Oceanside performers star in musical penned by Yankees consultant

Call it serendipitous, but when a group of teenage performing artists from Oceanside appeared on the weekly Cablevision variety show “Chapters Rap” on May 12 to perform a Broadway revue created by Oceanside High School junior Rebecca Goldfarb, there was no way they could know it would lead to a chance to perform in a musical penned by longtime Yankees special consultant, Ray Negron, about his early life with the team.

Their story is almost as unlikely as Negron’s, who as a teenager in 1973 was arrested while spray painting graffiti on the side of Yankee Stadium. Instead of languishing in a cell, however, he was approached by then-Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and offered a job as bat boy — and has been with the team since. Now, he has recruited the young Oceansiders to take part in his musical, entitled “Bat Boy A Yankee Miracle,” on June 24 at the Argyle Theatre in Babylon.

Their chance encounter occurred when “Chapters Rap” co-hosts Steve Vaccaro and Lisa Coppola invited the artists back on their show to perform songs from the musical comedy “Damn Yankees” for Negron during a May 11 book signing in Rockville Centre — part of a book tour for his most recent release, “Yankee Miracles: Life with the Boss and the Bronx Bombers.” Impressed with their performance, Coppola said, Negron recruited the group to take part in his premiere of “Bat Boy.” A play, she said, that Negron hopes to bring to Broadway.

“It was a total surprise to Ray,” Coppola recalled. “He was extremely impressed with them and he got them a chance to perform.”

“After seeing us perform he said he was touched by how diverse we were,” Goldfarb said. “He said it really reminded him how he was given an opportunity one time, and he just wanted to give us an opportunity too because we were so passionate.”

“Bat Boy” was originally conceived as a one-man play, according to Vaccaro, chronicling Negron’s life with the Yankees from 1973-79 — a contentious period in Yankee history. Steinbrenner was in the midst of revamping the club after years of decline under CBS ownership, and amid those efforts a feud developed between star outfielder Reggie Jackson and team captain and catcher Thurman Munson. “There were a lot of egos in that clubhouse,” Vaccaro said. And in the middle was Negron, who was tasked with running errands for the players.

The inspiration to turn the show into a musical came from Negron’s experience meeting big-name musicians during his career, according to Vaccaro. “It came through his love of music, and the players’ love of music,” he said. He had the opportunity to meet Frank Sinatra and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and Valli in particular, Vaccaro said, had a big influence on Negron.

Goldfarb said she never could have imagined that her group’s initial performances would lead to such an opportunity, but “we all gave it our all,” she said, “and things happened to work out the right way.”