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Elko’s and Sons BowlingLanes recently held their35th Annual Bowling Ban-quet at St. Maria Goretti’sin Laflin. Each year the El-ko Family and the DupontParents Association honorthe young bowlers for theirachievements throughoutthe year.

Elko youth bowlers honored

Picture#3- Graduating Senior Bowler Patrick Dougherty with parentsPat and Rosemary Dougherty.

Picture #1- Guest Speakers and and the Elko Family:seated left to right: Rev Joseph Verespy, Pastorof Sacred Heart of Jesus Church, Dupont; Dupont's favorite son the Honorable Judge Fred Pieranto-ni and his wife Donna and Carmen Ambrosino, CEO of Wyoming Valley Alcohol and Drug Servic-es.2nd row: Neal Elko, Brian Elko, William Elko,Jr., Donna Kasa and William Elko.

Picture#5- Brothers Peter & Charles Kulick, between them, took home a total of eight trophies in-cluding the all Wyoming Valley League 1st half Champs- Champions Class B Handicap.

Alex Holtz struck out three.Wyoming Area threw out tworunners, meaning of the 39outs in the game 28 weremade in the field, with justone error charged, that on athrow by VV. Of those 28outs at least a half-dozen flatout took away hits. Outfieldplays by WA’s AdriennePryzbyla and VV’s BlayseCholish were jaw droppers.Like I heard people scream-ing “Oh my God, she caughtit.”

VV’s third baseman CaseyPearce looked like she couldplay third base in a hard ballgame. What a gun.

By the way, thePittston Area teamwas 1-13 and lost alot of mercy rulegames, but trustme, they were nowhere near as poora team as thatrecord sounds.The catcher Ma-rissa Nardone

would be a league MVP on awinning team.

Back to Wyoming Area,part of the credit for the WAfielding prowess has to go tocoach Stephanie Griffin,who was a heck of a pickerherself as a D-1 caliber shortstop at PA and worked theWarriors hard on fielding. Inan email she wrote about thatand the season.

“I was very proud of theseason our team had,” shewrote. “They worked hardthroughout and never puttheir heads down. We didhave a lot of tight low scoringgames. This league is filledwith great teams, it’s verycompetitive and as a resultyou get a lot of tight lowscoring balls games. We didfocus on defense this year;it’s what keeps you in ballgames.”

After a couple of schoolyears away from the highschool sports beat, I was putback on it out of necessitytoward the end of this schoolyear. Well, it didn’t take melong to goof up. In a list ofDistrict 2 track and fieldmedalists I overlooked twojumpers from Pittston Area.PA junior Jayson Crawfordplaced 4th in the long jump.For the girls team sophomoreCales Owens placed fifth inthe high jump. They bothwon medals.

While I was away from thesports beat the softball pitch-ing distance was moved backthree feet from40 to 43. It was agood move.

Back in theday a when apitcher like PA’sall-time greatNikki Kotulawas striking out14 a game thatmeant the fiel-ders had to make only sevenouts, or five if two were hitback to the circle. And be-cause pitchers like Kotulawere so hard to hit, a lot ofbatters bunted. Outfieldersfell asleep. Understandably,there wasn’t much of a premi-um put on fielding.

Now there are far fewerstrikeouts and that haschanged the game for thebetter. Fielding is paramount.

I was stunned by the qual-ity of the fielding at theWyoming Area-Valley ViewDistrict 2 3A championshipgame Wednesday at Mary-wood.

Man the kids on thoseteams can pick ‘em and throw‘em. Valley View’s pitcherGina Chieffallo is consid-ered dominant, but stuck outonly six, none over the lastthree innings. WA pitcher

THE SMILE FILESby JACK SMILES -jsmiles@psdispatch.com

Softball getsdefensive

While I was away fromthe sports beat thesoftball pitchingdistance was movedback three feet from40 to 43. It was agood move.

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Cleveland in on the bottom ofthe line score.Note under the names of the

teams on the line score is theword “BATT” which is shortthe battery, a baseball term forthe pitcher and catcher.Note the pitchers are Score

for Cleveland and that his re-cord going into the game was4-3, as indicated in parenthesis,and Sullivan for Boston whoserecord was 3-0.At retrosheet.org I clicked on

the game log for the ClevelandIndians in 1955 and looked fora game in Cleveland where theIndians played Boston andScore and Sullivan pitched.I found such a game in 1955,

but it didn’t fit the clues of thepitchers’ records or the score ofthe game.I looked in 1956 and there on

May 23 was another gamewhere Score and Sullivanpitched.Cleveland won the game 6-3.

