Friends And Family Honor Brighton Beach Murder Victim Anthony Senisi With Softball Game

Friends and family of a Sheepshead Bay man who was brutally stabbed to death in 2007 gathered for the sixth consecutive year, honoring him with a long softball Sunday.

The group gathered at Homecrest Playground (Homecrest Avenue and Williams Court) on August 4, bringing with them coolers, pizza and gear for the game. For more than six hours, the group of roughly 60 friends and family took turns at batting and fielding, and trading stories about their friend, Anthony Senisi Jr., who was a Yankees fanatic before his untimely death.

Senisi was on his way home from a grocery store on August 4, 2007, on Brighton 6th Street when he was stabbed in the back. He collapsed in front of his house in view of his son, and died in his father’s arms. Authorities believed Senisi was mistaken for someone else while buying milk for his Sunday morning ritual of coffee with his daughter.

In 2008, one year after his death, lifelong friends Howie Sosner, Billy Fallon, and Gary Friedman organized a softball game for Senisi’s friends and family to stay in touch and do something he would have enjoyed.

“This is what we all did as teenagers. We played every Sat and Sunday, we played from noon until it was pitch black outside,” Fallon said, rattling off the local parks and schoolyards where they played, including Homecrest Playground.

After establishing the event, it just kept growing as those touched by the 44-year-old plumber discovered it and came to honor his life.

“The first year was 40 [people]. Then my friend introduced me to Facebook and it grew and grew. The biggest year we had was over 100 people,” Fallon said.

Six years into the annual event, the organizers said they have no intention of stopping anytime soon.

“[We’ll do it] ’til we can’t run no more,” Fallon said. (“Yeah, well, we might have the wheelchairs,” Sosner added.) “And then we’ll just find something else to do to remember him by.”