Catskills Baseball

This was a funny piece to read in this morning's NYT:

MONTICELLO, N.Y., Aug. 25 — Who is the most formidable Jewish ballplayer who ever lived?

A) Sandy Koufax

B) Hank Greenberg

C) Chaim Silber

If you did not choose Mr. Silber, a ferocious former second baseman known in these parts as Lobo, you clearly have not spent a steamy Sunday cheering on members of the Orthodox Bungalow Baseball League, a devout collection of rabble-rousers who have spent three decades tearing up the moderately manicured softball diamonds that pock the Catskill Mountains.

...Since 1977, the Orthodox league has been providing a healthful escape for thousands of men who might otherwise spend Sundays inside cramped bungalows, their wives threatening them with the prospect of laundry-folding.

There are six divisions, and the winner in each is rewarded with a classy-looking trophy, and most important, bragging rights during the long off-season months, when the players return to their winter homes, most in Brooklyn, Staten Island or the Five Towns of Long Island.

Read the whole thing for a bit of the flavor of one of these games - saying they are taken seriously by some among the Bungalow Colony set would be an understatement.