Rev. Armitstead:

Doing God’s Work

Thru His Love Of Baseball

And not surprisingly, this minister of the Methodist Church for almost half a century has extended his love of our national pasttime to thousands of others in the true Christian spirit to add joy to their lives.

Reverend Armitstead has also shown himself to be a man of boundless spirit. Although he has been beset by serious medical problems in recent years, he has continued his interest in baseball, attending games at Shea Stadium regularly.

Despite his adversity, he has continue his pursuit of another avid interest, photography. Following his retirement in 1995 as a minister after 47 years’ service, the last 25 as pastor at the aptly named Community United Methodist Church in Jackson Heights, Armitstead embarked on a new venture as the enquiring photographer for the Western Queens Gazette. He has also served as a community liaison for this newspaper.

Motivated by his interest and affection for his fellow residents and local community affairs, the gritty religionist has continued to put out a column week after week despite being confined to a motorized wheel chair most of the time.

Not to be overlooked is the encouragement and assistance he receives from his devoted wife, Bianca, whom he married in 1951. They have three children: Nancy, a nurse; Allen, an Army major and John, director of pharmacy at the University of Kentucky Medical Center.

Although the reverend is a dyed-in-the-wool Mets fan, he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to interview a New York Yankees player about a year ago after he found out that the player, Paul O’Neill, was a member of the same church as the reverend’s son, John, in Ohio. The interview developed into a feature story which later appeared in the Gazette.

The reverend is looking forward, he says, to the subway series between O’Neill’s Yankees and the Mets at Shea on July 9th, 10th and 11th.

Although he doesn’t plan to be in attendance, he is also looking forward to this year’s annual Baseball Hall of Fame weekend July 24th through 26th. The highlight will occur on Sunday, July 25th, when former Met pitcher Nolan Ryan, all-time strikeout leader and author of seven no-hit games, will be inducted along with George Brett and Robin Yount.

Armitstead attended th Hall of Fame induction of the Mets’ greatest pitcher, Tom Seaver, in 1992.

"Tom was a franchise power pitcher who changed the Mets from the lovable losers into the formidable foes," he says affectionately. He said he’s also glad that Seaver has rejoined the Mets as a game announcer.

Armitstead feels particularly close to the Hall of Fame because an old friend, Edward Stack, is the baseball museum’s chairman.

Reverend Armitstead, the son of a minister, acknowledged in a recent interview that it was his love of people and his devotion to their spiritual health which explained his efforts to try to get as many of them as he could out to Shea Stadium from time to time to enjoy the excitement of a ball game.

This melding of his religious calling and love of baseball had been developed throughout his career as a minister as he was assigned to different churches.

It started with the first church he was assigned to in Commack, Long Island, Suffolk County, after being ordained as a minister in 1952.

He started his studies for the ministry upon being discharged from the Army in 1945 after two years of service, including three months as a prisoner of war in Germany.

Rev. Armitstead recalled that at the time, Carl Yastrzemski, a Suffolk native, was starring for the Boston Red Sox, which incidentally was the favorite team of young Armitstead when he was growing up in the 1930s. In 1989, the power-hitting first baseman was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

But in 1952, the newly-ordained minister, then 28, was playing shortstop for a team he had formed among his parishioners.

"I heard Yastrzemski was going to be in Commack for something or other, so I contacted him and asked him if he would stop by at one of our games," Armitstead remembered. "He was gracious enough to say yes and he and our players, and me, of course, really enjoyed his visit."

Some years later, Rev. Armitstead was assigned to a new church in Bay Ridge in Brooklyn when the Dodgers were a dominant force in the National League. One of their key players was Duke Snider, their homer-hitting center fielder.

Recalling that period, Rev. Armitstead said, "This excited me when I found that some Dodger players attended the church I would be serving, one being Duke Snider."

Like so many other Dodger faithful, the reverend was shattered when the team moved to Los Angeles.

"What a shock for a baseball freak," Rev. Armitstead said.

Needless to say, the baseball-crazed minister was overjoyed when the Mets were formed, built Shea Stadium in Flushing, just minutes from Jackson Heights, and started playing ball in 1962. Rev. Armitstead started attending games with close friend Bob Howard and it wasn’t long until Rev. Armitstead was organizing various group nights at Shea, getting on a first-name basis with team officials and becoming the team’s unofficial "official" photographer.

