Jersey City’s ‘Field of Dreams’ celebrates 50th anniversary
When Howie Fink was a kid growing up in the Jersey City Heights in the 1930s, baseball was the only thing they had.
"We were all so poor," Fink recalled. "Back in those days, all we had was a bat, a ball and some tape. If the ball got messed up, we’d tape it back up and keep playing. I always went to Pershing Field. It was a great, great part of my life. My mother told me once, ‘Why don’t you just live there?’ It was a wonderful time. We all had no money. All we did was play ball."
As Fink grew into adulthood, he wanted to make sure that two things were still in his life – baseball and Pershing Field.
"It was a great place to grow up," Fink said. "We had some great times."
Fink was one of the founding fathers of the Pershing Field Babe Ruth Baseball League, which was formed in 1954. He was a coach in the league for many years, as well as a sponsor. Fink became a legendary part of Pershing Field and the countless ballplayers that came out of the area and the league.
There were players like Johnny Kucks, who went on to win 18 games for the 1955 New York Yankees, including a win in the World Series that year. There was Jim Hannan, who pitched in the major leagues for 12 years with the Washington Senators and then the Texas Rangers, and still ranks among the franchise’s all-time pitching leaders.
"There were so many great players to come from Pershing Field," Fink said. "Who could ever forget my friend Johnny Kucks from Dickinson High School? He brought us a lot of recognition."
But there were thousands of other kids from the Jersey City Heights who were first taught how to play baseball at Pershing Field, then went on to fine tune their skills in the Pershing Field Babe Ruth League, before heading on to bigger and better things – in some cases, professional baseball.
Last Saturday night, many of those standout ballplayers got together again to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Pershing Field Babe Ruth League.
They all gathered at Puccini’s in Jersey City, to celebrate the good times and the place where their baseball lives all began.
For Fink, seeing all the kids he got to know over the years come back for a reunion like that touched his heart.
"I was overjoyed," Fink said. "It brought back a lot of wonderful memories for me. I spent the entire night just talking about baseball with everyone I met. It was a tremendous, sentimental evening. I felt like I was seven feet tall."
Fink said that he remembered the humble beginnings of the league. He remembers when people got together like the late Ed Franco – a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and a member of the famed "Seven Blocks of Granite" that included the legendary Vince Lombardi – and Tony Barabas, whose brother, Al, was a standout performer in his day.
"They asked me if I would help," Fink said. "I was glad to do it. That’s how it initially got started, and after a while, we had hundreds of kids who wanted to play ball. Those were really good days, I’ll tell you."
Fink said that he enjoyed seeing people he hadn’t seen in a while, like Joe Damiano, who was an active baseball player into his 40s, playing for the Otto Mack Anchors of the East Coast Baseball League, which also called Pershing Field its home.
"That was the best part of the night," Fink said. "Seeing people I hadn’t seen in so long."
The league took the time to honor 60 former players as members of the Mike Fiore All-Stars, named after the late coach who was also a fixture in the league.
Fink was able to present an award in his name, the Howie Fink Lifetime Achievement Award to another league fixture, Charlie Straub, who has spent more than 40 years as a league coach and executive.
Al Komorowski was named manager of the Mike Fiore All-Star Half-Century Team, while Straub and John Mercado were named the coaches. All three of those gentlemen dedicated most of their adult lives to the success of the league.
Many former players credited their time in the league with helping to shape their success in their careers.
There were several former all-county performers in attendance, guys like Kevin Bearse, who pitched for the Cleveland Indians and the Montreal Expos after his playing days at Dickinson were done. Bearse, the former head coach at Lincoln in Jersey City, is now a teacher in central New Jersey.
Incredibly, the current coach at Lincoln High School, John Gonzalez, also got his baseball start in Pershing Field. He was also named to the All-Star Half-Century team.
Tom Crohan went from Pershing Field to Rutgers University, where he became the No. 2 starter for the Scarlet Knights in an NCAA tournament berth run in 2002. Crohan is currently pitching in professional baseball in Brockton, Mass.
Just one great player after another, guys like the Weber brothers, Ray and David, who also played pro ball; the D’Ambrosio brothers, Andy and Mark, both of whom played in the minor leagues; Mike Carlsen, who was an NCAA batting champion at FDU and also had a brief stint in the minor leagues; John Furch, another product of the Chicago White Sox organization who hit the furthest ball I’ve ever seen travel out of Pershing Field; George Gallagher, who played for the NCAA Division III national champion Montclair State Red Hawks a few years ago and Michael Untisz, who was a member of the Detroit Tigers organization.
There are so many names and faces that you could fill up this entire section, great talents that all came from the same area, the same league. It is an incredible ledger of success, one that probably has no peer in Hudson County folklore.
"It really was a great place to be," said Fink, whose active days are slowing down now due to recent illness and injury. "I feel like I was a part of the earth at Pershing Field. I think we all did. Having a night like this brought it all back for me."
Guys like Fink deserve to have those kinds of warm, nostalgic feelings. After all, he didn’t dedicate his life to the kids of Jersey City for nothing. He deserved to get something in return. Saturday night was Howie’s night to remember and recapture those years and those times.