There’s an old baseball saying that goes, “a bad day at the ballpark beats a good day at work.”
On Tuesday, the Dogfish had both.
After countless hours of landscaping, accounting, contracting, sunglasses sales, steam cleaning and more, members of the Vineyard’s 40-plus men’s league baseball team gathered at the Patriot charter boat for an off-Island odyssey to Chatham, where they were set to face-off against the formidable Hyannis Dugout Dogs in the World Series.
Well, the other world series.
“The team culture is a group of misfits, morons and dads,” said general manager (a loose term) Adam Bresnick, a self-proclaimed misfit, moron and father himself. “And one guy who’s actually pretty good at baseball,” he added.
The Dogfish started seven years ago, when a group of Little-League coaches and former high school (bench) players started playing pick-up baseball games around the Island. Eventually, they were invited to play a double-header scrimmage against a team on the Cape, and, as Mr. Bresnick says, “it all spiraled downhill from there.”
“It’s an escape, I guess,” he said. “We like to think that if it wasn’t for work obligations and family we would all be professional baseball players, so for a couple days a week we get to be. It’s laughing, it’s competing, it’s getting out and playing a game you’ve enjoyed and loved your whole life with people you like to be around. It’s a good time.”
The Cape men’s league season actually starts in the spring, when the Dogfish play most of their regular season games. They then go on a summer-long hiatus so the Vineyard’s college summer league team, the Sharks, can co-opt their field. By the time September rolls around, the fresh-faced boys of summer have transformed into the scraggly-bearded men of fall, pre-ordering enough Advil to keep a cohort of 15 right arms perpetually numb.
This season, for the first time ever, the Dogfish made their league World Series. After they piled out of their van in Chatham on Tuesday, they barely warmed up. They misran the bases. The misjudged fly balls. They just plain missed at the plate. And they lost 13-0.
But they smiled the whole time. Except for one brief moment on the drive back to Wood’s Hole, when it came to their attention at precisely 10:07 p.m. that the Bourne McDonald’s was closed. Good thing Falmouth has a 24-hour one.
“We are who we are,” Mr. Bresnick said. “At the end of the day, we do what we do, which is play fairly well at times, and fairly horrible at times, which is good enough to make the bad teams think we’re good, and bad enough to make the good teams to think we’re bad.”
The latter was true on Tuesday, but it didn’t matter to the Dogfish. For them, baseball is a lot more fun if you don’t have to win. And for manager (a loose term) Joe Farina, it’s a lot more fun if you get to eat Happy Meals after every game. Twenty-eight dollars worth of them, to be exact.
“Even if you love the sport, you can get burnt out really easily,” said Mr. Farina. “I don’t prepare. I don’t really like to practice. I just like to play shortstop and try to hit homeruns.”
Mr. Farina played college baseball and coaches at the high school. He leads the league in homeruns and pitching velocity, and is by far the team’s best player. He’s also a few years shy of 40. Shh, don’t tell the commissioner.
“What’s the saying on the Vineyard?” Mr. Farina said. “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”
Mr. Farina is also one of the team’s only eligible bachelors. All the other players, save one, have a significant other, many of whom take issue with their husbands turning them into baseball widows for much of the spring and fall.
“We call the wives the gypsies,” said team “constable” Kris Lukowitz, who met his wife within a year of playing for the Dogfish. “When we first started wives and kids and girlfriends would show up to watch the games, but not anymore.”
As team constable, Mr. Lukowitz has full discretion to levy two-dollar fines against players for what he calls “questionable behaviors.” Those include getting picked off, getting caught stealing, forgetting your uniform, or missing a game.
“I’m nothing if not fair,” Mr. Lukowitz said. “It’s not when a guy acts like a moron, because then everybody would get fined. I actually had to fine myself once because I got married and missed the first seven games of the season. Thankfully I won on appeal.”
One player, electrician, handyman, boat-builder, former catcher and current utility-man Steve Gallagher, who goes by Stevie Trades on the ballfield because “he can do anything,” is hundreds of dollars in the hole to the team. He once went out to catch without his chest protector.
“That’s one of the all-time greats,” Mr. Lukowitz said. “Stevie Trades has made us a lot of money over the years. We go as Trades goes. If he’s hot in the fine department, we’re hot on the field.”
After the season, the Dogfish use the fees Mr. Lukowitz levies to host a post-season banquet of sorts, but last year they decided to use the money to buy flowers and send them to Mr. Farina’s mother, who was ailing in Florida.
“See, we have a conscience,” Mr. Lukowitz said. “The one aspect when I can be a little bit overzealous with my authority is with rookies, because rookies don’t know what they don’t know, so they have to be taught. We have one rookie especially, who is in his third year of being a rookie. He’s a very reputable and respectable businessman, but on the baseball field he isn’t who you would think he is. He may end up being a rookie for the rest of his life. Sometimes the stick is better than the carrot.”
That man is architect and current catcher Chuck Sullivan. As the Patriot Boat pulled into Wood’s Hole on Tuesday, an 85-year-old woman, bundled in a winter knit-cap and Hamburger Helper-sized gloves, waved emphatically as Mr. Sullivan got off the boat.
“That’s Chuck’s mom,” Mr. Farina said. “She’s been to just about every game. She’s our biggest fan. In fact, she’s our only fan.”
Mary Sullivan, who lives in Falmouth, shivered through the entire game on Tuesday, far more aware of the score than any of the players. Mrs. Sullivan has 11 children and 32 grandchildren, but she has somehow always made time for the Dogfish. Seeing as she knows all 32 of her grandchildren’s birthdays, it very well may be that Mrs. Sullivan is the only person qualified to keep track of the opponents’ run totals.
“I got to hand it to these guys,” Mrs. Sullivan said. “They work all day then come out here and lose by 13 in the freezing cold. It’s impressive.”
The most “Dogfish” thing about the team is the name itself.
“That came about because dogfish are opportunists and no one really likes them, but after you catch the first one, you realize there’s actually something worthwhile there,” Mr. Bresnick said. “And if there isn’t, then the dogfish just keep going. They move on. You wouldn’t know if we were down by 100, up by 100, or zero-zero. It’s like Steve Pearce said on Monday. He didn’t know he was going to be there, but he kept plugging along, and there he was. Hitting a homerun in the World Series.”
Steve Pearce is a journeyman baseball player who now plays for the Red Sox and won the World Series MVP this year. He’s 35 years old. The Dogfish are always looking for new players.
“Five years,” Mr. Bresnick said. “Maybe by then we’ll have a ring too. Don’t count on it.”
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