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Vol. 33 No. 27
JUNE 30 - JUlY 6, 2022
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St. Agnes Bazaar makes its return
Men’s Health
ws!
Who needs an eye on the ball? Certainly no one on the RVC-based L.I. Bombers beep baseball team By ToM CARRoZZA tcarrozza@liherald.com
Imagine the fear of playing baseball with no sense of sight, instead having to trust your hearing and instincts to hit the ball, play the field and run the bases. That’s something the Rockville Centre-based Long Island Bombers do every time they step on the field — but for them, fear isn’t a factor. On June 25, the Bombers hosted other beep baseball teams from New Jersey, Boston and Philadelphia at Speno Memorial Park, in East Meadow, in the annual Beast of the
East tournament. Established in 2010, the tournament has given blind and visually impaired athletes the chance to compete at a high level. The large, heavy ball used in the sport emits repeated beeps that help batters track it and hit it. Pitchers are members of team that’s up at bat, which puts them in the unique position of wanting to give up lots of hits. The Bombers come from across Long Island, Queens and Manhattan to practice once a week at Reverend Morgan Days Park in Rockville Centre. Practice is especially important for bat-
Tom Carrozza/Herald
THE loNg ISlANd Bombers competed against three other teams with blind or visually impaired players at Speno Memorial Park in East Meadow last Saturday. ters and pitchers to sync up their timing and location. “You only pitch from 20 feet away, which is kind of crazy, and people ask why a machine can’t do that,” Bombers pitcher James Shortino said. “Every batter has a different swing and timing, and I have to know where each batter’s spot is, and the machine can’t do that.” Shortino, 66, has been with
the Bombers since they were founded in 1997. He grew up in Franklin Square, but recently moved to North Carolina, and made the trip north to pitch in the tournament last weekend. Joe “Lighting” De Jesus, 28, patrols left field for the Bombers. He has been with the team since he was 16 and the Bombers came to his camp for visually impaired athletes. De
Jesus was born with a rare hereditary eye disease called Leber congenital amaurosis, which affects about 1 in every 80,000 people and has left him mostly blind in his left eye. With a degree from St. John’s University, De Jesus now helps counsel visually impaired youth at Camp Helen Keller in Old Westbury. Continued on page 10
South Side grad is running across the country for a cause By ToM CARRoZZA tcarrozza@liherald.com
Rockville Centre native Greta Ohanian has already beaten cancer, and now the South Side High School alumna is embarking on a 4,000-mile cross-country run over the next month and a half during which she will tell her story and lend a hand at cancer centers from Baltimore to San Francisco. On Sunday, Ohanian and her seven-person team started their run from the Inner Harbor in Baltimore, the home city of the Ulman Foundation, which created an event called the 4K for Cancer. Ohanian and her teammates held hands in a “dedication cir-
cle” for those who are fighting or have fought cancer, as they will at each stop of the journey, and then dipped their toes into the Chesapeake Bay. Ohanian, 24, was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2015, when she was a senior in high school. She was a member of the cross-country team, and had noticed that her times had begun to slow. “I was trying in my races and workouts, but I was getting a lot slower,” she recalled, blithely adding, “It turns out I just had a couple of tumors in my body.” She underwent cancer treatment at Winthrop University Hospital, and has been cancer-
I
’m envious of her energy. She’s got enough energy for three people. dANIEl oHANIAN Greta’s father
free for six years. She has been involved in the St. Baldrick’s program, in which participants volunteer to shave their heads and donate to the cancer fund, since 2016. “She was profoundly affected by her own experience, but also
the experiences of those in the clinic,” Greta’s mother, Ginnie Ohanian, said. “They’re all rooting for each other, and everybody’s process affects the other patients.” The 4K for Cancer was first organized in 2001, by students at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and was acquired and expanded by the Ulman Founda-
tion in 2011 to include runners from all over the country. Since then, the event has raised more than $7 million for cancer research and treatment. Ohanian found out about the program on Facebook two years ago, and figured it would be the perfect fit for her, given her love of running and her experience Continued on page 12