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Rob Bibbiani: Time to Play Ball

Rob Bibbiani has a new nickname for the upcoming vintage baseball classic pitting teams from Essex, Chester, and Deep River against one another in a round robin tournament. The fourth annual vintage classic will take place on Sunday, Sept. 17 from 2 to 4 p.m. at Devitt Field in Deep River. Admission is free. The historical societies of the three towns sponsor the game.

Rob, who has played for Chester all four years, used to be known as “The Bibbino,” a tribute to Babe Ruth’s famous nickname, “The Bambino.” But this year, Rob will be The Iron Snowflake. “Snowflake” is a term some conservatives use to refer to liberals, as a suggestion that are fragile and “melt in the heat,” he says. He added the word “Iron” to indicate that he intends to stick around.

Rob plays catcher for the Chester team, the defending champions in the vintage tournament. In high school and at the University of Connecticut he was an outfielder, but he says his knees, which he describes as “no longer working,” prevent him from covering the distance he would need to catch fly balls.

Don’t get the catcher in the vintage game confused with a modern catcher giving the pitcher signs on what to throw, however. In the upcoming contest, played with mid-19th-century rules, the batter indicates to the pitcher where he would like the ball and the hurler tries to throw it there. Exact pitch location can be a challenge, not only because the local teams come together only to play one time a year, but also because the ball itself is a soft, oval-shaped affair that moves differently from a modern baseball.

The accuracy of the pitch doesn’t really matter anyway, because nobody calls balls and strikes. The only strikes are swinging strikes. The umpire, called the adjudicator, doesn’t even crouch behind the catcher; the adjudicator can stand anywhere on the field.

Rob says when he tells people he played baseball in college, they often asked why he didn’t try to go professional.

His answer is simple: “I would have if somebody had asked me.”

Still, that has had no effect on his enthusiasm for the game.

“Baseball is a love affair for me,” he says. “There is nothing better than to be at a baseball game, sitting there in the stands enjoying everything.”

He has even made travel itineraries to include games. Once he was able to arrange a stopover in Chicago to see his favorite team, the Red Sox, play the Cubs, who play the most day games of any team in the major leagues.

“I love day games. It pains me that the World Series is night games,” he says.

Standing in the center of Chester, Rob is surrounded by family history. His maternal great-grandfather J. Albert Berg owned a haberdashery shop at 1 Main Street. His maternal grandfather Jasper Trabucchi once owned the Pattaconk. Rob remembers lowering a fishing rod into the Pattaconk Brook from the restaurant’s back windows. Rob’s uncle Gino had a barbershop where Leif Nilsson’s art studio is now.

Rob himself was named for one of Chester’s legends, Robbie Collomore, proprietor of the long-gone Robbie’s store, located where the River Tavern is now. Rob’s mother once worked at Robbie’s.

“It was a magical place,” Rob remembers.

He and Collomore almost shared a birthday. Rob was born on Nov. 29; Collomore on Nov. 30.

“He always told me if I had been born one day later, he would have left the store to me,” Rob says.

Rob, a graduate of Valley Regional High School, remains devoted to both to the Chester of his youth and Chester today.

“Born, bred, and I’ll be dead in Chester,” he says.

Once he moved out of Chester, not far, but not close enough: Ivoryton.

“It just didn’t work out; I couldn’t live anywhere else,” he says.

Locally, Rob is a member of the Chester Board of Education and on the steering committee of The Valley Stands Up, a group that advocates tolerance and understanding for people of different beliefs, ethnicities, and life styles that formed in 2016 after defacement of a sign in East Haddam. He also serves on two working groups at the Tri-Town Youth Services Bureau, the Substance Abuse Council and the Juvenile Review Board.

Rob retired after more than 25 years as a juvenile probation officer for the Connecticut Department of Corrections. Now he has his own consulting business as a coach for individuals working towards addiction recovery.

A coach, he explains, would not be qualified to engage in therapy as a counselor does. Instead, a coach works with individuals to help increase the life skills and socialization so important to a person fighting addiction. Unlike a counselor, whom clients usually see on a regular appointment schedule, Rob is available to those he works with at any hour, on any day. He often communicates with his clients by text, email, or Skype.

“Some people prefer that way to doing it in person,” he says.

Rob began his career in a completely different field. His college concentration was sports marketing, but he soon found that wasn’t what he was cut out for.

“Crazy to go into marketing. I always said I couldn’t sell long underwear to Eskimos in January,” he says.

These days he takes a different view of sports than he did when he was a young outfielder on the University of Connecticut’s Division 1 baseball team. As he thinks ahead to the upcoming tri-town vintage game, priorities are different.

“Mostly we’re older men and not all that in shape,” he says. “Of course we want to win because we are former competitive athletes, but mostly now no one wants to get hurt.”

Tri-town Vintage Baseball Game

Sunday, Sept. 17 from 2 to 4 p.m. at Devitt Field, 245 South Main Street, Deep River. Admission is free.