One such promotional event, International Week, grew out of the ethnic mixture of the reverend’s parishioners. As he explained, his church had instituted a four-language ministry—English, Chinese, Spanish and Korean—to reflect the broad diversity of nationalities that had come to make up the church’s membership.

Picking up on this change at the church, he says, "suggested to the Mets that they print their game schedules in four languages like the churches and I offered to provide people who could translate them."

The following year, the Mets introduced International Week, during which special nights were held for the various ethnic groups.

Later on, Mark Bingham, a senior vice president for the club, wrote in a "thank you" letter to Rev. Armitstead: "It seems as though International Week has been a part of your plans for baseball’s future for many years. Thank you for your dedication and loyalty to the Mets and for spreading the worked to the many communities and nationalities you work with."

Other special events which Rev. Armitstead initiated were "Methodist Night," an annual event attended by members of the United Methodist City Society. They came from New York City, Long Island and Connecticut and, beside enjoying the congeniality of seeing a game together, the opportunity also enabled them to raise some money for a camp fund for youths from their churches.

In his community, Rev. Armitstead organized a night at Shea for local residents and he was also involved in getting Chase Bank to sponsor a special night in cooperation with Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and the Mets. It has allowed thousands of youths to see a game for free. Speaking of the program Armitstead said, "It is most gratifying to see New York’s major league teams remember that ‘kids’ are important throughout the city’s five boroughs. Seniors and handicapped persons are not forgotten, either."

In recognition of the part Rev. Armitstead has played in organizing these special events to benefit children and others, and which have benefitted the Mets, he was twice presented with the "Spirit of the Mets" award on the field at a home plate ceremony at a game attended by thousands.

And he had the rare distinction of having his retirement acknowledged on the Shea scoreboard one evening, and to punctuate the lasting importance of the event, he even threw out the ceremonial first pitch that night.

But his most overriding relationship with the Mets perhaps has been his penchant for taking peoples’ pictures just for the joy and friendliness of presenting a print to someone.

"I’ve taken pictures of ticket takers, ushers, parking personnel, rest room attendants, scorecard vendors and vendors of hot dogs and ice cream," he says nonchalantly. "Also ball players, press, fans, police and fire personnel, and group sales personnel."

And all of this at his own expense.

"As a result," he continued, "The staff greet me, ‘Hi Scoop, any pictures today?’"

Strangely, this friendly extension of a personal hobby appears to have had the effect of giving this lifelong baseball fan a place in the Mets’ extended family.

Rev. Armitstead’s twin passions have also come together to involve him in one of the major annual events concerning baseball, Hall of Fame Day.

By some heavenly coincidence, a colleague in the Methodist Church, Edward Stack, is chairman of the baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York and also president of the Clark Foundation, which was founded by Stephen Clark, a Cooperstown resident and philanthropist. The foundation contributes millions of dollars a year to various charitable causes, included among them the United Methodist Church Society. The contributions, Rev. Armitstead said, go to health, education and religious organizations located around Cooperstown, and both upstate and metropolitan New York. Clark established the foundation through his connection with the estate of the Singer Sewing Machine founders.

The former Jackson Heights minister, describing the origins of his love of baseball says, "The Armitstead family was baptized into the baseball world by Rev. Johnson N. Armitstead." The family lived in Nashua, New Hampshire, where Austin was born and raised with his brothers, Paul and Donald, by their mother, Olive, who also participated in the baseball discussions which dominated the family’s attention.

As a youth, his preference was for the then-called Boston Bees, who later became the Braves, and his father often took them into Boston to see the games.

A major influence in his life was Birdie Tebbetts, a Nashua neighbor who was a catcher for the Detroit Tigers in the pre-World Wa II period. Through his acquaintance with Tebbetts he got to meet "in person" two of that era’s best Tigers players, Hank Greenberg and Rudy York, two of the leading homerun hitters in either league.

One of his most memorable days was attending his first All Star game "at old Braves Field in the 1930’s." He recalls that after the game he did "the heroic deed of hailing a cab" for Leo Durocher, then a shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals and later manager of pennant winning Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants teams.