The Story of Pierre Bernard & Summer Baseball in Nyack
Pierre Bernard, who formed the Clarkstown Country Club in Nyack, was an unusual and inventive man. In addition to starting a westernized form of yoga in America, he owned elephants on the club property in South Nyack and started Rockland County’s first airport. Even more remarkably, he built a Sports Centre on a hilly property in Central Nyack that seated 3,500 when it opened and 8,000 when it closed. To top it off, he installed lights for night games, even before the Major Leagues did.
Bernard had a passion for baseball. He funded a semi-pro team, the Nyack Nighthawks, and built a diamond on the club property. The Sports Centre began hosting baseball in 1933, followed by boxing, wrestling, and other events. Unfortunately, the Sports Centre was not a moneymaker. In 1936, in an uncharacteristic fit of desperation, Bernard formed an alliance with a Florida company hosting dog racing. Betting on dog racing was quasi-legal in New York. Soon, legal authorities closed the operation for good after a few weeks. The Sports Centre never reopened.
“The Clarkstown Country Club Sports Centre is one of the finest fields I have ever seen. Rockland County has something to be proud of, and there is no reason I can think of why it should not be a huge success.”
General John J. Phelan, Chairman, Athletic Commission of the State of New York
Nyack Baseball
Baseball did not appear in the local press until 1887. Although baseball must have been played earlier, it was not organized. The Nyack Baseball Club formed in the late 1880s, playing against other area teams. By the turn of the century, baseball leagues formed. A baseball fundraiser featuring the Sky Pilots against the Saw Bones for the Nyack Hospital was held on October 1, 1904, at Nyack’s Athletic Field, likely across the street from the hospital.
Pierre Bernard
Much has been written about the complex individual named Pierre Bernard. In a nutshell, Bernard, the guru of yoga in New York City, became extremely popular with his westernized version of Hinduism and yoga. He came to Nyack in 1918, buying the old Nyack Country Club in Upper Nyack. Bankrolled by the Vanderbilts and other NYC elites, Bernard then purchased the Stephen Rowe Bradley farm in South Nyack in 1922. Bernard controlled 170 acres in Nyack. Named the Clarkstown Country Club, members performed circuses every summer. Bernard expanded his holdings to include a zoo complete with performing elephants. With an interest in flying, he launched Rockland County’s first airport. On top of everything else, Bernard loved baseball.
Baseball at the Clarkstown Country Club
Bernard organized coed, hardball baseball games in 1920 in Upper Nyack, near what is now the Nyack Field Club, drawing the ire of Village President Frank Crumbie for playing on Sundays. When he did not have enough players, he drafted employees and their families. Dubbed the Mechanicals, the team almost always won against the home team, the Aristocrats. Bernard himself pitched for the Aristocrats, throwing a submarine-style pitch. In a creative mood, the team dressed in drag for a game.
In 1922, to elude Upper Nyack’s blue laws, Bernard built a diamond on the South Nyack Bradley estate. He hired local talent, including a midget second baseman, “Butts” Thomson. He added bleachers and a grandstand and charged 50 cents admission. His team, dubbed the Nyack Club, won 25 out of 30 games against teams like the House of David, Brooklyn Blue Sox, East New York Howards, and the Haverstraw Cuban Giants. At season’s end, the newspapers hailed Bernard as the local Baseball czar.
In 1925, Bernard took a step back. He had lost money for several seasons as president and chief benefactor of the Nyack Athletic Association, the sponsor of the local semi-pro team for the last four years. However, big-time baseball remained in his dreams.
An Improved Diamond in South Nyack
In 1932, Bernard rigged up lights and a grandstand seating 750 at the South Nyack diamond, one of the first to set up permanent light poles for night baseball. In the season opener on July 11, the local champions, the West Nyack Red Sox, played Nyack under the management of “Ski” Wilson, known as “Jigger” Graham in Nyack. William Mott, the Mayor of Nyack, threw out the first ball. However, Nyack lost the game.
Traveling teams, lured by lights, came regularly that summer, including the Detroit Clowns. Bernard enlarged seating to 2,000. Any charitable organization could book the diamond at no cost. One night that summer, Major Jimmy Doolittle flew over the field in an airplane. His close flight over the field excited the baseball fans and players. Bernard took the flight as an omen. His dream became for an even bigger and better baseball field.
Leveling a Hill for the Sports Centre
Bernard bought an 11-acre uninhabited hilltop property from the Brush estate in the winter of 1933 during the heart of the Depression. He hired teams of unemployed local workers to level the property. Using some 1,800 cases of dynamite, workers blasted away at rock ledges. Compressed air drills, diesel-powered shovels, and earthmovers removed the rock. Bernard even used his elephants to haul boulders. The work went slowly, but finally, a level plateau between The Nyack Turnpike (Route 59) and Waldron Avenue (then called Towt Avenue) emerged. The playing field measured 420 x 550 feet.
The Sports Centre had a seating capacity of 5,000 with parking for 2,000 cars. Equipped for both day and night events, the Centre included dressing rooms, showers, lavatories, and an indoor and outdoor café adjoining the park. One hundred and twenty-five 1,000-watt lamps mounted on sixty-feet-tall steel towers provided night lighting. The invention of incandescent lighting provided a means to light night sports in the 1930s. Major league baseball held its first night game two years after Bernard. Large amplifiers provided sound from the field and booth.
