Four sporting events are on tap for the coming weekend — Paddlers for Humanity’s Montauk Point to Block Island paddle and the Southampton Village Ocean Rescue squad’s long-distance swims at Cooper’s Beach Saturday morning, the Artists and Writers Softball Game at East Hampton Village’s Herrick Park that afternoon, and Ellen’s Run at the Southampton Intermediate School on Sunday morning.
The longest-lived — by far — of these annual fund-raisers, is the Artists-Writers Game, whose origins have been traced to 1948. Where it was first played has been lost to history, but, according to a timeline that accompanied a Guild Hall show not long ago that featured artists and writers who had vied in what became known as “The Game” over the years, “it was played somewhere that year by a group of artists who included Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Philip Pavia, and Jackson Pollock.”
Wilfrid Zogbaum’s front yard in Springs played host to the game in 1954 — the year that Pavia, a slugging sculptor with a sense of humor, was fed not one, but two disguised grapefruits (the first by Kline, the second by Elaine de Kooning) and a coconut (by “the treacherous” Esteban Vicente).
In a 1991 Star interview, he said, “When I hit the coconut, which was shaved and painted with all the stitching and the Spaulding trademark, it was like fireworks! The Fourth of July! It splattered all over . . . the kids ran out and ate the pieces. It was a wonderful joke. . . . We played like the old Brooklyn Dodgers then. You know, runners on first and second and somebody hits a home run and passes the ones ahead of him? Girls, lots of them, played. They didn’t care, they ran backwards sometimes. It was the start of the feminist movement, they began to make the rules. You can quote me. But we had a lot of fun.”
Skills on both sides have sharpened as time has passed, and now the annual agon’s combatants usually go at it toe-to-toe. The Paletteers brushed the Scribes off 15-9 in last year’s meeting, thus extending their lead to 18-15-1 in the Clinton era, and to 6-4 in the past decade. The year before, the Writers, who had been trailing 18-2 going into the bottom of the ninth inning, came through in storybook fashion to win 19-18.
Saturday’s game begins at 2 p.m., preceded at noon by batting practice. East End Hospice, the Retreat, the Eleanor Whitmore Early Childcare Center, and Phoenix House are the beneficiaries. The same-as-it-ever-was donation is $10.
Participants in Saturday’s Southampton Village Ocean Rescue squad’s long-distance swims, which are to begin at 7 a.m., will have a choice, a flier says, of swimming one mile, a half-mile, or a quarter-mile. Competitors can register online through the Elitefeats website or at Cooper’s Beach the morning of the race. Milers and half-milers have been asked to arrive by 7 to check in; quarter-milers have been asked to arrive by 7:15.
“The swims will support S.V.O.R.’s extensive training, operational expenses, and essential services,” the flier continues. “Our complementary adult clinics focus heavily on ocean awareness, rip currents, entries, and exits, greatly improving swimmers’ abilities to deal with moderate to rough oceanic conditions.”
Those joining in Paddlers for Humanity’s 18-mile Montauk Point-to-Block Island crossing, which is to start at 6 a.m., have been asked to raise or donate “a minimum of $1,500 to participate.”
“Most paddlers raise even more,” the p4h.org website says, adding that “the all-volunteer nonprofit is dedicated to bettering the lives of children, with an emphasis on supporting innovative and comprehensive mental health programs, including early intervention outreach, resiliency, anti-bullying, and changing behavior through focusing on the positive. Plus, the P4H Catastrophic Fund supports families in crisis on the East End. . . . To date, Paddlers for Humanity has given away almost $2 million.” Fred Doss and Ed Cashin are the organization’s co-chairmen.
Ellen’s Run, a 5K road race in its 29th year the proceeds of which go toward the prevention and treatment of breast cancer among women who live on the East End and to the after-care of breast cancer patients here, is to be held at the Southampton Intermediate School Sunday. The race is to begin at 9, with warmups and a 50-yard dash for kids at 8:30. A photo of breast cancer survivors is to be taken at 8:40. It costs $50 to register online at bit.ly/3AfCjPe.
Dr. Julie Ratner, the race’s founder, said in an interview last week that Ellen’s “celebrates life and friendship,” and, to assure people concerned about the traffic, added that “you can definitely get to Southampton on a Sunday morning — it’s a piece of cake.”
