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Local Jewish Softball Leagues
Back in Play in 2021
M JARRAD SAFFREN | JE STAFF playing since he was 4. He
gets to compete, high five,
uch like Major sweat and make fun of guys
League Baseball, who make bad plays. Plus,
the two
big since the Shir Ami team is 10-2
Jewish softball leagues in the going into the playoffs, Leon
Philadelphia area struggled to gets to win, too.

“Then we go out to eat, have
play a 2020 season.

Due to the pandemic, the a couple drinks and we go
Main Line Synagogue Softball home,” he said. “Then we do it
League finished a six-game all again the next week.”
The Main Line League has
regular season with no playoffs,
according to Commissioner teams from Montgomery,
Scott Waterman. The Delaware Delaware and Philadelphia
Valley Synagogue League counties. The Del Val League
didn’t even have a season, per stretches across similar
territory, just with Bucks
Commissioner Ken Sherman.

But in 2021, much like MLB, County replacing Delco.

Last year, both leagues
the middle-aged man pastime
faced the same issue into
is back in full.

The Main Line League has late-June: Suburban townships
11 teams, three more than wouldn’t open their fields. As
last year, playing a nine- the lockdown ended, with no
game season plus playoffs. vaccine yet available, the men
The Delaware Valley League could either risk COVID and
had 18-21 teams in a typical play with heavy restrictions,
season before 2020. This year, like masks and social
18 teams and more than 400 distancing in the bench area,
players agreed to come back or just not play.

Enough Main Line players
for a 12-game regular season
decided to play in a smaller
and playoff tournament.

Most of the players in eight-team league; while Del
both leagues are vaccinated, Val guys just scrapped the
according to the commissioners. season.

“If we could have a season
That’s why they agreed to
last year, we were going to
come back.

But that wasn’t the only have a season,” Waterman
reason. For middle-aged men said.

Sherman said that, even by
with careers, families and lives
filled with responsibilities, mid-summer, he didn’t have
playing softball on summer enough open fields to organize
nights as the weather cools off a full schedule.

On the Main Line, nobody
might just be heaven.

Todd Leon, 47, is the captain got sick in 2020, according to
of Del Val’s Shir Ami team out Waterman. In the Delaware
of Newtown. The insurance Valley, most of the players did
lawyer can’t even remember get sick ... with boredom.

By the winter, Del Val
how long he’s been playing in
players were blowing up
the league.

As he described the Sherman’s phone about the
experience, he gets to keep 2021 campaign.

“What are we going to
playing the game he’s been
PHOTO BY ERIC PATENT
The Delaware Valley Synagogue League is back this summer after a COVID-induced hiatus in 2020.

do?” he recalled. “They were
chomping at the bit.”
“I was getting texts
weekly,” Leon added. “When
are we going to start batting
practice?” Both leagues started
between April and early May
to allow more guys to get
vaccinated, according to the
commissioners. But once they
opened the season, it felt like
2019 again.

They were just a bunch of
middle-aged guys going out
and playing ball. Township
rules didn’t even require them
to wear masks or maintain
physical distances anymore.

“The world
changed quickly once the vaccinations
happened,” Sherman said.

“The idea that we’re able
to provide this activity is a
blessing.” With the playoffs coming up
in both leagues, it feels like
2019 in the standings, too.

Leon’s Shir Ami nucleus is
in its sixth or seventh year
together. Some of those guys
use bats with their names
engraved on them.

In other words, they are
serious. And in their 10-2
regular season, the Newtown
boys outscored opponents by
more than 100 runs. They enter
the eight-team playoff field as
the favorite to win the title.

On the Main Line, Beth
David Reform Congregation
in Gladwyne is going for its
15th championship in 16
years. Led by ace pitcher Rob
Pearlstein, the Beth David
team is undefeated going into
the postseason.

“His ball spins,” Waterman
said of Pearlstein.

More importantly, both
leagues are on solid footing
again. Waterman expects even
more players and teams to
sign up for 2022.

This middle-aged man
pastime dates back decades,
and now it looks likely to go
on for decades more.

Sherman, 61, a member
at Congregation Beth Or in
Ambler, went to the bar and
bat mitzvah celebrations of
his teammates’ children back
in the day. Now, Leon is doing
the same thing with his Shir
Ami teammates.

“Not only are the guys on my
team some of my best friends,
their wives have become some
of my wife’s closest friends,
too,” Leon said. l
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