BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | It was rainy and the mercury was hitting the 30s, so it wasn’t a great day to be hitting baseballs. Nevertheless, 600 hardy Greenwich Village Little Leaguers — from T-balling tykes to 16-year-old Seniors — wearing their uniforms and toting colorful team banners, trooped onto Pier 40 last Saturday morning to kick off the Little League season.
Joining them on the W. Houston St. mega-pier was a heavy-hitting line-up of local politicians and community leaders, plus Staten Island Yankees mascot Scooter the Holy Cow.
Concerned about the weather forecast, G.V.L.L. President Carin Ehrenberg had consulted with others beforehand, wondering whether to reschedule for a better day. But, like a batter swinging away on a 3-and-0 count, she just decided to go for it.
“And with everything going on with Pier 40, it was a super-important day,” she said. “We want to use it as a platform to remind our elected officials who came to opening day that Pier 40 is important for us.”
Ehrenberg is entering her second year as the league’s leader. Despite the popular conception that she is G.V.L.L.’s first female president, she said there actually was another woman who led the league back in the 1980s.
Leading the parade into the artificial-turf youth sports mecca Saturday morning and carrying the American flag were two outstanding G.V.L.L. alumni: Eli Kimbell, who will be playing baseball at Princeton University, and Max Schneider, who has a sportswriting scholarship to Vanderbilt University.
The league fields 800 players, so a turnout of 600 on Saturday was pretty good.
“I was pretty impressed since it was 40 degrees,” Ehrenberg said.
Her own kids, in fact, have aged out of the league, yet she has stayed involved with it due to her belief in youth athletics’ importance — something she touched upon in her brief speech on opening day.
“Sports help kids learn to deal with adversity and become team players,” she said.
Her speech focused on the theme of parks and ball fields and their importance to the community. Last year, her speech’s theme was volunteers, and she highlighted people who have given their time to help make G.V.L.L. better.
There was a real “murderers’ row” of local pols out on the pier last Saturday, including Assemblymember Deborah Glick, state Senator Brad Hoylman, City Comptroller Scott Stringer, Borough President Gale Brewer and Councilmember Corey Johnson, plus Madelyn Wils, the president and C.E.O. of the Hudson River Park Trust, and Tobi Bergman, the chairperson of Community Board 2, along with Bob Gormley, the board’s district manager, and former Chairperson David Gruber.
“Hurricane” Hoylman threw out the season’s first baseball pitch, while “Wild Thing” Wils fired in the first softball pitch.
The Pier 40 Champions group made “Save Pier 40” buttons for the event.
Gruber is heading up a C.B. 2 task force that is focused on the complex plan under which Pier 40’s unused development rights will be sold across the highway for a massive new development on the St. John’s Center site. The millions of dollars from the air-rights sale will be funneled back into Pier 40 to repair the crumbling pier.
Last year, G.V.L.L. opening day also featured Sandy the Seagull, the Brooklyn Cyclones mascot.
“We didn’t invite the seagull this year,” Ehrenberg explained, “not because we’re anti-seagull. We have nothing against the Cyclones. We get the cow — he’s part of a package deal with us and Downtown Little League. And then we have the P3 mascot, which is this dog, one of the P3 coaches. I keep telling them to name the dog.”