Note on the photograph that itwas 6-0 after seven innings. AsGargone puts the “2” up in thebottom of the seventh, the topof the eighth is already in pro-gress and he knows this, be-cause he has written “Mossi”after the name “Score” on the“BATT” line. Not sure if youcan see this, but it’s there.I learned by looking at the

box score that Mossi relievedScore with one out in the top ofthe eighth.May 23 was a Wednesday.

The game was a day game. Ittook 2:39 to play. I don’t knowwhat time it started, but it wasvery likely at 1 or 2 o’clock.Let’s say that after the sev-

enth inning we were two hoursinto the game, so two hoursfrom one is three and two hoursfrom two is four, so the picturewas taken between three andfour o’clock that afternoon.By the way, La Torre’s wasn’t

going through the trouble ofrunning such a comprehensivescoreboard just to keep sportsfans informed.You can probably guess what

the board was for.

Before there were smartphones, before there were com-puters and an internet, beforethere was Sportcenter, heck,before there was even cable TV,baseball fans in Pittston couldfollow the progress of everymajor league baseball game inreal time on the baseball score-board at La Torre’s Pool Roomon South Main Street.Take a look at the scoreboard

pictured here. Mike Lizonitzscanned a negative to create thisdigital photo. He emailed it toBernie Stiroh of duryeapa.comwho in turn emailed it to me.Notice how John “Day” Gar-

gone is updating the scoreboardwith the information he’s get-ting from a Teletype receiver.At first glance it would seem

there is no way to tell when thephoto was taken.But a closer look reveals

there are two clues on the boardwhich immediately tells us thephoto has to be from 1955, ’56or ’57. Can you guess whatthose clues are?Take a look before you read

on.Okay, now, there are three

words on the scoreboard whichnarrow the date of the photo to’55, ’56 or ’57 – “Brooklyn”and “Kansas City.”The Brooklyn Dodgers

moved to Los Angeles after the1957 season. The PhiladelphiaAthletics moved to Kansas Cityafter the 1954 season. So thephoto has to be from 1955, ’56or ’57.After narrowing the photo

down to the three years1955-’56-57 from the clues onthe board and using the 2012version of the Teletype receiver,the internet, it is possible topin-point, not only the year, butthe exact day and to make apretty could guess at the time ofday when the photo was taken.The photo was taken on

Wednesday, May 23, 1956 mostlikely between three and fouro’clock in the afternoon.Look at the line score of the

game Gargone is updating byputting up two runs for theCleveland Indians in the bottomof the seventh inning. Note thegame is in Cleveland because

THE SMILES FILESLet’s play baseballscoreboard detective by JACK SMILES - jsmiles@psdispatch.com

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Bill Mecca won the EmanonCountry Club regular ClubChampionship with a birdie onthe second playoff hole of afour-player playoff Meccaforced the playoff after he threeputted the rain soaked18th aftera long rain delay.He edged out Tom Kerrigan,

TedMatthews and Joe Colemanwho all had a two day total of145. Those four along with LenColeman will represent Ema-non in the Coal Scuttle at CC ofScranton on September 29.

Championship Flight

1st - Bill Mecca 73-72-145

2nd - Tom Kerrigan 73-72-1453rd - Ted Matthews 73-72-

1454th - Joe Coleman 70-75-1455th - Len Coleman 71-76-147

1st Flight

1st - Ed O’Dell 79-75-1542nd - Rich Petrillo 77-78-1553rd - Dave Wisnosky 78-77-

1554th - Len Benfante 77-78-155

2nd Flight

1st - Mike Amitia 80-78-1582nd - Kevin McCracken 84-

75-159

3rd - Alex Brogna 79-81-1604th - Rich Barni 82-79-161

3rd Flight

1st - Mike Busch 86-81-1672nd - Mark Kolmansperger

85-83-1683rd - Jack Gilbride 85-84-1694th - Mike Matute 88-82-170

4th Flight

1st - Jack Linksky 93-76-1692nd - Jim Pethick 92-80-1723rd - Jack Vasil 91-85-1764th - Bob Kovitch 91-87-178

EMANON GOL F

Mecca wins Emanon championship

The second half race tightenedup with both Bassler Equipmentand Atlas Realty winning bothmatches this to tie for first placewith only three weeks remainingin the regular season. The Bass-ler boys are Doc Campanella,Mark Millington, Joe Chiumen-to and Ed Seprish.Mayor Joe carried the day by

making some super shots. TheRealtors are led by Gene Cardo-ni, Erald Biondi, Joe ZambettiSr. and Joe Zambetti Jr.Kudos to the Dyller Law Firm

for breaking into the win co-lumn.

