Take On Life

Hi everyone,

Last week, I wrote a column about Rick Flannery, the Cal Ripken Commissioner of Danbury Youth Baseball. Flannery, it turns out, wants to start a local baseball program for kids with special needs in Greater Danbury.

The program is called Bambino Buddy Ball. It matches a special needs kid with a buddy, who helps the child catch the ball, hit the ball, throw the ball, run the bases, you get the picture.

Sounds good, right? You bet.

The local Buddy Ball program is open to special needs kids from age 6 to 18 who live in Danbury, Newtown, New Milford, New Fairfield, Brookfield, Bethel, Ridgefield or Redding.

Flannery plans to hold a free, three-hour clinic Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Rogers Park in Danbury to introduce Buddy Ball to interested kids and their families. Call him at 203-778-3611 for more information.

In Ridgefield, meanwhile, the Little League Challenger program has given kids with special needs a chance to play baseball for the last five-plus years.

The Ridgefield program draws kids from Ridgefield, Redding and Wilton, according to Bruce Yuen, the former Ridgefield Little League president.

Bruce shot me an e-mail after the Buddy Ball story ran to tell me about Ridgefield’s program, which is overseen by Garry Berger.

Suddenly, Greater Danbury has become a hotbed of baseball for kids with special needs. That’s great news for the dedicated folks who run these programs.

And even better news for the kids who play in them.

It’s not every day you get a marriage proposal. At least not in my world.

But last week, while I was working on a column at Village Crest Center for Health and Rehabilitation in New Milford, I met a very nice woman named Lucia.

Lucia, it turns out, has been married five times. As legend has it, she buried a couple of her husbands and divorced the rest.

I happened to be at Village Crest to write about Mary Casagrande, the center’s recreation director. Mary is putting together a one-day shopping boutique Nov. 16 for residents where every item – clothes, books, jewelry, you name it  – costs 25 cents. If you have new or nearly new items you’d like to donate, call Mary at (860) 354-9365.

But back to Lucia.

Mary was the one who introduced me to Lucia and told me about her five husbands.

“Maybe you’ll be next,” Lucia grinned in my direction.

Before I could respond, Mary pointed to my left hand to show Lucia my wedding ring.

“That’s OK,” Lucia said. “They come off!”

Hi everyone,

Welcome to the Take on Life blog, your perfect companion to my Take on Life column that appears three times a week in The News-Times and on The News-Times Web site.

OK, so now for the Ken Green connection.

For those of you who don’t know, Ken Green is a professional golfer who grew up in Danbury. In June, he survived a terrible RV crash that took the lives of his brother, girlfriend and dog. Soon afterward, doctors amputated the lower part of Green’s right leg.

Folks in Danbury threw a benefit golf tournament for Green last week and raised over $100,000, I’m told. Pretty amazing stuff.

A day or two after the tournament, I got an e-mail from the husband of my wife’s cousin – my cousin in-law, News-Times scribe Melissa Bruen tells me. Anyway, his name is Matthew and he lives in Baltimore with his wife, Lori.

So Matthew – he’s a Cincinnati grad and an architect by profession — sends me an e-mail telling me he liked a Ken Green column I wrote recently. Best of all, he tells me, Green gave him an autograph at the Kemper Open years ago.

“That solidified his status with me,” Matthew wrote.

Small world, huh?

After 18 years at The News-Times, it’s funny how many times Danbury has turned out to be the center of the universe. Or at least, six degrees of separation away from it.