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In what has quickly become an early summer tradition, the Hudson Valley Renegades of the New York Penn League hosted hundreds of Catholic school children in their annual “Home Run for Catholic Schools” night June 24 at Dutchess Stadium in Wappingers Falls. On the scoreboard, the Renegades defeated the Brooklyn Cyclones 6-3. But the real winners were Catholic school children who got to start their summer vacations in style. Big baseball fan Cardinal Dolan was part of the festivities in which Catholic school kids were center stage. Matt Baldwin, an eighth-grader at Holy Trinity School in Poughkeepsie, got to throw out the ceremonial first pitch because his essay, “How Baseball Helped Racial Integration in America,” was the winner of an annual contest held in conjunction with Homerun for Catholic Schools. Students proudly marched behind their school banners during a pre-game parade. St. Joseph’s School, Kingston, performed the “The Star Spangled Banner” while St. Joseph’s student Mikayla Diacovo sang “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch. After that, students from St. Stephen-St. Edward School, Warwick, led the crowd in a spirited rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.”
