Wayne, NJ July 2024

Let's Explore ... A Piece Of Our National Pastime

July Means It's Explore Time!

July is such a great month: School is out, vacations are in full swing, summer sports are everywhere and you have options on what you can do.  You want to hang by the beach or the lake? No problem. Read a book on your favorite lounge chair? Go ahead. Plan an extra vacation for somewhere unexpected? Yes, please. That’s just the beginning. Learn to cook over a campfire, finally jump off the high dive, throw a family BBQ, go see a car race, take in a ballgame, or have a catch with the frisbee.  I’ll take them all, and that’s the point.  This is July and July, in my opinion, is the least limiting month out of the year.  If you come out of July and say you were bored, you did something wrong.

In this issue, we will help start your July off with some things to explore.  We gave you the secret rundown on a secret resort in Austin that has everything for everyone.  So whether it is time for adventure, horseback riding, water sports, golf, an ATV tour or the lazy river, they got you covered.

We also gave you a couple of recipes perfect for snacking on your day trips and hikes. Then, just in case you can’t get away, we have presented you with a few recommended books that will take you away while reading them

Want to explore a few things while staying in the comfort of your home?  Well, we were lucky enough to spend time with Rich Domich.  Rich is our local connection to a slice of America’s pastime.  He was the producer of (and threw the batting practice on) The Baseball Bunch.  He met all the greats, threw most of them batting practice, is still friends with many of them to this day, and, most importantly, he let me try on the baseball glove he has…. which used to be Willie Mays’ glove!

We also shared with you the story of Doc Rolando, the inspirational man who runs the Masters Fencing Academy, in Wayne.  There he teaches people of all ages how to be a master foilist and after a devastating medical diagnosis, he’s also been teaching many people how to persevere.

Whether your July will be spent on the road or in your house, take advantage of it and don’t waste it.  After all, this all-access month only comes around once a year.  Enjoy!

July 2024

PUBLISHER

Phillip Barone | phillip.barone@citylifestyle.com

EDITOR

Don Seaman | don.seaman@citylifestyle.com

SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR

Officially Social | alison@officiallysocial.com

INTERN

Zach Gilbert | wayne@citylifestyle.com

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

Don Seaman, Pauli Reep, Sue G. Collins

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

John Agnello, Phillip Barone, Jack Drozd, The Baseball Bunch

Corporate Team

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Steven Schowengerdt

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER Matthew Perry

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF HR Janeane Thompson

AD DESIGNER Andrew Sapad

LAYOUT DESIGNER Kelsi Southard

PHILLIP

BARONE, PUBLISHER @WAYNELIFESTYLEMAG

city scene

WHERE NEIGHBORS CAN SEE AND BE SEEN

1: Lou D'Angelo Hosted The St. James of the Marches Knights of Columbus Charity Golf Outing 2: Old Friends gathered with new ones for a perfect day on the course 3: The Boys & Girls Clubs of Northwest New Jersey held their Great Futures Breakfast 4: Over 100 golfers came to the Picatinny Golf Club supporting the Totowa-based KOC council 5: The breakfast supported the Boys & Girls Clubs’ Neighbors in Hardship Scholarship Fund (NIHSF) 6: Their NIHSF enables struggling local families to remain working while their children are cared for 7: Nearly 100 people came together to help support a wonderful program for our needy children Photography by Phillip Barone

How You Live Your Life Matters

Diamonds Are Forever

Surrounded By Baseball Gods, Rich Domich Has Explored a Lifetime of Memories

ARTICLE BY DON SEAMAN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY THE BASEBALL BUNCH

Baseball is living history. Each pitch, each at bat, each moment shared on the field creates memories. For those who lived it, they may not remember what they had for breakfast yesterday, but they can tell you an exact pitch sequence in one particular time at the plate from 40 years ago.

There’s magic in baseball moments, and they’re not all just on the field.

For Rich Domich, this inadvertent baseball historian, the memories he’s lived among baseball immortals have built his own field of dreams.

It all began in San Francisco, where, as a young teenager, he’d found his way into working as a vendor at Candlestick Park back in the 1960’s. Back then, all he wanted was a Willie Mays model glove, one that retailed for about $80, an unapproachable sum for him at the time. He’d asked his boss if there was a way to get one at wholesale price –pretty novel thinking for a 14-year-old.

The next day, his boss brought him a package. Inside, there it was – a genuine MacGregor Willie Mays glove, made of kangaroo skin. “Oh my gosh,” he responded, dumbfounded. “How much do I owe you for this?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” he was told. The boss had asked the Giants’ equipment manager what could be done. Turns out, it was an actual Willie Mays glove, straight from the legend’s locker, where he kept many to give to teammates and others.

This wasn’t just a replica. This might’ve been the one where an actual triple had gone to die.

And now it was his. Magic.

