February 26-March 3, 2004

pretzel logic

Yeeeeer Out!

by Howard Altman

There are few things that bring me as much joy in life as standing on a baseball diamond, playing ball with my children.

The diamond is my respite, my refuge.

The worries of the world melt away with each thwack of the bat, with each thud of a heater snapping dust off my catcher's mitt.

Helping kids learn the finer points of the game is my Zen.

Seeing a kid lay down a perfect bunt -- an art seemingly lost on the overpaid millionaires -- is my ultimate reward.

Yet I, ever the cynic, know that there is no escape.

The diamond is on a field run by an organization.

Which is in a neighborhood.

Which is in a city.

Which is next to the suburbs.

Which leads to all kinds of mishegoss.

I am enough of a realist to realize that, no matter how much I would like to think otherwise, no diamond is an island.

I could've written about The Passion of the Christ, but I decided to take on a really controversial subject:

The Passion of the Baseball in Northwest Philly.

This passion is deep, and that is a good thing.

The controversy, however, is not.

It centers on Mt. Airy Baseball's (MAB) attempt to find a new home for its older kids.

MAB, a neighborhood organization headquartered at the Mt. Airy field at Sedgwick and Germantown, used to send its 13- to 16-year-old teams to the Devlin League in the Northeast. This year, there was concern that Devlin was about to fold. Also, many parents and coaches felt that schlepping to the Northeast was too far, so MAB officials asked to join the Montco League -- a confab of 12 suburban communities much closer to Mt. Airy.

And therein lies the controversy.

Even before a vote was taken, MAB league commissioner Dan Winterstein says he was told that MAB's application was, essentially, dead on arrival.

The source? Dennis Primavera, Chestnut Hill Youth Association president, and an influential member of the Montco League board.

"He told me that he would not permit us to enter the league, that he had influence over other members and he would not allow us to play," Winterstein says, adding that Primavera gave no plausible reason but that somehow MAB was taking players from Chestnut Hill.

Primavera, shockingly enough, has a different take on the conversation, saying that the discussion about how Chestnut Hill and Mt. Airy were competing for the same pool of players "went over Dan's head." Montco's bylaws, he explains, prohibit bringing in any organization that would have a detrimental effect on any existing organization.

Should Mt. Airy gain access to the Montco League, Primavera argues, Chestnut Hill baseball would "be diminished, diminished, diminished."

Now, before I go any further, a little full disclosure is in order.

I am a coach with MAB. My son plays there.

He also plays soccer at Chestnut Hill, where I have helped coach his teams.

Earlier this month, Montco voted 12-0 to exclude Mt. Airy Baseball.

To the people who run MAB, this was not just a shock, it was painful.

There were meetings, dozens and dozens of hours of phone calls.

Questions. Consternation. Anguish.

How could they do this? How could this suburban league exclude Mt. Airy?

The answer is a bizarrely twisted case of good news/bad news.

The good news is that, despite the fact that Mt. Airy is a city organization with a mostly black membership and Montco is a suburban organization with a mostly white membership, race is not an issue here.

The bad news is that the long-simmering feud between Chestnut Hill and Mt. Airy -- the two were once in the same organization until Mt. Airy left many years ago -- is.

Primavera offers several other reasons for the Montco decision, including the fact that MAB's interest in entering more than one league presents scheduling headaches, that there are not enough fields in Mt. Airy and that Montco "does not want to become the largest baseball organization in the area."

Other Chestnut Hill board members, like Joe Pie and Joe Barbarese, say they are also concerned about the dwindling number of kids in the Chestnut Hill baseball program.

Winterstein says those issues are easily addressed subterfuge and that the bottom line is that Chestnut Hill feels threatened by the fact that more area kids are choosing to play baseball in Mt. Airy.

"It's petty that they would take this action, to exclude our kids, just because they feel threatened," Winterstein says, adding that he sent protest letters to Primavera and Montco League commissioner Steve Lapin, who was unavailable for comment.

"We couldn't just let this happen," says Winterstein. "Our kids were treated unfairly. It is a matter of principle."

The Chestnut Hill board members and people like Larry Ceisler, (who lives in Chestnut Hill but whose kid plays in Mt. Airy), say perhaps the two leagues should merge.

"Politically, it would be stronger and a combined league would get more resources," Ceisler says.

Winterstein disagrees, saying that Mt. Airy Baseball is more than just about sports, it's one of the few organizations that brings together Mt. Airy residents regardless of race or class.

Like I said, The Passion of the Baseball in the Northwest knows no limits.

Thankfully, I will soon be back on the field with the kids, which is all that any of us, despite our differences, really care about.

The crack of the bat and the thwap of leather ball on leather glove will soothe.