A speech by Arthur Spector of the Wycliffe Stiffs Stickball League
Good afternoon, Mayor Gerwig and other dignitaries. My name is Arthur Spector, and I am one of three members of the Management of the Wycliffe Stiffs Stickball League. With me is our Director of Publicity, Phil Strassler, Allen Lebowitz, and Harry Klaff.
Eighteen years ago, two Wellington area retirees at Wycliffe Golf & Country Club — Marty Ross, formerly from The Bronx, and Harry Klaff, formerly from Brooklyn — organized a bunch of old men and got them to play a game they hadn’t played in 40 or more years, if they had ever played it at all. The game is known as “Stickball.” It was so popular, they made a league to accommodate the 75 players. And thus, the Wycliffe Stiffs Stickball League was born.
Marty, known by all as “The Commish,” and his trusty right-hand man, jack of all trades, utility everything, Director of Operations, Harry “the Blade” Klaff, needed an appropriate home to host the games. Stickball, although a derivative of baseball, is a creature of the players’ geography. You see, the inner big cities lack those fields of dreams you see in the movies. So the very streets, with traffic and all, are the ball fields for stickball. However, our sexagenarians, septuagenarians, octogenarians, and even nonagenarians — yes, we have had players in their 90s — are not nimble enough to dodge South Florida traffic — so Marty and Harry needed a place that could sufficiently duplicate the narrow streets of our respective yoots.
That’s where the convivial, virtuous, visionary villagers of the venerable, vibrant Village of Wellington stepped up to the plate and provided us venerable fogies with the otherwise vacant yet vital Village Park parking lot as our very own Ebbets Field, or Yankee Stadium, depending on your viewpoint, of course. The League and all of its by-now hundreds of players owe you a debt of gratitude.
Our warm feelings for the Village itself are felt just as strongly for your magnificent mayor. Mayor Gerwig has honored us over the past few years by throwing out the first pitch of the game — sometimes the actual first pitch of the season — and by visiting us when she can at other times as well. To Mayor Gerwig, a product of rural Indiana and really rural Western Palm Beach County, our form of stickball was probably initially viewed as a rather strange affair — there being no running involved in this so-called “sport.” Yet she has been a true friend of the game, the League and all of us who are privileged to be allowed to enjoy our younger days by playing this kids’ game for 90 minutes a week for a few months a year.
At the end of each season in April the League has a luncheon where we hand out awards and other honors, enjoy some hokey entertainment, and partake in our favorite beverage — no, not beer. Egg creams. The team that wins the playoffs is crowned the champion and receives the coveted Egg Cream trophy. This year, due to Covid-19, the playoffs were discontinued midstream so we had no playoffs winner. The Covid catastrophe also caused us to cancel the luncheon. So, since there was no way for Mayor Gerwig to attend our end-of-season luncheon, we had to find a way to properly honor her for her support and for being the all around good sport she is.
I am aware that Mayor Gerwig has been bestowed many a prestigious award for her service to the community at large. Recently, I recall, she received the 2020 Home Rule Hero Award. Well, although we can’t claim to top that one, your friends at the Wycliffe Stiffs wish to present you with our own 2020 Hero Award.
It is my great pleasure to present you with this plaque commemorating you, Mayor Anne Gerwig as a Wycliffe Stiffs’ Hero. The plaque reads:
THE WYCLIFFE STIFFS STICKBALL LEAGUE HEREBY EXPRESSES ITS DEEP APPRECIATION AND GRATITUDE TO MAYOR ANNE GERWIG OF THE VILLAGE OF WELLINGTON FOR HER FRIENDSHIP AND COMMITMENT TO OUR LEAGUE. WE ARE DEEPLY INDEBTED TO YOU AND THE PARKS & RECREATION DEPARTMENT FOR MAKING THE WYCLIFFE STIFFS AN INTEGRAL PART OF WELLINGTON’S EXTRAORDINARY LIFESTYLE.