The best gift I ever got from my father was a love of baseball. His team, the New York Giants, became my team. His team also migrated from the East coast to the West coast the spring of my 10th year. This love for the game translated to love of playing the game too. In my neighborhood, three kinds of baseball were available. The first was watching the game along with all my idols on TV. In those days, it was the game of the week, televised on Saturdays. To see the World Series, we had to wait for the film to accompamy the "News of the Day" in our local movie theater. We may have heard of a fantastic play or a clutch home run, but to see it was another matter. The second kind of baseball available to me was Little League. Open to boys 8 through 12, it was organized baseball complete with tryouts, scheduled practices and games, uniforms, and a well kept field complete with foul poles, umpires, and a snack bar. Of course there were bleachers, screaming parents and official umpires to call the game.
The third kind of baseball I played was the neighborhood game. Played in the street with two teams of two people and our own bats and tennis balls, this was arguabley the most fun. It was pure fantasy. The fields were the stdiums of our mind adapted to the geograohy of our neighborhood. A manhole cover was home plate, trees were the stands in foul territory, and one neighbor's pyracanthy covered fence became the iconic ivy covered walls of Wrigly Field in Chicago.
When a team was up at bat, each hitter tossed the ball up in front of him and then swung for the fences. If the hit that followed went a certain distance or hit off a roof, or parked car, the "announcer" would explain and a resujlt would be quickly assigned to the play. After 3 outs, the other team came to bat. We hit a lot of catchable fly balls, so the games moved along at a good clip. The team at bat always provided the announcer, who's job it was to highlight great defensive plays, keep the score, and generally provide all the statistics and color of the professionals we watched on television. In my town we had Vin Scully, the Hall of Fame Dodger announcer to listen to, so we learned from one of the best.
I'd play this version everyday if I could. The problem came with finding enough people. On my street there were four other boys close to my age. Paul andRandy were my age, Jimmy was one year older, an Dickie, Paul's older brother was two years older and mostly hung out with kids his age. The teams were always Paul and Jimmy against me and whoever else we cold get. Mostly it was Randy, a kid from the Southern end of the block, who was usually more interested in reading Science Fifiction than anything in the real world.
Paul and Jimmy would not be separated. They were sure of that, so the teams were usually them against me and whoever we could get. If Randy wasn't around, we'd try Kenny King, but he lived one street over and had "baloney breath" so an invitation to him was a rare occasion.
Jimmy and Paul were my friends, but with a caveat. They flaunted their bond. They couldn't be trusted, and they were ignorant enough to spout racist and anti-semetic tropes from time to time. But they were all that I had. Despite feeling like "the other" in every way possible, I made due because I loved playing baseball.
To the casual observer, Jimmy's abillity to manipulate Paul was apparent. He was slightly shorter than the other kids, and probably developed a small man's complex early on. He compensated for his lack of height by rough and tumble aggressions that openly exerted his strength and need for domination. Jimmy could be funny, but his sense of humor too often was at the expense of someone else. I always figured that because his dad died when he was very young, he needed to compensate for that loss with a show of strength. Nevertheless, he was there, and playing neighborhood baseball was high on my list of priorities. There was another kid I neglected to mention: Larry. Larry lived way down on the corner of the block and rarely ventured into Jimmy and Paul territory. Larry had two much older sisters in high school and was slightly overweight and therefore less into playing street baseball. He'd show up in the Fall when we played football. Tackle on the grass, touch in the street. Larry liked to pounce on the smaller kids and with his weight, hold them down and rough them up a bit. But he was slower and less talented and seldom avaiable most of the time.
One other thing about Larry was that he always had more money than all the other kids. We'd save bottles for the 2 cent deposit and in a few weeks would go down to Jack's Liquor Store and buy two 15 cent packs of Topps Baseball cards. Larry would go down to the same store and buy the entire box on the counter. Probably about 25 packs of cards. The worst part came when we sat on someone's front porch steps and opend our cards. We separated the brittle slap of pink buggle gum from each pack first and then slowly proceeded to go through the 10 cards in each pack. Looking for our favorite teams and players, we separated them into one pile and then put all the others and duplicats we had in another. I held my brerath while searching for Willie Mays, hoping he'd appear with the revelation of each player in the pack. He rarelhy did. But then Larry would proceed to open his packs whick totaled over 100 cards.
" Oh look, here's another Willie Mays, that makes five I have now. Too bad you guys don't have anyone good to trade for one of him."
Hate brewed in my brain.
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