Bernard eventually expanded the arena to hold even more people, with more parking, a raised platform for smaller events, new roads, and expanded parking.
Opening Day
Bernard’s elephants carried the Nyack Nighthawks onto the field. Jack Sharkey, the heavyweight boxing champion of the world at the time, threw out the first pitch. His first toss missed, but the second found the catcher’s mitt. Vendors sold peanuts and near beer, allowed under Prohibition rules. Nyack and Rockland County’s elite attended, including politicians, policemen, postmen, and even a state supreme court justice. CCC members manned the ticket booth. It was a complete success, except the Nighthawks lost to the Brooklyn Winchesters 6-5.
1933 Season
The balance of the 1933 season was filled with a wide variety of sporting events. For example, on September 12, 1933, games at the Sports Centre dominated the Journal News sports section. The paper reported that The Black Yankees lost to the House of David 5-3. Teams from the Rockland-Bergen league announced their playoffs at the Centre featuring Piermont Field Club versus Pearl River and Blauvelt against Hillsdale. To top it off, Pierre Bernard enlisted a local soccer match between Letchworth Village and Pearl River Legion.
Boxing matches, in addition to baseball, figured into night events. One such boxing card headlined a local Piermont welterweight against the Fargo Flyer. Wrestling also proved popular. Postmaster General James Farley attended one match but without President Franklin Roosevelt, as had been announced.
Just as baseball ended, football teams from the Rockland County Football League began.
The Baseball Game of the Century
In the depths of the Depression, local authors Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, famous for their play The Front Page, cooked up a scheme to hold a charity baseball game in the Sports Centre with city celebrities. The press dubbed it the “baseball game of the century.” In early November 1935, on a cold day, a motorcade of limos, buses, and cars led by a police escort arrived at the Sports Centre. Broadway stars, journalists, playboys, and showgirls joined in.
The Nyack Eagles, managed by Hecht and MacArthur, faced the 21 Club Hangovers. A Fox newsreel team captured the affair. A brass band met the crowd, and Bernard’s elephant circled the field twice, one of them carrying Billy Rose, the well-known Broadway composer. Helen Hayes, married to Charles MacArthur, led the local cheering squad. Humphrey Bogart and tennis star Bill Tilden led the Hangovers. No one really knew the final score or who won the game. It was all in fun. Oom the Omnipotent, as some in the media dubbed him, pulled off one of the most noteworthy publicity coups in Nyack history.
Seeking Profit
In 1936, after the Nyack Nighthawks failed to draw big crowds, Bernard opened with the Black Yankees semi-pro team. This team also failed to draw an audience despite adding free fireworks and parking. By June of 1936, Bernard rented out the Sports Centre to the Heller-Acme circus, which included his elephants.
That event also did not turn much profit, so Bernard tried donkey ball, in which all players except the pitcher and catcher played sitting on a donkey. To pick up a ball, a player had to dismount and hold the donkey with a tether. Of course, donkeys being donkeys, kicked, bucked, and threw players to the ground. It seemed a lot of fun, even to seventeen-year-old Pete Seeger, who had grown up at the club.
Dog-Racing Track
Needing funds, Bernard turned to greyhound racing, then a popular sport that drew big crowds only five miles away in Orangeburg. The move puzzled many of his adherents and local citizens. Betting on dog racing was quasi-legal at best, using a system called “options betting.” Track patrons would join the kennel club for the evening, making them “friends” for the night. Gambling among “friends” was legal. Bernard enlisted a shady partner who had operated dog-racing tracks in Florida. The new organization, called The Nyack Kennel Club, sold public shares, claiming that greyhound racing was legal. Judges ruled otherwise.
In the middle of ongoing litigation, Bernard plunged ahead. He renovated the Sports Centre with a new sand oval. On October 1, Bernard opened his dog track to thousands of excited fans who bet wildly. After the eighth race, thirty deputy sheriffs and state troopers appeared and closed the place down. Two track workers were arrested for bookmaking. Despite the raid, the track continued to run. However, on September 12, when the district attorney, state, and local police showed up, the crowd of 8,000 patrons was sent slinking away.
A Sad Legacy
Dog racing was over, and the Sports Centre, mired in litigation and liens, never reopened. Because of liens, Bernard could not even sell the property. In 1960, after his death, the Nyack Housing Authority built 88 units of affordable housing, the Waldron Terrace apartments, on the grounds of the old Sports Centre.
In three short years, Central Nyack had gone from a large-scale Sports Centre to a weedy lot. Still, for a time, the light towers of the old Sports Centre survived at the old Nyack High School field on Midland and Sixth Avenue.
Note: Many of the photos may be found in Life at the Clarkstown Country Club, reprinted and available from the Historical Society of the Nyacks.
Mike Hays is a 38-year resident of the Nyacks. He worked for McGraw-Hill Education in New York City for many years. Hays serves as President of the Historical Society of the Nyacks, and Vice-President of the Edward Hopper House Museum & Study Center. Married to Bernie Richey, he enjoys cycling and winters in Florida. You can follow him on Instagram as UpperNyackMike.
Editor’s note: This article is sponsored by Sun River Health. Sun River Health is a network of 43 Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) providing primary, dental, pediatric, OB-GYN, and behavioral health care to over 245,000 patients annually.