Rich soon followed his dreams to Stanford where he began covering sports, chasing that dream all the way to NY for a spot with Major League Baseball Productions. It was there that he and a friend were given an opportunity for an unpaid internship as a production assistant for a kid’s baseball show they were planning in Arizona – all they had to do was get themselves there. They got themselves the cheapest reliable car they could find and took a “Route 66”type road trip to Tucson and never looked back.

This show would become the Emmy-winning Baseball Bunch , hosted by Johnny Bench. Rich eventually became a Senior Producer, and lifelong friends with people like Bench, Dusty Baker, and many others. He’d thrown batting practice to the likes of Willie Stargell, Mike Schmidt, and – “Good Lord”, says Domich – Ted Williams.

“Ted kept telling me to ‘throw harder’,” Rich recalls. “I’m throwing as hard as I can, and all I can think is ‘Please God, don’t let me hit Ted Williams.” Schmidt hit a line drive over his head that might’ve just killed him. Stargell hit the longest home run he’d ever seen.

Just another day at the office for a guy like Rich. And he never, ever stopped appreciating it.

“Imagine the impact it would have on a 14-year-old to get a baseball glove straight from your idol.”

“Dusty Baker is just a wonderful guy,” explains Rich. “After he won the World Series with the Astros, he must’ve gotten about 1,500 texts from people congratulating him. And because of who he is, he responded to every last one. That’s just who he is.”

It wasn’t just the players that became part of Rich’s circle. They had one segment that that involved Bob Costas getting into a proposed Yankee Doodle Dandy mascot costume, ripping off the head to say “Hey George (Steinbrenner) – play me or trade me!” Steinbrenner was not interested in any mascot for his team. Years later, Rich wondered if that was all just a ragged memory of a fever dream. Then he ran into Costas at an event recently. “Domo!,” Costas said, using his familiar nickname. Within 30 seconds, Costas pulled up the video from his phone of him in the costume. It’s 42 years later, and Costas still cherishes the memory.

The memories that Rich has about these days are legion. Why Bench learned lessons about autograph hunting, how Pete Rose approached scouting, and even a random encounter Dusty Baker had with Jimi Hendrix on a street once. The practical joke that Johnny Bench and Gary Carter pulled on Rich that he has framed, given to him by Bench.

Nowadays, this baseball lifer isn’t spending his time being pranked by Hall of Fame catchers, but that doesn’t mean his life has been any less charmed. He ended up in North Jersey, having bought his home from Kelly Ripa. One of the first people he encountered walking around his new neighborhood? None other than Phil Simms, who was working out with his son on a local high school field. Naturally, Phil came over and struck up a conversation with him.

Not bad for a kid from San Francisco who once had the good fortune of being in the right place, at the right time, with the right question for the right person. “Hey, can I get a Willie Mays glove at wholesale?”

“I’ll tell you one thing about that glove,” Rich boasts. “I don’t think I ever made an error with it.” Baseball is truly magic.

Gorgeous Community.

Spring

Learn how a move to Brightview will help you do both. Come meet our team and see how our resort-like amenities, services, and specialized support inspire bright, carefree days for residents – and peace of mind for families.

A Double Edged Sword

EXPLORING A NEW SPORT MIGHT JUST SAVE YOUR LIFE

ARTICLE BY DON SEAMAN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY JACK DROZD

Fencing, at first glance, is a simple sport. It’s you against one opponent. The first one to score five touches wins.

Even the best fencers around find themselves down 4-0 sometimes. Finding your way back from that is what proves their mettle.

Doc Rolando has faced 4-0 many times – and not only while he’s fencing. Doc has run the Masters Fencing Academy since 2008, and he attributes his success, both in fencing and in life, to simply having the bigger heart. It’s a lesson in persistence, in never giving up, no matter what’s in front of you.

The Masters program is renowned in the area’s fencing universe as the go-to place that will take your skills to the next level. Even if you just want to try it out without joining your school’s team – or if you’re an adult who’s always wanted to try it but never had the opportunity, it’s the place to see what fencing is all about.

“We’ve had kids come in and you could just tell by the way the walk in, we’d say ‘boy, this kid’s going to take some work.’ Then we work with him for a bit and all of a sudden something clicks and they rise to the occasion and they become this Uber fencer and actually a pretty good athlete - but don't ask them to throw a football don't ask them to dribble a basketball, that's not happening - but fencing enabled them to just rediscover themselves and realize that they don't have to be super athletic in order to be super successful. You can see it in their poise, the way they carry themselves.”

It's the commitment to his students and changing their lives in multiple ways that pushes Doc forward. It’s what helped get him through the toughest opponent he’s ever faced: prostate cancer.

“I noticed I was just feeling ‘off’ and sluggish back around October of 2022. Then I got a shocking diagnosis that it was prostate cancer,” he says. If you know Doc, who’s as high-energy and as physically fit as anyone you’ll ever meet, this could’ve upended his entire world.

