There was $450 left in the team’s account and no games left to play. Ever. An all-Saturday-afternoon party would put a proper end to it all.
The Webster Huskies baseball team was no different from countless other teams in countless other towns. The Huskies had their roots in Webster Little League as a 10-and-under All Star team, the core of which, eight years later, was still together. They played North Coast and Babe Ruth schedules. They won more than their share. And, like countless other teams from countless other towns, never really thought it would end.
They were the Black Raiders playing North Coast, Cooperstown rules, 70-foot base paths. As an underage team playing 12U, that first season was memorable for all the wrong reasons. They failed to win a game. Actually they did win one, when a team from Canandaigua wound up a player short and had to forfeit a game.
“And we were thrilled with that,” said Cindy Casilo, the mother of the centerfielder. Surprisingly there were no problems keeping the team intact. “They became such good friends. That’s why they stayed together.”
The payoff came the following season when the Black Raiders rode off into the North Coast League sunset with a 12-1 record. It was on to Babe Ruth ball, an uneventful season spent as the Mariners came before the Huskies were born.
The unifying force behind the Huskies was coach Dennis Long. The oldest of four brothers growing up, Long first coached as a substitute for his father with an 8 and under team. He was 12. Dennis won that game was hooked. He became the coach you’d want your kid to play for.
“I always said, ‘It was their team, I just coached.’ Each year we’d lose a player and picked up another. We knew the core. Ones who didn’t fit in, moved on.”
Playing time was not an issue. “We had twelve on a team,” said Long. “Everybody played the same. We had some winter practices. But if you had something else, you had something else.”
That allowed guys whose avocations included hockey, golf, soccer and lacrosse, an opportunity to play baseball too. And they kept coming back.
2007 was the big year. With a good team, the Huskies lost their first game in the double elimination playoff format and needed to win out for the Babe Ruth title. They had two pitchers and wound up playing seven games in ten days. The semifinal game against Penfield had to be replayed when the only umpire working that day went down after taking a foul tip to a sensitive area. The Union Hill ambulance came for the victim, cutting short a Huskies’ rally.
