Father's Day is a time to celebrate the joys of being a dad but it was one man who didn't have any kids of his own that made sure that fathers and sons from future generations would have the chance to share the rewarding experiences of Little League Baseball in Rhinebeck.Rhinebeck's Dave Wager was an accomplished baseball player himself and when the catcher on his Interstate League team, Henry "Moose" Karn, asked him to start an organized Little League in Northern Dutchess County, Wager decided to give it a shot.
" Moose has started Little League in Southern Dutchess County and he asked Dave to start up a league in northern Dutchess County," said Wager's wife, Marie. " Next year it will be sixty years already."
Dave Wager was honored for being one of the pioneers of Rhinebeck Little League Baseball by having the field behind the Starr Library officially named in his honor. It was a ceremony attended by many of Wager's former players.
" Happy Father's Day to everyone. It's so appropriate that on this day we dedicate the field to the father of Rhinebeck Little League and a guy who was like a father to all of the team members that he had," said Lewis Ruge, one of Wager's former players, in his remarks to the crowd. " Dave played baseball himself and was a great player. He loved to coach and he loved the kids. He always had something to say that would compliment or encourage. I know Dave would have been very proud of this honor."
Howie Mann, a member of the Dutchess County Sports Hall of Fame, was a player on that first Rhinebeck team.
" I remember that when they handed out the uniforms that I was so proud," said Mann. " It had Eagles on the front of it. I might have gone to bed with it on that first night."
" There was only one team in town, a traveling team, and if you made that team you were somebody special in town," remembered another former player, Mike Martinez. " It was quite an honor to wear that uniform."
That first season was played in 1948 and saw Wager go from business to business in Rhinebeck to solicit small sums of money to help defray the costs of those coveted Eagles uniforms. The games were played at Rhinebeck High School with opponents such as Red Hook, Tivoli, Elizaville and Rhinecliff supplying the opposition.
Mann, clutching some old newspaper clippings of game stories and a team picture of that first Eagles squad, said that playing and all-star game against a team from Newburgh in the City of Poughkeepsie and the games against neighboring Red Hook were what sticks out for him from that first season. Winning the first game the team ever played, by a score of 5-1, also brings a smile to Mann's face.
The smiles and laughter were prevalent as different players showed up with souvenirs and mementos from those diamond days gone by. While the hair has gotten shorter, has been highlighted with a touch of grey, or has disappeared altogether, the tales of baseball exploits past grew only taller on this day.
The former players joked how challenging Wager's practices could be and that he was a stickler for players wearing their uniform properly and treating the game with proper respect. No swimming the day of the game was the rule with a soda and a bag of chips at the American Legion being the reward for a great effort in a game or practice. It wasn't unusual to find half of the team at Wager's house or in his pool after a game.
" Oh, he loved it," said Marie Wager when asked if Dave knew what he was getting himself into when he volunteered to start the team. " They were his kids. You ask some of these guys, he was like their father."
" He was a father to all of us but I was lucky enough to go on vacation with him and Marie for a week every summer," recalled Martinez. " He was just real special."
Martinez joked that he would come up with all kinds of different bats that he was going to use in the game but Wager always had other ideas.
" I would find all these bats that I thought were really neat and he would never let me use them," Martinez smiled. "
He made me use that original bat that they bought when they started the team back in 1948." " The year I won the batting title I made him fix it for me after I cracked it," Martinez recalled, his voice now cracking a bit as well. " He disguised it. It was illegal but he fixed it so I could finish out the season with it and I won the batting title. It went from where I didn't want to use the bat to where I couldn't play without it."
" I still have that first bat that Dave bought for Little League back in 1948," Martinez said.
Mike Greco was another former Eagles player that was affected by Wager's presence.
" You wanted to be like Dave," Greco said. " In fact, many of us tried to walk like him. He was like a John Wayne -type figure. You were always looking for approval from Dave. If you got that approval, you were a Rhinebeck Eagle."
Another former player, Bill Dowden had these words to say about Wager.
" Dave taught us lessons that we carried on all through our lives. It was just a great experience to be a Rhinebeck Eagle."
Mann drew a laugh from the crowd when he said that he is still playing ball today in a league where 5-of-7 teams are sponsored by funeral homes but then got serious in his closing remarks about Wager.
" I want to thank everyone who made this day possible," Mann said. " Dave sure enriched our lives and we sure had a great time. Dave always stressed sportsmanship. You wanted to win, but you still wanted to have a good time."
Marie Wager said that she was sure that her husband would have approved of the afternoon's festivities.
" I want to thank everyone who was supportive in honoring Dave in this manner," she said. " I know that, if he was here, that he'd be very proud and honored."