But it didn’t.

Cancer was like any opponent. It was a competition. He was going to face it head on, take whatever it was going to give him, and fight back. This diagnosis wasn’t going to change his resolve, nor his commitment to his program.

“Most of the kids didn’t even know about it. My coaches did. They figured I’d take time away to fight this. But I wouldn’t. I was going to keep going as long as I could go. And I never missed time. It kept me going. You never take that for granted. When some of the kids would find out later what I was dealing with and still giving them lessons, they told me that they were ticked off that I’d ‘destroyed them’ while bouting during our lessons, but after they found out about it, it gave them the drive to rise up and compete even harder when they had their own bouts later.”

45 days of radiation treatments are hard to endure. It saps absolutely everything from you. After walking twenty feet to his kitchen he said felt like he’d run a marathon. Yet he never stopped coaching, never stopped training with his students. Since he’d been in such good shape, he  joked with his coaches that now he knew how an average human feels. Yet he went through it all undaunted, determined to live through it the same way he’d done everything, by persevering. He’d put his faith in God’s hands, that there was a reason to fight through this and lead by example.

I'll talk with anyone going through something like this. If it helps just one person, the question of "why did this happen to me?" has been answered.

Not everyone would go through the treatments he did without anesthesia, but that’s just Doc. He just didn’t want to lose any more time to this than was necessary. He wanted to be back out there, teaching late into the night without having to “come out of it.”

“As a fencer, I have blades coming at me all the time. You get numb to it,” Doc points out. “The doctor would say ‘are you sure…?’ Yep, I’m sure. Although there was one procedure that I went through I would’ve been willing to give up state secrets if they’d asked.”

But the important thing that Doc wants people to know – you can get through it. Fencing gives him his motivation to persevere, but everyone has their thing that will keep them going. It’s the positive mindset he subscribes to that he uses when he speaks with others about getting from diagnosis to living the rest of your life.

After going through all of this, he’s very open to talk with others who find themselves in similar situations. “I have conversations all the time with men in their 50s and 60s that are struggling with how to treat it, who to go to, and all that stuff. I might know them as a friend of a friend

of a friend who’d said ‘Oh, I know this guy who's going through it and maybe you should talk to him,’ and all of a sudden I get a call and we get to know each other and you know it puts their mind at ease when I get off the phone. I guide them through what I went through and how it’s beatable, especially if you have the right mindset.”

That right mindset has led him through prostate cancer treatments, reasonably no worse for wear. He’s fine now, for the most part, but as he says, you’re always hyper aware of what your body is going through and what could be next. It’s not a tooth that’s pulled and the issue goes away while you’re being treated. That’s why positive perseverance is key. Keep fighting that opponent, no matter what the score is. 4-0 is just an opportunity to show what a bigger heart is capable of overcoming.

Masters Fencing Academy holds its training sessions at Our Lady of Consolation Church, 1799 Hamburg Turnpike in Wayne. For information about the program, go to mastersfencing.com. If you’d like to talk to Doc about surviving prostate cancer, he can be reached at arolando@optonline.net. If anyone can help you through that, it’s Doc.

“All I thought was ... if cancer is a fencer, I know I’m kicking its butt.”

-Doc Rolando

Entry Doors

AND FIND YOUR PEACE GET LOST

Exploring The Lost Pines Resort and Spa

Just on the outskirts of Austin, nestled on 400 acres of luscious and sprawling countryside, this fun-filled resort does not disappoint. Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort and Spa is a family-friendly destination that offers an array of activities for all ages to enjoy.

Guests are transported to a simpler time where both adults and kids can be seen casually riding bicycles around the property or strolling along the Colorado River that hugs the resort. Open areas with yard games, outdoor game tables, sports courts and a mini golf course invite families to engage in activities that allow for quality time spent enjoying the outdoors.

Choose between an adventurous getaway or a serene escape, as Lost Pines Resort and Spa has something for everyone. Resort experiences include horseback riding, skeet shooting, archery, guided ATV tours, fishing, kayaking and more. Cool off poolside at one of the many pools, or float on the 1,000-foot lazy river. The expansive, 18-hole, 7,200 yard golf course designed by award-winning architect Arthur

Hills, allows golfers to enjoy the natural beauty of this championship course.

A Texas ranch-style resort wouldn’t be complete without animals. Visit the Lost Pines corral for daily meet and greets with longhorns, miniature ponies, miniature donkeys, goats, alpacas and pigs. Families can enjoy nightly movies on the outdoor movie screen. Scheduled kids activities are available day and evening throughout your stay. The expansive grounds allows guests to spend time exploring the activities on the property.

