Major League Baseball’s Opening Day is upon us, with all of the requisite nostalgia, excitement about the blank slate and the promise of a new season, and hopefulness for, and dreams of, a championship year.

From 1937 until the late 1940s, Patchogue was graced with its own local independent baseball team, the Cubs.

1937 saw the organization of the squad, but the second World War forced them into a lengthy hiatus, after which they regrouped under Manager Paul Andrisani. The April 4, 1946 issue of the Patchogue Advance lists the names of the squad’s intrepid nine at that time, along with a request that any other team wishing to take on the team contact Mr. Andrisani. Fundraising was also apparently on their minds, and several ideas were mooted, including, as is commonplace today, showing advertisements for local merchants on the team’s scorecards.

Although it’s well known that many famous Major League Baseball players served their country in the second World War (among them Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio), this team was, possibly uniquely, composed entirely of veterans of the second World War.

Later in April, 1946, Newsday reported that the team was actively seeking a berth in the South Shore Baseball League, although Patchogue was, also according to Newsday, already represented in the League by an un-named club. Just a few more days later, Newsday reported that the Cubs were apparently successful in their bid for the berth. The team’s home field, Wiedner’s Park, was located on Medford Avenue (Route 112) in Patchogue.

Soon after, in early May, Newsday listed George Dioguardo of Patchogue as the manager of the squad, and published an open appeal to any other team on Long Island interested in taking them on. Under what circumstances the team’s story eventually ended is unknown, although newspaper coverage of the team’s activities can be found as late as the summer of 1947.

What are books?

In 1857, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, an author and later Patchogue resident, would give her own answer: “Books are the natural outgrowth of thought.” In a book, the author not only expresses his thoughts to others, but makes his thoughts into something new apart from himself. Plato observed that books allow author’s to meet people living long after the author himself; they communicate thoughts over great expanses of time and space and even beyond death. It is often observed by readers that you seem to know an author by reading his books.

At the same time there is a distinction to be made between author and book. Oakes Smith noticed that we can like a book and dislike the author. “We are often disappointed,” she wrote, “at the seeming discrepancy between authors and their works, and wonder that such gorgeous, tropic flowers could strike root in those icebergs. We turn away mournfully from the cold, polished manner and artificial words – so different from the glowing, inspired thoughts which held heart and brain entranced till the last page was turned and the last sentence ended. But the chill is the semblance, the warmth the reality.”

In other words, on meeting authors she has found herself disappointed – they have not lived up to their books! Oakes Smith was friends with and supporters of Edgar Allen Poe, Horace Greely, Susan B. Anthony, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Thoreau. She also disagreed and argued with many of these literary contemporaries – it is interesting to imagine who might have inspired such a remark.

It may be that the books of an author can be so much like an author as to be unrecognizable when compared with the original. After all, it is in thinking that we are the most ourselves. Books, however, are unchangeable. A book, Oakes Smith noticed, can, somehow, be more real than the person who wrote it.

Elizebth Oakes Smith and her husband, the editor and humorist Seba Smith, lived in Patchogue, owned property, and are buried in Lakeview cemetery. More about the life of Oakes Smith can be found on the local history website as well as the Oakes-Smith website of Professor Timothy Scherman.

The original essay “Books” by Elizabeth Oakes Smith is reproduced on our Local History website.

History is the source of many of our favorite stories. Sometimes, in the case of historical fiction, history becomes the story itself.

One of the most enjoyable parts of reading or watching historical fiction is actually just after we finish reading or watching. When we begin to wonder what really happened, and what was invented; whether we should wonder at the coincidences of history, or be more impressed by the powers of the imagination.

Last Monday, the second season of Turn: Washington’s Spies premiered at 9 on AMC. The series focuses on the Culper Spy Ring, a group of Long Island spies who operated during the Revolutionary War. For those who have not watched before, the hero is Abraham Woodhull, farmer and leader of the spy ring. Many scenes are set in the Long Island town of Setauket, where the events really occurred, and feature real historical figures.

Tonight’s episode is on at 10 on AMC; you can watch the premiere on AMC’s website here.

Although enjoyable television, you might ask, how much Turn is based on real history and how much is fictionalized?

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