History

The Beginning
The seeds of the Bulldog baseball team were actually planted on the golf course.  In 2005, Casey Janke was playing in a golf tournament with Efrain Gonzalez, Paul Stugis, and some other schmuck whose name escapes me now. While waiting for Efrain to show up, Paul mentioned that Efrain played baseball. Not softball, but real baseball. My (Casey's) interest was peeked to say the least. Real baseball again, instead of beer league softball. After chatting with Efrain the entire round, I was convinced to go check out one of there games and see if I was interested in playing. The ironic part was that Efrain was a catcher, my favorite position! Although I didn't check out a game that Sunday, I did get a call from Efrain on Monday, stating that he had taken a foul ball of his hand and was wondering if I was interested in giving it a shot with the then Cosmos (now Cubs). That had another guy who could catch, aka, Rabbit, but wouldn't mind giving me a shot. Of course the first game I went to had to be against the Padres, who had one of the best pitchers in the league (Maniocci). I was definitely a little rusty, both behind the plat and definitely at the plate, but kept plugging away for the weeks to come.

About three weeks into going to games and getting in some innings, I noticed that although the the Cubs had a real good pitcher in Yatsey and Billy, they could possibly use another one. So I got on the phone to my old friend who I had known since I was little and told him what was going on. He (Tim Cooley) was definitely excited and interested. Tim stopped by one of the games, and after catching the end of it had a little audition in front of a couple of the Cubs players. After taking a look at his velocity and movement, they gave him the nod to go get a uniform. Tim did well in his first outing, going a little over 4 innings and keeping the game close, an outstanding outing for his first one in over 20 years. Tim kept getting in some innings at pitcher and I kept getting in some innings at catcher, but we were both still a tad rusty. With a few games left in the season, Efrain came back and my role was diminished quite a bit.

Since I would like to play baseball and not sit the bench I started talking with John Scarpelli about setting up a new team for the following year, 2006. I remember catching John after one of his games, and before one of ours at Spencerport high school.  I could see the look in his eyes as I told him of my plans. It was something like 'Yup, heard this before, would love to see it, but I'm not holding my breath'. Which of course drove me even further to ensure there would be a new team the following year! I got on the phone to Tim and told him I had plans on forming my own team for the next year, even if we had to find people from the softball beer leagues! The season ended when the Cosmos got knocked out of the playoffs in the semi-finals. After that last game was when I decided to definitely go through with the new team as the Cosmos didn't really have a spot for me and kind of let me know that.

All winter Tim and I planned and organized, but the biggest issue was finding guys. I was getting neighbors, who were talking with others and by mid winter we had about 6 or 7 people interested, but not committed. However gold was struck one day when Tim's brother David decided to head back up here to New York. All of a sudden, the hunt for players was down to just a few as David's baseball contacts in the Rochester area were numerous. All of a sudden we were getting guys who had played college ball, semi-pro ball, and pro ball. Just take a look at the 2006 roster to find out who were founding members of the bulldogs team.

2006

More to come ............