Softball is the wheel-deal at Shea

In what could be a preview of this year’s World Series, the Boston Red Sox met the Chicago Cubs team in the parking lot of Shea Stadium recently - in New York City’s 8th Annual Major League Wheelchair Softball Tournament.
The two-day event, which began on Friday, September 19, brought together six teams from some of the 11 Major League Baseball teams who sponsor wheelchair softball, including the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox.
“I first heard about the Colorado Rockies sponsoring a team in 1998,” said Victor Calise, Accessibility Coordinator for the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (DOPR), from his own wheelchair.
Calise recounted how he approached the department and the Mets, and got an enthusiastic response. “The Mets and the department embraced the idea. Now we have wheelchair ball fields striped [marked off on asphalt areas] in all five boroughs.”
The program, which is also supported by the United Spinal Association (formerly the Eastern Paralyzed Veteran’s Association), has grown to 40 teams nationwide, Calise explained, with a National Championship in August.
“Attendance was a little off this year,” he surmised, “partly because the airfares are so high right now and partly because so many of the players went to China for the Paralympics.”
Mets spokesperson Jill Knee divided her attention between the championship game and a consolation game between the Mets “black” and “white” teams (for the “booby prize” one player sighed in mock-despair.)
“The Mets have been proud to partner with the Parks Department and United Spinal in this event,” she said, “Not just the tournament, but also the kids’ clinics they have during the year.”
“It’s a great feeling to have the chance to give back to the City, especially with the schoolchildren,” Knee explained. “It isn’t just the knowledge they get, it’s the inspiration when they see players in wheelchairs compete.”
Indeed, there are very few concessions to “disability” in these games. The distance between the bases is only 50 feet and the bases themselves are larger - two-foot diameter circles except at a regular-sized home plate.
The pitcher, whose offering has to fly between six and 12-feet high, sits 28 feet away, and there’s no base stealing. Other than that, the games are at full-tilt.
Watching players spotting wheel chocks in the batter’s box and rounding the bases (barely remaining upright thanks to outriggers) can leave the casual catch-player in awe. This is not a game for the faint-hearted.
As if proof was needed, it came in the first inning, when a Chicago player got caught in a “pickle” between second and third base - that’s the original term for what’s called a “run-down” nowadays.
As the Boston fielders converged, the Chicago player, Alex Parra, desperately avoided the tag until a final, desperate lunge - which sent him sprawling on the pavement. With a perfunctory brush-off of his bruised stump, he hauled himself into the chair and headed for the “dugout.”
“That’s nothing,” commented Calise. “One of the Met players had a collision and flew out of his chair coming home last year - he needed five stitches.”
As if on cue, Dave White, the ill-fated “base-runner” from that incident last year wheeled past at that exact moment. When asked, he pointed to the scar in his left eyebrow, smiled and shrugged.
“I was safe,” was his only comment.
At the end of the day, the players and their families collected their trophies and went home to tend to their bruises and prepare for the next contest… hockey season starts soon.
Oh - in what may be the portent of the Fall Classic, the final score was: Chicago Cubs 17, Boston Red Sox 1.