Standings......................... Points

Bassler Equipment 6-2...... 83Atlas Realty 6-2 ................ 83Cuz’s Bar & Grill 5-3........ 68KWIK ’N EZ Market4-4 .. 82Roberts’ Repairs4-4 .......... 75Blandina Apartments 4-4.. 73Old Forge Chiropractic 3-5 67JetSurge Cleaning 3-5 ....... 66Dyller Law Firm 1-7.......... 55

YATESV I L L E BOCCE BAL L

Tight race with threeweeks remaining

but the high school sportscalendar says fall. Tomorrow isthe first PIAA official practiceday. If it feels as though girlssoccer season just ended, it did.Last year school year it was aspring sports. This school yearit’s a fall sport as mandated bythe PIAA.For years half the state

played spring girls soccer andhalf fall. The schools andleagues that wanted to stay inthe spring were worried aboutscheduling and referees. Look-ing at the schedule it looks likethe WVC is scheduling boysand girls teams against thesame opponents on the samenights home and away whenev-er they can.That means, if we count

cross country as two sports,boys and girls, there are ninesports on the fall calendar golf,girls soccer, boys soccer, girlscross country, boys cross coun-try, girls tennis, girls volley-ball, field hockey and football.Wyoming Area and Pittston

Area are scheduled to playeach other in official WVCevents in seven of the ninesports. They aren’t scheduledto play each other in field

Veteran Richard White, theChaplin of the local AMVETSchapter, got to see some of the1960s Olympics in Rome. Hewas in the Navy then aboardthe Sixth Fleet aircraft carrierthe USS Independence. Thecarrier was anchored off Italy.“The sailors were invited

free courtesy of the USO,”White said. “We took launchesinto port and then buses prob-ably about 30 or 40 miles tothe Olympics.”White recalls he got to see

two American gold medalistscompete. He saw MohammadAli, then Cassius Clay, whowon a boxing gold medal andRafer Johnson who won thedecathlon.But the Olympics were not

the highlight of his trip toRome. “The Olympics weregreat, but the bigger thing forme was meeting the Pope. Theship’s Chaplin was a CatholicPriest. He made the arrange-ments. That was one of thebest things that ever happenedto me.”White has home movies of

the visit with the Pope

Fall sportsThe calendar says summer,

hockey or golf.That’s been the case in field

hockey the last couple years,but it’s new to golf which forthe first time has gone to twodivisions. In the past there wasonly one golf level. This yearthere are two AAAA-AAAand AA-A, with PA in theformer and WA in the later.PA coach Len Benfante said

he might try to arrange anexhibition match with Wyom-ing Area later this week beforethe regular season starts. Thepast few years the WyomingArea and Pittston Area fieldhockey teams played an exhi-bition tied to a fund raiser. Ifthey do that again, that willmean a full slate of BridgeAward events for the fall sea-son. Below are the scheduledWVC games between thelocal teamsPA – WA WVC gamesAug. 21 G. tennis PA at WASept 15 B. X country(at GAR)Sept 15 G. X country(at GAR)Sept 17 Volleyball PA at WASept.21 B. soccer WA at PASept.21 G. soccer PA at WANov. 2 Football WA at PA

THE SMILES FILESby JACK SMILES - jsmiles@psdispatch.com

Richard White at the ’60 games RedMill defeatedSelensk’is 2- 1 to extend the first place leadthey have held most of the year.Guy Fasciana 37 and Dave Snell38 led the winners while RickLaneski had a one-over par 35with a eagle on the last hole.Adonizio’s swept Hoffman

Electric 3 - 0 and stayed in theplayoff picture. Mike Fereck 38and Rob Belza 39 led the win-ners and John Polak had a 38 for

Hoffman.Power’s swept Ashley Ma-

chine 3 - 0 with Clem Parulis 38and JimMcCannn 42 leading thewinners and Alex Brogna had a36 for Ashleys.O’Connor Plumbing edged

Bryan Construction 2 - 1 withJack Mayer 36 and John O’Con-nor 39 leading the winners whileJoe Farrell had a 41 for Bryans.

EMANON GOL F

Red Mill extends leadin Thursday League

Galli black belts

Newly-ranked black belts from Galli's Fighting Chance School ofSelf Defense are, from left, first row, Michael Abromavage, Wyom-ing; and Jordan Cicon, West Wyoming. Second row, Master LenGalli, Master Christina Ackourey and Master John Byrd.