"Peyes swing from under Yankees caps, and players sling Yiddish jeers from the outfield, when the Stormers take the hardtop for their Sunday games at Brooklyn’s McCarren Park. The teams of Brooklyn’s Greenpoint Softball League reflect the boro’s inimitable patchwork of cultures, and the Stormers — with a hardworking 3-23 record — represent Williamsburg’s sizable but insular Satmar Hasidic community.
The Stormers are a ragtag band of yeshiva students in their late teens and early 20s who report to the field in tailored day clothes and disappear briskly after games. ....To some, the Hasidic ballplayers seem to have stepped from the famous opening passage of “The Chosen,” Chaim Potok’s novel about boys from pious families of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg who struggle with their parents over the draws of assimilation, including long afternoons on the baseball diamond."
Comments