ST. GEORGE — Just feet from where the first tennis game in the U.S. was played, a new exhibit will track the history of sports on Staten Island.
"Home Games," which opens at the Staten Island Museum on April 30, will feature photos, jerseys, documents and memorabilia showing the borough's contributions to American sports.
"We tend to look around and see things as they are and just kind of assume that things were always this way," said Jay Price, a curator of the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame, which worked with the museum on the exhibit.
"I’m hoping that one of the things that comes across in the exhibit is that that is not so. A lot of areas in sports were very, very different back in the day."
Price, a retired sports columnist for the Staten Island Advance, said the exhibit dates back to 1874, when Mary Outerbridge introduced America to tennis in St. George.
It spans the years up until the 2000s, with sports celebrities like Staten Islander Joe Andruzzi, who won three Super Bowls playing with the New England Patriots.
The exhibit features ticket stubs from the 1951 game when Staten Islander Bobby Thomson hit the "Shot Heard Round the World" homerun to win the National League pennant for the New York Giants, as well as an NYU jersey that Staten Island Ferry boat namesake Andrew Bariberi wore in a legendary win against the Fordham Rams, in which he played with a broken arm.
"Home Games" also covers the few professional sports teams that used to call Staten Island home, including the original New York Metropolitans baseball team and the Staten Island Stapes, who played in the NFL, Price said.
"A lot of people, if you told them Staten Island had a national team in the NFL, they would think you were nuts," Price said.
The Staten Island Stapes began as a neighborhood team known as the Staten Island Stapletons in 1915 and eventually became one of the best semi-professional football team in the city, Price explained.
They joined the NFL in 1929 — playing where Stapleton Playground currently sits — and eventually became the Staten Island Stapes.
At the time college football was more popular in the country, but the Stapes still played in one of the biggest rivalry games in the league against the New York Giants. The team signed legend Ken Strong, who's a member of both the college and pro football halls of fame, as well as the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame, Price said.
However, with the Great Depression and a small stadium that could only hold about 8,000 people, the Stapes didn't make enough money to survive and the team folded in 1932.
"They played their first game two weeks before the stock market crashed. A lot of people didn’t have the money to spend the buck on a few games," Price said. "They just couldn't keep it going. It was a painful death, apparently."
Before the borough was home to a football team, it also had a baseball stadium in St. George — where the current Richmond County Bank Ballpark sits — that housed the first team to use the New York Metropolitans name and the New York Giants, Price explained.
"There’s all that history right there and the new ballpark was built in the footprint of the old ballpark," he said.
The site — which was known as the St. George Cricket Grounds — housed the original Mets from 1886 to 1887 after journalist, businessman and developer Erastus Wiman thought he could get Manhattanites to take the ferry to watch a game.
"He bought the baseball team and brought it here as an attraction," Price said. "He thought hordes of people would take the ferry over from Manhattan. Apparently the hordes didn't come."
After the Mets — which has no relation to the current MLB team that plays in Queens — folded, the New York Giants baseball team played the first half of their 1889 season in the St. George stadium while waiting for the Polo Ground II to be finished, Price said.
"Home Games" will have an opening ceremony at 11 a.m. April 30, at the Staten Island Museum's St. George location, 75 Stuyvesant Place.
