensohn work so hard on this fundraiser each year.

John: Dusk to Dawn is the primary fund raising event for Dawn’s Ray of Hope, Inc. www.DawnsRayOfHope.org Dawn’s Ray of Hope is the charitable organization created in honor of Dawn Re to carry on her efforts to raise money to aid in the fight against cancer. With significant money already going to cancer research, we wanted the money we raised to go where a smaller amount of money can make a larger impact. We donate to local charities that provide support and assistance to cancer patients, and to cancer patients themselves who need financial assistance to pay medical bills. Our donations to both Support Connection in Yorktown and Gilda’s House in White Plains have enabled them to offer much needed programs to help not just the patients, but their families who also are going through a tough time. By paying for part of some local residents’ medical bills, we have been able to make an immediate impact on those families as well as being able to alleviate some their financial burdens so they can focus on recovery and family.

The Dusk to Dawn event is an all-night co-ed softball tournament/marathon which combines Dawn’s two favorite fund raising activities–the ACS’s Relay for Life and the LLS’s Snowball Softball Tournament. Teams make a $750 donation to enter the tournament and are assigned a game slot to compete against “Dawn’s Team.” (Yes, Dawn’s Team plays each game…from dusk (about 5:30 p.m.) on Friday night, ‘til dawn (or whenever the last game ends–usually around 7or 8 a.m. on Saturday morning.) And since teams are of varying abilities (all skill levels are welcome!), we play with wood bats and a 16” Chicago style softball which helps to balance the game. We also have a barbecue going, with hamburgers and hotdogs, refreshments (non-alcoholic) and snacks available all night for just a nominal charge.

2) What are your goals each year?

John: Our primary goal is to raise as much money as possible by bringing in as many teams as we can to play. We have been lucky enough to have a full schedule with 10 teams participating in each of the last few years; but (by shifting the schedule and adjusting the game slots) we do have the ability to make room for more.

We also want to have fun. Dawn was all about fun and I can’t think of having an event in her memory and not have fun be an integral part of the formula.

Last (and certainly not least), we also hope to make this a community event, where people who are not on (or affiliated with) teams will come, watch, hang out, enjoy the barbeque, and (of course) make a donation. Quite honestly, we’re trying to figure out how to make that last part happen.

3) Any highlights from this year you want to share?

John: Truthfully, the night is full of memories and highlights. The game against the “Chappaqua Moms” is always a favorite because it is fun year-after-year, and everyone on both teams plays with the right attitude. This year’s Chappaqua Moms game was especially fun for me since Mike and I were honorary CMs and got to play on the team!

Playing alongside our kids and their/our friends never gets old, providing a lot of smiles and proud papa moments. One highlight this year was playing against a group from the HGHS Class of 2012. They played in our first tournament in September 2011 as Greeley Seniors, and returned this year as young adults to support us.

We also appreciated the HGHS Women’s Soccer Team coming to grab dinner after their game on Friday night. The young ladies on the soccer team have played in prior Dusk to Dawn tournaments, but were unable to do so this year as they had a game of their own.

But each game has great moments. Whether we’re playing against the team from CM, the Chappaqua Fire Department, Quaker Hill Tavern, the Support Connection in Yorktown, or the New Castle Adult Softball League (i.e., the Scramblers, Dirty Ol’ Dawgs, 8 Men Out, Raptors, Without a Prayer–to name a few)), there’s always something we remember and laugh about!

4) What’s your hope for the future?

John: We’d love to see Dusk to Dawn continue as a community event here in Town for many years to come, with more and more people becoming aware of us and our mission, and coming to support the players and the organization. We know that there are many worthy charities out there to which a lot of folks in our Town give a lot of their time. But by the same token, we think our event is easy to support. What better way is there to support a charity than playing softball and eating at a barbecue with your friends? And after that, who knows? Maybe our event can serve as a model that could be run simultaneously in different communities in Westchester.

The Measure of a SOFTBALL Man

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Dan and his son, Greeley senior, Charlie, sport their team colors.
Dan and his son, Greeley senior, Charlie, sport their team colors.

By Dan Levitz

It’s been about a year since I wrote on these pages, with some gravity, about an important component of life here in beautiful Chappaqua: Adult Men’s B League Softball. My previous missive detailed what had been a recent and glorious playoff victory for our long-suffering yet defiantly optimistic squad. I detailed a sweet path to the championship where all we needed were several, fully achievable, victories and that elusive title would have been ours, finally. Alas, best effort aside, our bats went dormant in the clutch and the long winter off-season began way too soon.

Hope most certainly does spring eternal but, as April arrived, we began the 2014 season with an ignominious six straight defeats. Long story short, softball creatures that we are, we righted the ship and won enough games not be dropped to the dreaded C league (no offense fellas). We even had a nice win in the playoffs. Now we look towards 2015 with nearly unfathomable optimism as a highly controversial “old man” softball league scenario finally begins to turn in our favor.

You see, losing the first six games was especially disastrous for us as, on average, our players are in their mid-forties. In early spring most team rosters have pretty similar demographics. However, a few weeks into May 
everything changes as college age players come home soon to be followed by fresh Greeley grads. So, for us, early season wins are essential because, once the warm weather comes, most of the other teams no longer look like ours does and, traditionally, we stay the same: old.

The young player issue has been a subject of great debate within our league. There’s been talk about limiting the number of young players on the field or even how many kids can be on the entire roster. However, no consensus has ever been possible as the teams with the kids playing don’t want to change a thing, while the old guard teams disagree with great fervor. The net result is the rules stay the same.

Now, I can’t bear a hypocrite as much as the next guy, but I can just feel my perspective on this controversy shifting after essentially embodying the old player point of view for years. This year my team will have at least five sons of players who will be eligible. So, as we do abide by the rules of New Castle Men’s B League Softball we will be adding some very young varsity athlete legs to our, ahem, veteran roster of players.

Because who doesn’t love a man in uniform?!
Because who doesn’t love a man in uniform?!

Along those lines, like yin/yang and to every season turn, turn, turn there will be some changes on the older end of the spectrum. We have two pending retirements and they will, no doubt, bring us sadness from a teammate point of view. In reality, a big part of being on the team is celebrating a win at Quaker Hill Tavern–or bemoaning a loss there as well. Most of the time you wouldn’t know which scenario was being enacted as, once the beer and wings start going down, it doesn’t really matter.

A quick shout out to one of our older warriors who may be hanging up his cleats. Amongst our most devoted players this teammate could always be relied upon to show up which, believe me, is no small thing. In what may have been his last game (a playoff battle) he was catching and, at an important moment, ran out to try and catch a pop up. He pulled his mask off, took one step and fell damn hard. Had he come out of the game, we’d be short a player for the game in which we already trailed. To his credit he stayed in the game and, despite the eventual loss, he put the team ahead of his own discomfort which was something to see. That he later said this was his last game made the moment even more meaningful.

I know enough about sports to understand that a team “on paper” cannot accurately be evaluated. In team sports, every squad has its own rhythms, strengths and weaknesses; none of which can be accurately predicted. I also know that just seeing how things evolve in a season is part of what makes competing in this league so much fun. In a simple kids game played by men (and very young men), there are lessons to be learned in sportsmanship, honor and friendship. We may not win this spring but we’ll battle every week and those young legs cover a lot of ground in the outfield.

Anyone interested in New Castle Adult Men’s Softball should definitely contact the recreation department at Town Hall.

Dan Levitz plays third base for The Dirty Mac and hopes to hit better in this coming 2015 season.