_________________
CommuNIty uPDAtE Infections as of April 18
7,997
Infections as of April 11 7,837
$1.00 $1.00
bellmore
________________
HERALD
Friends Don’t Let Friends Overpay
DEADLINE APRIL 30TH
Calhoun set for playoffs
lady Sharks win championship
Page 5
Page 7
Vol. 24 No. 17
THE LEADER IN PROP ERTY TAX REDUCT ION
18/21 itc FG Demi Condensed
Sign up today. It on ly takes seconds. Apply online at mptrg .com/heraldnote or call 516.479.9171
Hablamos Español
Page xx
Maidenbaum Propert y Tax Reduction Gro up, LLC 483 Chestnut Street, Cedarhurst, NY 11516
APRIl 22 - 28, 2021
Fall festivals set to return in September By ANDREW GARCIA agarcia@liherald.com
Alyssa Seidman/Herald
tHE RIDES ARE only part of the fun at the annual Merrick Fall Festival, hosted by the Merrick Chamber of Commerce, which was canceled last year. This September, both the Fall Festival and Bellmore’s Street Festival will be back on.
Around September of last year, Bellmore and Merrick were unusually quiet because of the already months-long pandemic. The hamlets went without their annual festivals, which attract hundreds of local vendors and tens of thousands of visitors from across Long Island. The Bellmore Street Festival, hosted by the Chamber of Commerce of the Bellmores, and the Merrick Fall Festival, hosted by the Merrick Cham-
ber of Commerce, are boons to the business community every year — besides providing fun with rides, food and entertainment to so many visitors and residents. This year, the sights of the carnival rides, the sounds of the crowds and the smells of the food trucks will return in September. While there may be some changes — and the chambers’ plans are still being developed — the festivals should look much the same as in years past. Continued on page 3
Recognizing an unsung women’s baseball hero By REINE BEtHANy agarcia@liherald.com
A much-loved but unsung local hero is about to be inducted into the New York State Baseball Hall of Fame. Mary Pearl Watts (1930-2007) was affectionately known as “Mickey.” She grew up in Merrick, married Patrick Stapleton at age 22, mothered six children, fostered dozens of newborns and was a grandmother to 11 and great-grandmother to four. But before marriage and family, there was baseball. Girls on organized teams in the 1940s usually played softball, and girls with baseball-crazy
brothers often played a little bit of everything. Watts was the catcher for her four brothers when they practiced pitching. She and her sisters unhesitatingly joined pickup neighborhood ball games. “We were very athletic,” said Lucy “Unkie” Watts Genova, 89, Mickey’s sister. “When younger, we played football with the boys. It was helter-skelter, and we just went out and did it.” In 1946, at age 15, while a sophomore at Wellington C. Mepham High School, Watts became the catcher for the Freeport Forest Jewelers. It was a club in the American Girls Baseball Conference, which operated
S
he was a pretty tough lady — in a good way. DEBoRAH DEFINo Daughter, Mary “Mickey” Watts in New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey (see box, Page 4). The Jewelers (often called the Jewels) competed against the Arthur Murrays, the Hollis BBCs, the Clover Girls and the Nutmegs. Watts’s name ap-
peared in dozens of local sports articles, including in the Freeport Nassau Daily Review-Star. “Mickey Watts was the big gun Saturday night in the Jewels attack as she collected half of the Freeport hits,” the paper reported. “Mickey Watts, who is batting .417 and leading the team, drove out the first home run of the season . . . Mickey
Watts, diminutive catcher, then singled in two runs . . .” The Clover Girls led the league from 1946 to 1948, while Watts played for the Jewelers. When the Clover girls became the Hostess Girls in 1949, Watts joined the team. So did Lucy, at second base. “If we weren’t playing a Continued on page 4