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Nassau County Bar Association Installs Rosalia Baiamonte As 120th President

Rosalia Baiamonte, partner of the matrimonial law firm Gassman Baiamonte Gruner, P.C., was recently installed as the 120th President of the Nassau County Bar Association (NCBA) by her mentor, business partner and NCBA Past President and WE CARE Founder Stephen Gassman. Baiamonte was installed alongside the following NCBA Officers: President-Elect Sanford Strenger; Vice President Daniel W. Russo; Treasurer James P. Joseph; and the Honorable Maxine S. Broderick, secretary.

Among the evening’s speakers were the Honorable Norman St. George, deputy chief administrative judge for Courts Outside New York City, and Nassau County Administrative Judge Honorable Vito M. DeStefano, who were invited to install the new officers of the NCBA Board of Directors and Nassau Academy of Law.

Throughout her term, Baiamonte plans to build upon and strengthen key components of the NCBA, including an increase in fundraising efforts to benefit the NCBA Lawyer Assistance Program, and creating new diversity and inclusion initiatives, among them, an NCBA Scholarship and Pre-Law Society for college students who are interested in a career in law.

“The tapestry of our association becomes richer because of diversity. Diversity encompasses not only gender, race and sexual orientation, but also ethnic and national origin, religion, geographic location, work experience, economic background, age and disability, Baiamonte said. As diversity increases, so does our strength and capability as a bar association. Through increased diversity, our organization can more effectively address societal and member needs through a collection of varied perspectives, experiences, knowledge and understanding.”

Baiamonte has extensive experience dealing with a full range of matrimonial issues and substantial appellate advocacy experience, having prosecuted, and defended dozens of notable appeals involving complex matrimonial and family law issues. Her practice also extends to Collaborative Interdisciplinary Divorce. She will serve a one-year term as President of the NCBA.

About the Nassau County Bar Association

Founded in 1899, the Nassau County Bar Association is the leader in providing legal information and community service on Long Island. NCBA consists of private and public attorneys, judges, legal educators, and law students who demonstrate their commitment to the community by offering a variety of services for the public, including lawyer referral services, free mortgage foreclosure, judicial screening and public education programs.

The Nassau Academy of Law provides continuing education for the legal community. WE CARE, a part of the Nassau Bar Foundation, the charitable arm of the NCBA, assists children, the elderly, and others in need, through countless projects and donations.

Visit www.nassaubar.org, email info@ nassaubar.org or call 516-747-4070 for more information.

Rosalia Baiamonte

(Photo courtesy of the Nassau County Bar Association)

—Submitted by the Nassau County Bar Association

Summer of ’62: Casey’s Return, Roger’s Revenge

JOSEPH SCOTCHIE

jscotchie@antonmediagroup.com

It’s summertime and the Mets and Yankees are living in first place. A Subway Series? Well, there are miles of playoff action before that happens.

The Mets are celebrating their 60th anniversary this year and that means six decades of rivalry with the mighty Yankees. It’s not the Yankee-Dodger showdowns of the Fifties, but it’s had its moments.

Two figures are central to the early Yankees-Mets era: Casey Stengel and George Weiss. By 1960, the Yankees were ready to fire Stengel, the manager who led the team to five straight World Series wins in the first five years as skipper. Stengel was pushing 70, the Yankees had a poor season in 1959, Stengel had a habit of falling asleep during the game, younger players found him often cruel and impatient. Above all, the Yankees worried about losing popular coach Ralph Houk to a rival team. Houk, a former bullpen catcher, was being groomed as the future Yankees manager.

The team made it easy by losing the 1960 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates. Stengel made a major blunder in waiting for game three, played at Yankee Stadium, to start his ace, Whitey Ford. If Ford had started game one and four, then he would have been on the hill for the decisive game, if indeed the series had gone that far. In Ford’s two games, the Bombers won by lopsided margins.

But they lost and Stengel, to the great displeasure of fans and the media, was sacked. As significant was the firing of George Weiss, the longtime general manager who hired Stengel in 1950. For the Yankees, that turned out to be a long-term blunder.

