Jesse A. Collyer, Jr. (1897-1983)

Jesse A. Collyer, Jr. (1897-1983). Politician, Baseball Umpire and Youth Sports Pioneer. Jesse Acker Collyer, Jr. came by his nickname of “Mr. Ossining” honestly. This native son was descended from two of the village's oldest families; the Collyers were shipbuilders and carpenters, and the Ackers were merchants. , After leaving the navy in 1918, Jesse married Rose Ostrum and they had a daughter Marilyn. He was juggling a job at the Rand McNally printing plant with civic duties such as the American Legion, volunteer firefighting, and running the Baker-Collyer Christmas Cheer Fund. , Later Collyer went to work at Sing Sing Prison's Recreation Department. On September 6, 1929, he called a game between the prisoners and the visiting New York Yankees, Babe Ruth hit a towering homer that sailed 600 feet over the prison wall - the so-called “longest home run in history.” , A self-taught umpire with a flamboyant, crowd-pleasing style, Collyer was twice named the top semipro umpire in the nation. Despite supervising Sing Sing's vocational department, he took off every spring for Dodgertown, the spring training camp in Florida, where he called balls and strikes on such legends as Jackie Robinson and Yogi Berra. , In 1951, Collyer helped to start Ossining's Junior Baseball Leagues. “I didn't want to see any boy in Briarcliff, Ossining or Croton go to Sing Sing,” he said. “That was my motivation for the Little League.” , The following year, Collyer ran for mayor of the Village of Ossining and won in a landslide. He served six two-year terms as village mayor, from 1953 to 1963, and one term as town supervisor, from 1964 to 1967, green-lighting the new ball fields at Ryder Park. The league was renamed in his honor: Jesse Collyer Youth Sports.