Tell us a little about yourself off the field.
What up, my name is Syed Salman Haque. I go by both Syed and Salman depending on who you ask lol. Right now I’m a PA (Physician Assistant) working nights at Long Island Jewish Hospital. I grow up in Long Island in East Meadow.
How’d you come into the league? Who brought you in?
I came into this league in 2008 I believe for the Lions, when Rehan was captain. I had a few family members playing for the softballers ( Nabeel) and SWAT( Shumail) and asked them if I can join the league. They told me to get into reach with Ammad Sheikh which is how my softball career started. I reached out to Ammad and the Lions were looking for some players. I was eager to play so I joined them.
So you’ve decided to its time to wear bigger shoes and take on a captain role? What motivated you to do that? How’s things going so far?
Yes I’m the captain, or just the puppet and Shumail does everything behind the scenes lol. Actually I didn’t really want to do it, but nobody else did either, so I just took the position because everyone else had a busier schedule then me hah! One thing I realize about being captain is it’s a lot of hard work. We have a pretty big team and each weak we get 12/13 guys to come, so it’s tough getting everyone playing time.
Everyone knows the breaking bats are a family team, tell us a little about that. Tell us what challenges an outsider faces when joining this team:
Yes we are a family team. I think this team started in 2014/2015 season? Not sure which exact year. I guess we were all at a family event one night and decided hey let’s all start a softball team. A few of us said yes and that’s how the breaking bats were created. At that point, the league was starting a lower division and that’s when we decided to play for the lower division. We can all thank Zimmad and Shumail for the creation of the Bats!
This team was created so we can go out on Sundays and have fun and also be competitive we then realize we can compete for a championship. We then realized we can’t win just with the Haques, Imams so that’s when we had to add a few pieces. First couple of years we had our one and only NSA, Shawn. He fit into the team perfectly and was a great player but he had to leave for work reasons. Later we added players like Imran Khan (Shimmy), Kunal Sra, Usman Sheikh and Zeeshain Sheikh on our team. These guys are vital to our success and without them I don’t think we would be at the position we’re at. Zee can fit into any team I think, Kunal just loves softball and Usman and Shimmy are great guys, not to say Kunal and Zee aren’t lol.
What is your strategy and goal in batting like 13 guys?
Haha, there is really no strategy in batting 13 guys. We just want to get everyone playing time and when the time comes, we will shorten the batting order!
What is Shumail’s role this season 😀 ?
Shumail’s job this season is to yell if someone drops a fly ball, yell if someone makes a mistake running the base path, and yell if someone strikes out looking ! LOL JK. I honestly don’t know what his role is, but it’s great that he does everything 🙂
We see you pull up in an Audi s4 to the games, you must be a car guy. If you could trade your s4 for another car, what would it be and why? What’re a couple of your favorite non-super cars that you’d buy in a heartbeat?
Haha, yea I got an S4. I was actually pretty close to getting a BMW F80 M3 but because of financial reasons I couldn’t get it. Hmm good question, if I was to get a non-super car I would definitely get an M3. I always love BMW coming from 428 and 335 so definitely would get that. But you also cant go wrong with a Honda, Nissan or Toyota , so practical!
Aside from the savages last year, you guys were the heavy favorites to win the whole thing. What happened in the playoffs? Give us some insight of the series and how you guys played.
Aside from the Savages, we were favorites to win the whole thing? Oh crap I didn’t know that lol. Yes last year was a disappointment that we couldn’t make it to the finals but it was also the furthest we went as a team. Our first series was against Layth and we swept that series. First game I remember we were all hitting like crap, and we had no reason winning that game. But we grinded it out with great defense and Fazeel had a clutch hit to put us over and win that game. Second game we just took that momentum from the first and won that series. Our second round of the playoffs we played Empire and they beat us in 3. I mean I can make up excuses that we should of won game one, blah blah blah but they were just better than us that series and won. It was a good learning experience for me, since that’s the furthest I made it into the playoffs.
How would you compare the Breaking bats of this year compared to the last couple years? Tell us about some challenges and improvement of this year’s team compared to last year and years passed.
I think the only difference between last year’s group and this year group is we have a few players that are cross-overs since there are 2 divisions. Other than that we dont have any huge additions. Usman Ghumman did leave our team to play for the Mets in the upper division. Even though we didn’t make any additions, I feel that from top to bottom, everyone on this team can hit. Last year a couple of us didn’t hit as well as expected, but we hope to turn it around this year. Expect bigger things from the bottom of our lineup! I think we have a few players that will break out this year, especially Fazeel. He’s a baller so I expect him to be our leadoff hitter in the near future.
Who are your biggest challengers in the NL? Any plans to move into the AL next year?
Who is our biggest challenge in the NL? I feel any given Sunday any team can Win. Every team is evenly stacked in this division and I feel that there is no team that is leaps and bound above anyone else. We have a huge matchup against purple reign this weekend and since they’re first in the standings, I guess them for now? But there’s some great teams in this division like Dynasty and Hit Squad who we haven’t played yet, so these couple of weeks are going to be important for us to see who we are as a team. And since less teams make the playoffs this year, it’s vital for us to win these games.
About moving to the AL, I feel that we can compete if we have our best 10 out there. But we would need our cross-over players to be full time with the Breaking bats. So no, there is no plans for us right now to move to the AL division next year.
