The 76th annual East Hampton Artists & Writers Charity Softball Game was contested this past Saturday afternoon. It took place before a crowd of over 300 people on the softball field in Herrick Park behind the Stop & Shop in East Hampton.
The official program handed out at the entrance to the stands briefly noted many of the prominent people who have played in this game over the years. They’ve included painters Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Audrey Flack, Singer Paul Simon, President Bill Clinton, film director Woody Allen, investment banker Carl Ichan, soccer star Pele, bad boy hippie Abbie Hoffman, author Betty Friedan, actor Alec Baldwin and Broadway’s Murray Schisgal. People from all walks of life have joined in with the artists and writers. It’s all for charity.
Playing in this year’s game, among others, were Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, former New York Mets pitcher John Franco, and NBC figure Katie Couric. I thought Franco, who was the losing pitcher on Saturday, should have been named the Player of the Game. But he wasn’t. Instead, the honors went to Andrei Lloyd.
And this year, for the first time, we should have had an Object of the Game. It would have been the new scoreboard. We’ve never had a scoreboard before. And there it was, huge, six feet high and 29 feet long, fastened to the big chain link fence separating left field from the tennis courts beyond. It figured prominently, and often inaccurately, which was kind of amazing, as you will soon see.
As an unusual object, it was right up there with the ice cream truck that drove out and parked in short center field in the bottom of the 11th inning, in the way, causing all softball activity to come to a halt until the driver could be persuaded he was in the wrong place.
The game itself was very exciting. After the first two batters up for the Writers, Alex Lupica and John Lemire, each singled, comedian Teddy Jones hit a towering drive over the left field fence.
At the scoreboard, a woman with a ladder climbed up it, carrying a rectangular white panel with a black No. 3 printed on it, and placed it in the square for the top of the first inning. Before that inning ended, the number 6 was up. The Writers had started things off with a bang.
In the bottom of the first, Artist Bill Quigley struck back with a single, driving two people home, so the posting now read 6 to 2.
After that, no more runs were scored by either side for the next two innings. Out at the scoreboard, however, something was going wrong. Five rectangles with zeros on them did appear, but the zeros had clearly been scribbled in the rectangles using a magic marker. I was at the media table behind home plate at this time, where Juliette Papa of WINS radio was interviewing actress Blythe Danner, who had been watching the game in the stands. Apparently, the scoreboard people lacked zeros.
After the game ended, when the players, covered with dust and sweat but still in their uniforms, gathered for a party in the courtyard of the new Village Bistro restaurant on Main Street, I met up with AP reporter Julie Walker, who had been out there at the scoreboard. Yes, the printer had given them stacks of white rectangles with numbers on them. But there were no zeros. Perhaps the actual printing at Ocean Graphics had been done by some immigrant who knew nothing about baseball, not even that an inning could happen needing a zero. More food for thought for Donald Trump.
In the bottom of the fifth, the Artists scored 2 runs, and in the seventh, the team scored 4 runs — largely the result of a hard-hit double by Greg Lauritano. That gave them the lead 8 to 7. The crowd stirred. But then, in the eighth, author Dan Pulick doubled and Joe Lemire tripled leading a rally that put the Writers back in front 10 to 8. This was going to be a fight to the finish. Indeed, at the end of nine innings, the score was tied at 10 to 10!
And this was reflected on the scoreboard. But now those magic marker zeros had all been replaced by printed zeroes, but only up through the sixth inning. After that, more magic marker zeros appeared again. Apparently, the scoreboard people had their printer create 8 printed zeros, which they thought would be enough. It wasn’t.
Through the 10th and 11th innings, neither side was able to score any further runs. As Josh Brandman, who was the play-by-play announcer working with Juliet Papa at the media table, reminded everyone by loudspeaker that in the bottom of each of these two innings, the Artists could put the game away by scoring just one run. But that never happened.
The game did end in the bottom of the 12th; but before I get to that, I must tell you there was something really shocking going on at the scoreboard. The places where numbers could be posted when each half inning came to an end after the ninth did not exist. There was just the nine innings and then the summary which had been posted with two 10s.
And so it was, in the bottom of the 12th, after the game had been temporarily halted by the arrival of the ice cream truck in center field, business executive Andrei Lloyd dropped a single into short center field, that installation artist Clayton Calvert, who had been on second, came in to score the 11th run, winning the game for the Artists.
Or, as the scoreboard stubbornly said, it was still 10 to 10, and remained so until an 11 was finally found and placed in the Artists’ summary box after the nine innings, even though they had no way of having the score tally up to that in the prior innings out there. So, at the end, it appeared as a mathematical error
How to fix this? The board of directors that runs this game will have a year to figure that out. Meanwhile, it was announced after the game that nearly $50,000 had been raised for the four charities benefitting from it: The Retreat, the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childhood Center, East End Hospice and the Phoenix House.
See you next year.
SCORE BOX:
WRITERS: 610000030 000 – 10
ARTISTS: 200020420 001 – 11
TEAM ROSTERS
WRITERS
Alex Lupica, 3B
Josh Franklin, DH
Jonathan Lemire, SS
Teddy Jones, CF
John Franco, P
Dan Pulick, LF
Joe Lemire, 2B
Alec Sokolow, RF
Liz Wells
David Bernstein
John Avlon
Whitney Casey, C
Ann Liguori
Ben Gosher
Paul Winum, 1B
Ben Goldberg, C
Brian Burns
Katie Couric
Andrea Elliot
Eric Gertler
Rob Levi
Tucker Harding
David Andrews
Erika Katz
Lizabeth Zindel Wells
ARTISTS
Parker Calvert
Peter Cesaro
Andrei Llyod
Eddie McCarthy, LF
Bill Quigley, 3B
Eric Fischl
Walter Bernard
Joe Sopiak, P
Nick
Johnathan Schenk
John Andrei, 1B
Greg Lauritono
Jesse, 2B
Abby Russell
Ron Noi
Victoria Hilton, C
Ed Hollander
Tom Clohessi
Gabriele Bluestone
