One Father Provides Joy With Special Needs Baseball League: "Everyone Deserves The Chance To Play!"

This is going to break his heart, Dom Cambareri thought in spring 2000 when he learned there was no space for his 5-year-old son, Domenico, on the special needs Little League baseball team.

Dom couldn’t get enough baseball when he was growing up in East Syracuse, New York. He played, watched, even coached when he got older, and assumed his kids would do the same someday.

His son having special needs didn’t end that dream. Dom was excited when he learned about the Syracuse Challenger Baseball team, the special needs baseball league for kids. But when he tried to sign Domenico up, he learned there was a set number of players, and someone would first have to leave the league, which rarely happened.

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Still, Dom refused to give up, and two years later, one of the coaches agreed to make room for one more player.

At 7-year-old Domenico’s first game, his mom, Valerie, and Dom were filled with happiness and pride seeing their little boy’s huge smile as he trotted out onto the field.

Up for the challenge

For two years, Domenico loved playing ball and flourished; then the couple who ran the Challenger Baseball program announced they were ready to step away. What will happen to the special needs baseball league? Dom and Valerie worried. “You know what you’ve got to do,” Valerie told Dom.

“I’ll take over,” Dom volunteered.

As his first order of business, he worked with a team of volunteers to do away with player limits. “I don’t want any other parent to have to go through what I did,” he explained. All agreed, and the league was opened to any child or young adult with disabilities who wanted to play. By 2006, it grew from 60 athletes to over 120.

Still, Dom wanted to do more for his kids.

The teams played on Little League fields, available only if not in use and weather permitting. Those windows of time were fleeting, which spurred Dom to think about a place for Challenger Baseball to call its own.

But how to make that happen? I have a law firm to run, two kids, and I don’t know anybody with money or land like that, Dom thought.

But then he channeled his favorite quote from Saint Francis of Assisi: “Start by doing what is necessary, then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

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Field of dreams

Dom shared his dream with as many people as he could. And in 2009, a friend who was the town supervisor for city of DeWitt, told Dom that 26 acres of land previously used as a recreational park was being donated to his town, and he offered it up for his field.

With a site, a committee was formed, fundraising began and in 2016, the all-accessible $7 million Carrier Park “Field of Dreams” sports complex opened. It has two all-accessible baseball/softball diamonds, an all-accessible playground and three all-accessible basketball courts.

Parents are grateful to Dom for his dedication. “Being part of this league means so much because players see that they are part of something bigger than their own team. They cheer one another on after their own games,” says Patti Marvin, the mother of an adult Challenger player.

Dom’s latest goal is to raise funds to build a multimillion dollar Superfield, complete with concessions and a giant viewing screen, capable of hosting huge sports tournaments that would draw thousands of special needs and able-bodied athletes from the entire East Coast and Canada—something Mike Newman, a coach in the senior league, says will grow their program into an even larger beacon of light and hope for all Challenger Programs throughout this country.

“Baseball is about family. Baseball is about friends. Baseball is about faith,” says Dom. “For me, it’s about knowing that this community, and its children, like my son who has enjoyed playing for 21 joyful years, and our grandchildren and great-grandchildren- will have a program and park to play at for years and generations to come.”

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