In 1962, the Mets took flight. Stengel owned New York. He implored the “youth of America” to come to New York and play for the Mets. The team was the first to have their own mascot. They also had a theme song. The comical Stengel foresaw a day when women would give birth to “little Metsies” who would indeed lead the franchise to future glory.

It worked. The 1962 Mets drew 283,000 more fans that year than the 1957 New York Giants, the last tenants of the long-lost Polo Grounds. Who can forget that team? They went 40-120, but the fans loved them anyway. The names ring out: Richie Ashburn, Elia Chacon, Charley Neal, Charles “Choo Choo” Coleman, “Hot Rod” Kanehl, Felix Mantilla, Hobie Landreth, Ed Kranepool, Jay Hooks, Al Jackson, Roger Craig, the old Dodger greats, Duke Snider and Gil Hodges and finally, Marvelous Marv Thornberry. Marv could hit. He just had trouble finding the bases. Once he cleared the bases with a

Casey Stengel at the helm

The M & M Boys from left: Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle in 1962

triple, only to see it erased. The man forgot to touch first base and while he was it, second base, too.

Being an original Met became a badge of honor. They remain the stuff of history: Loveable losers, sure, but also Casey’s boys who, game after game, went into the breach to almost certain defeat. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, they could say: I was the man, I was there, I suffered, but hey, I brought National League baseball back to New York. Everyone loved those original Mets.

In Yankee camp that year, there was trouble in paradise. The year before, the Bombers won 109 games while dusting off the Cincinnati Reds in the Fall Classic. That year, Roger Maris hit 61 home runs, breaking Babe Ruth’s 1927 record. The pressure on Maris was inhumane. Clumps of hair kept falling out of his head as he chased The Babe. In spring training 1962, it all fell apart. Maris feuded with sportswriters. The man playfully responded to an autograph request with an “X.” (He later gave the youngster his full name.) Too late. The press ripped the man as a one-shot wonder: “The Whiner,” “Rude Roger,” and a “punk ball player.” Maris was miserable. He told the front office, “If it was up to me, I’d like to build a house on top of a mountain, and if I never saw another person, that would be okay with me.”

The Yankees were still the Yankees: Maris, Mickey Mantle, Elston Howard, Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek, Clete Boyer, Tom Tresh. A staff anchored by Ford, Bill Stafford, Ralph Terry, and rookie Jim Bouton remained the class of the American League.

In the World Series, the Bombers faced off against a San Francisco powerhouse lineup led by Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda, Willie McCovey, Jose Pagan, and the Alou brothers, Matty and Felipe. It all came down to the ninth inning of game seven. Leading 1-0, Ralph Terry faced Mays with two outs and Matty Alou on first. The Say Hey Kid ripped a double down the right field line. The play was Roger’s Revenge: The man played the ball off the fence, throwing a bullet to cut-off man Bobby Richardson who fired his own strike to Howard. The next batter, Willie McCovey, hit a screaming line drive to Richardson for out three. The Mays double remains a miracle play: Two outs, a runner on first, an extra base hit. Of course you score. Maris, a former high school football star, was more than a home run hitter: He was also a great outfielder.

The story of those early Mets-Yankees years wasn’t necessarily Stengel or Maris. It was George Weiss. This was the man the Bombers should have never let go. Weiss was elderly, but the fires still burned. The Mets eagerly signed Weiss as GM. The latter convinced a reluctant Stengel to come back as manager. Weiss began making moves. In 1964, the Amazins moved into spacious Shea Stadium. Weiss built a team centered around pitching and defense. His prospects included Kranepool, Cleon Jones, Tug McGraw, Ron Swoboda, and Bud Harrelson, all indispensable to the Mets success.

Would the Yankees have fallen so sharply if Weiss was still at the helm? The Yanks were down, the Mets, with the brash Tom Seaver as ace of the pitching staff, were up. From 1964 to 1976, New York was a Mets town. The Yankees, now playing in a refurbished Yankee Stadium, acquired some swagger of their own. The mercurial but happy-spending George Steinbrenner was the new owner. He hired Billy Martin, baseball’s volatile genius, as his skipper. What a pair they made: Billy hired and fired, hired and fired, hired and fired again. No matter. The Bombers ran off a championship era of their own. As for 2022? Game on!