Dan's Papers -March 27, 2009 - New Baseball League

Rusty Leaver, the cowboy who with his wife, Diane, owns and has run the Deep Hollow Ranch in Montauk for the last 30 years, is surely one of the most interesting characters on the East End of Long Island.

About 15 years ago, he got the idea that, in addition to raising 100 head of cattle on the land each summer, he ought to use the main pasture just south of the Montauk Highway as the site of a Saturday night rock concert.

He invited rock star Paul Simon, who lives up the street, to build a giant stage at one end for a one night only performance, and on the appointed evening hosted about 5,000 people on the property, seating them on rows of hay bales facing the stage. The money raised, more than $100,000, went to charity. So the next year he did it again, this time inviting Jimmy Buffett, from North Haven, to perform.

For the next eight years, the "Back at the Ranch" concert raised nearly $10 million for different charities on the East End, and performers included Billy Joel, Ray Charles, James Brown and a host of others. Sometimes as many as 10,000 people came to enjoy the events.

Then there was the celebration in 1998 of the 100th anniversary of Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders, who helped win the Spanish American War. Roosevelt and his men camped in Montauk after the war. Then he became president. Leaver hired actor John Davidson to portray Roosevelt for a big jamboree and hoedown on the property, and had everybody else dressing up in various costumes. Yours truly appeared as Admiral George Dewey. Jazz musician Percy Heath, who lived in Montauk, dressed up as a newspaper reporter.

This event segued into still another of Leaver's ideas. Why not offer tourists rides aboard horse drawn chuck wagons through the 4,000 acres of the ranchland? At the farthermost point, there would be a barbecue with Buffalo Bill demonstrating rope tricks and Princess Noadonah or Will Rogers - another Montauk guest at one point - telling local history stories. These chuck wagon rides continue in the summertime to this day.

Leaver's latest idea involved his son Gardner Leaver, who, in high school, was a star pitcher for the East Hampton High School baseball team. Gardner went off to the University of Rhode Island on a baseball scholarship, but when he'd come home in the summertime to help rustle the steers, both he and his dad wished there was some baseball team that Gardner could play for. There wasn't. So Rusty Leaver invented one.

Leaver approached the managers of the Cape Cod Baseball League in the fall of 2007. He wondered if he couldn't scare up a team that would play under the banner of the Hamptons against the Hyannis Mets, Bourne Braves and Y-D Red Sox. The team, called the Hampton Whalers, lost their first game and fell to last place during the summer, before rallying to win the pennant. In the end, the Whalers lost the World Series game to the Kutztown Rockies, 8 to 2.

The idea of fielding teams of college players to defend the honor of a town or a region is not new. The college kids are recruited from schools around the country. In the town they represent, host families put them up. They play not for money, but to hone their skills. And very often scouts attend the games looking for future Hall of Famers.

This year, Leaver is taking it a step further. Not content with having created a team to play college ball in the Cape Cod division of the American Collegiate Baseball League, he is creating a whole slew of baseball teams here on the East End to compete in a whole new division.

What he had in mind was the Southampton Breakers, the Westhampton Aviators, the Riverhead Tomcats, the North Fork Ospreys and, well, the old Hampton Whalers baseball team now renamed the Sag Harbor Whalers in honor of the fact that they would be playing on the ball field in Mashashimuet Park in that town.

Leaver and his wife have expended a tremendous effort to organize five teams for this new league. Through the network of college coaches and professional baseball scouts that had helped them find players for the Hampton Whalers, the word soon went out to more than 70 colleges, including Brown, Stanford, Notre Dame, the University of North Carolina and other top tier schools. The response, Leaver says, was overwhelming. There was no problem filling the positions with kids from all levels of college play, including the top levels. There's not a boy in America who wouldn't want to play baseball while the scouts look him over for, perhaps, the Mets and the Yankees.

The Leavers had to find proper playing fields for the games. There are standards set down by the American College Baseball League that have to be met. There are rules involving dugouts, infield grass and distances to the outfield walls. Some of the sites chosen do not fully measure up, but will be upgraded by the league for either this summer or next. Other sites chosen were not made available by those who owned them, even with offers to upgrade the facilities over time.

"We were hoping to get East Hampton High," Leaver said. "We negotiated, but it didn't work out."

The five East End teams, with 125 future baseball stars, have now completed filling their rosters, and will join up with a sixth - an up-island team already in existence, called the Long Island Mustangs, to compete for the pennant of the Kaiser Division, beginning this June.

Anyone interested in providing housing for these players is invited to call the Leavers at 631-668-3901.

The East End of Long Island has a rich tradition in providing world-class play, not only in baseball, but also in other sports.

Carl Yazstremski, the star outfielder for the Boston Red Sox in the 1960s and the last man to win baseball's coveted Triple Crown, was the son of a Bridgehampton farmer and grew up here.

Jesse Stavola, who blazed softballs across the plate with such speed and consistency last year at East Hampton High School that she was ae State All-Star Team, is playing this year for Providence College.

The Montauk Rugby team, a pick up team of local residents, was so good about 10 years ago that they finished second to Dallas as the best amateur rugby team in the country in 1999.

The Bridgehampton Killer Bees basketball team won seven State Championships in 12 years during the 1980s and 1990s.

And this year the East Hampton High School Bonackers basketball team just won the Class A basketball title in Suffolk County last week.

Maybe Dan Reiser, a former pitcher for Pierson High School and now off in college, will be the next Joba Chamberlain for the New York Yankees following this year's performance with the Sag Harbor Whalers. He had a great season pitching for the Hampton Whalers last year.

Or maybe the new star will be pitcher Garner Leaver. Very likely, his dad thinks so.