The resort offers a variety of dining experiences for the culinary enthusiast including six different on-site restaurants, each offering unique bites and beverages. Enjoy a farmto-table dining experience at Stories, where all food is sourced from local purveyors. They also offer an expansive selection of wines, scotch, and mixed drinks. For a unique dining experience, visit the renowned, exclusive 10-seat omakase, Sushi By Scratch, with Chef Philip Frankland Lee. This menu-free establishment boasts a private and unexpected experience that is sure to please. Advanced reservations are required and encouraged as dining spots fill up quickly. For a more casual dining experience, visit one of the other four on-site restaurants including Maverick’s Roadhouse, buffet style dining at Heartwood House, light bites enjoyed poolside at Old Buck’s Place or eat alfresco at Maude’s Bar and Terrace.

After a day of making memories, retreat to the newly remodeled and spacious rooms and suites. The views are breathtaking, and all rooms offer elevated amenities that invite relaxation. The Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort and Spa is the perfect vacation destination to recharge regardless of what stage of life you are in. For more information visit LostPinesResortandSpa.com

ADVENTUROUS GETAWAY OR A SERENE ESCAPE

Derek Vannelli, Agent 1212 Route 23 North Butler, NJ 07405 Bus: 973-838-0220 derek.vannelli.pa98@statefarm.com

KOOB S T O TAKEYOU AWAY

I ASKED MY EXPAT AND TRAVEL-SAVVY FRIENDS TO RECOMMEND BOOKS TO TAKE ME FAR AWAY. HERE YOU GO!

ARTICLE BY SUE G. COLLINS

Blue Latitudes

BY TONY HORWITZ

Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before. The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist travels to various parts of the world, following in the footsteps of explorer James Cook.

The Island of Missing Trees

BY ELIF SHAFAIT

It is 1974 on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chili peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows.

The Corfu Trilogy

BY GERALD DURRELL

Three classic tales of childhood on an island paradise -  My Family and Other Animals, Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The

Garden of the Gods by Gerald Durrell - are available in a single edition for the first time in The Corfu Trilogy

Just before the Second World War the Durrell family decamped to the glorious, sun-soaked island of Corfu, where the youngest of the four children, ten-year-old Gerald, discovered his passion for animals: toads and tortoises, bats and butterflies, scorpions and octopuses. Through glorious silver-green olive groves and across brilliant-white beaches Gerry pursued his obsession . . . causing hilarity and mayhem in his ever-tolerant family.

Cutting for Stone

BY ABRAHAM VERGHESE

Cutting for Stone is a novel written by Ethiopian-born, Indian-American medical doctor and author Abraham Verghese. It is a saga of twin brothers, orphaned by their mother’s death at their births and forsaken by their father.

The Museum of Innocence

BY ORHAN PAMUK

The author is a Nobel-laureate Turkish novelist. The book, set in Istanbul between 1975 and 1984, is an account of the love story between the wealthy businessman Kemal and a poorer distant relative of his, Füsun.

RO A D CHOW

FUN AND CREATIVE TRAVEL SNACKS GUARANTEED TO SATISFY EVERY TASTE PALATE IN THE FAMILY.

ARTICLE BY PAULI REEP

Planning to load up the family truckster and head out on an adventure? These easy-to-pack and satisfying snacks are a great way to keep growling tummies quiet while you’re behind the wheel. Grab the kids, prepare them together, and try not to eat them all before you hit the road!

DIRECTIONS:

1/ Preheat oven to 325°F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups quick oats

• 1/2 teaspoon salt

• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

• 1 cup peanut butter

• 1/4 cup honey

• 1/3 cup apple butter

• 1 large banana, mashed (1/2 cup)

• 1/2 cup dried cranberries

• 1/2 cup pepitas

• 1/2 cup raisins

2/ Combine all the ingredients into a large bowl of a stand mixer (or hand mixer). Mix until all the ingredients are combined and the dough is thick and heavy.

3/ Portion 1/4 cup mounds of cookie dough onto prepared cookie sheets. Use the back of a spoon to slightly flatten out into a cookie shape. (The cookies will not spread in the oven.)

4/ Bake for 16-18 minutes or until the edges are slightly brown. Cool cookies on the baking sheets for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

5/ Cover leftover cookies and store at room temperature for up to 5 days or 10 days in the fridge.

TRAIL MIX

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup puffed quinoa or puffed millet

• 1/4 cup unsweetened coconut flakes

• 1/2 cup whole roasted almonds

• 1/2 cup raw pepitas

• 1/2 cup raw cashews

• 1/2 cup dried banana chips (broken in half)

• 1/4 cup chopped dried mango or papaya

• 2 tablespoons candied ginger

• 1/4 cup dark chocolate chunks (or chocolate chips)

DIRECTIONS:

1/ In a medium mixing bowl, toss all ingredients together until evenly combined.

2/ Store in an airtight container for up to 1 month or in the refrigerator for up to 3 months.

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