Documentary follows Danbury Westerners baseball team
NEW MILFORD FILMMAKER SPOTLIGHTS DANBURY WESTERNERS TEAM AND VOLUNTEERS IN DOCUMENTARY
Inspiration can strike in a variety of ways; it can burst forth in a moment or it can gradually build until it forces an individual to act. For New Milford resident Mark Pernerewski, it was a highway sign that led him to direct his documentary “My Boys of Summer” about the Danbury Westerners team.
Pernerewski said he had often driven past the highway sign on I- 84 advertising “Rogers Park, Home of the Danbury Westerners” since settling in the area in 2003 and often considered checking out the local baseball team, a member of the New England Collegiate Baseball League.
“Unfortunately, I was always on my way to a destination, so I never got around to it,” he said. However, his curiosity about the team was piqued again three years ago when one of his students at New Milford High School told Pernerewski about how his family hosts members of the Westerners team each summer.
“I was fascinated to hear the reality behind what I had imagined was a semi- professional, perhaps an independent league, team. He described how he had grown up with prospective major leaguers playing video games and wiffle ball with him and his older brother each summer. This put a human side on high- level sports that I had not expected,” he said. “I [ was] determined to find out once and for all what the Westerners were all about.”
Pernerewski said this led him to attend several ball games.
“I was amazed at the quality of the product the Westerners put together for the fans. A couple of hours before game time, Rogers Park was a sleepy downtown ball field with a few individuals putting up folding tables and raking the infield. By game time, it was an energetic, exciting, professional evening of baseball for the fans,” he said. “The quality of play that top college athletes displayed would please any knowledgeable baseball enthusiast, and my only question became why aren’t the
stands packed? I could not imagine a better way to spend a beautiful summer night.”
Pernerewski said he had an interest in documentaries and even started his own YouTube Channel,
Knowledge Investigations, where he created general knowledge videos in areas that interested him. “I realized that the Westerners could be the project to take my filmmaking to the next level,” he said. From there Pernerewski contacted Shelley Pitser, the host family coordinator for the team to pitch his film idea.
While the team’s 2020 season was canceled due to COVID- 19, the documentary was screened last week during the Mystic Film Festival. “My Boys of Summer” follows the 2019 Danbury Westerners season as a “fly- on- the- wall observation” from the “arrival of the players for their first practice together to the tearful goodbyes after the final out of the year” the director said.
He noted that the film also includes interviews with the players and volunteers that make the season possible.
“I hope it gives the viewer a sense of being behind the scenes and experiencing how much goes into putting a team together and allowing the players to develop in their potential careers, while giving the fans a fun experience. I did capture some awkward moments as the team of young athletes strove to find itself. Sometimes, there was even tension between the players and the volunteers, as in Chickengate,” Pernerewski said. He went on to explain that Chickengate was a controversy that occurred when the players adopted a chicken as their good- luck talisman which caused tension with a vegetarian Buddhist board member.
“The community of volunteers and loyal fans is the most dedicated bunch of people I’ve ever encountered in my life. Each one of them does what he or she does for the love of baseball and the desire to create a setting where the players can concentrate on the game,” he said. “While they were thrilled that I was documenting and recognizing their contributions, they had already been doing this for 25 years without anybody spotlighting them.”
Pernerewski noted that his film ends with an image of a sandwich board reminding fans that the Westerners will return in 2020, but that season never happened due to the pandemic. The director said that he thinks his film has garnered a better reception now due to the pandemic because “people are missing the things that they previously took for granted. I hope the pandemic provides the world with an opportunity for a reset of what people believe they need in life. Maybe we will learn to value experiences and togetherness again, rather than focusing on the acquisition of things. If my film can remind folks of this, I will feel that it has done its job.”