Simone Excavates Yard, Challenges Neighbors In Mitt
Quilted oven mitt worn through full practice, then two days atop rented tracked excavator; six passersby challenged and beaten
Property owners association names him neighborhood's official public nuisance for six months; Simone thanks the room
By Anita Bath·Staff Reporter
Mr. Simone works the bucket attachment on Highland Avenue Saturday. The excavator cost $1,140 for forty-eight hours, plus $60 for a rock situation.
“The mitt stays on for anything with a motor. Chainsaw, excavator, the Weber grill. I don't make the rule, I just follow it.”
ROWAYTON, Conn., Sept. 1 —Andrew Simone, who captains both the Rowayton E and F sides, wore a quilted oven mitt through a full team practice on the club's courts last Thursday, then kept the mitt strapped to his right hand for two consecutive days while operating a rented tracked excavator on his property on Highland Avenue, stopping the machine at intervals to challenge people walking past to matches of paddle.
The excavator, a 3.5-ton tracked model rented from a Norwalk equipment yard, arrived Friday morning and departed Sunday evening, according to the invoice, which billed Mr. Simone $1,140 for forty-eight hours and an additional $60 for a bucket attachment he used to address what he described as "a rock situation." By the desk's count, roughly 1,100 square feet of lawn, two flower beds and one section of split-rail fence did not survive the rock situation.
"The mitt stays on for anything with a motor," Mr. Simone said, standing beside the machine in the mitt. "Chainsaw, excavator, the Weber grill. I don't make the rule, I just follow it." Asked whether he had considered removing it, he said he had considered quitting paddle three times this year and the mitt zero times, and saw no reason the ratio should change.
Six passersby accepted his challenges over the two days, according to Mr. Simone, who said he won all six. One neighbor, a marketing consultant who declined to give her name, requested a rematch without the mitt on the theory that it was giving him an unfair advantage. He declined.
The Highland Avenue Property Owners Association met Sunday evening and voted, unanimously and without discussion of the excavation itself, to name Mr. Simone the neighborhood's official public nuisance for a six-month term, a title with no known prior holder. A resident granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the association called the vote "more ceremonial than corrective" and said Mr. Simone had thanked the room.
Mr. Simone, whose rating sits at 45 and eighteenth of nineteen men on Rowayton A, said afterward that the PTI algorithm had never once accounted for a mitt, and that until it did he saw no reason to stop wearing one.
Chris Gorman, who co-captains the F team with Mr. Simone, said he had not been consulted on the mitt, the excavator or the six challenges, and that this was consistent with how decisions on the F team generally got made. Kyle Avery, who co-captains the E team with Mr. Simone, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
By Sunday evening the yard had been reduced to a shallow depression the width of a paddle court, the mitt remained on Mr. Simone's hand, and the quilting along its thumb seam, by the desk's inspection, showed no sign of wear.
