…has been baseball.” This line plays in my head (in James Earl Jones’ voice, of course) every time I reflect on how baseball has been such an integral part of my life. Growing up in the slums of Brooklyn, NY in the 70’s and 80’s, playing any form of baseball was the way I, my brothers and our friends stayed out of trouble. Stick ball, sponge ball, wiffle ball, softball, hardball – we played it all. We would play with tattered gloves, chipped bats and in some instances, hand-sewn hard balls. Once in a while, we would pool some of our allowance money together and buy a new ball or two. Those were special days. I remember how we were all so conscious of how new the ball was as we hit and threw it around. Some of us would immediately rub off any dirt or scuff marks as we caught it. Being the bossy, loudmouth of the group, I was always the first to reprimand one of the boys for “messing up” the ball. Defies logic when I think about it now, but back then, having anything new was a rare experience.
When we weren’t playing baseball from dawn til dusk in the concrete playground of the middle school across our row house, we plopped down on our front stoop and played with the small stack of baseball cards we each had over and over again. We recited stats and figures as each ballplayer’s image hit the step. When the Yankees won the ’77 and ’78 World Series, I was 6 and 7 years old, respectively. My brother Leo was about 5-6 years old, respectively. I still remember how we begged for baseball cards those years so we could have our favorite players literally in the palm of our hands.
During the “off-season”, Leo and I would play “air baseball”, where we would pretend to play an entire baseball game despite being only in our living room. We imagined ourselves as each player, with Leo starting the game-ending double play as Graig Nettles and I helped along as Bucky Dent. We’d fight over who hit the game winning home-run as Reggie Jackson or who got to be Willie Randolph driving in five runs during the “Boston massacre” of end of the 1978 regular season. For as long as I can remember, baseball has played an active part in my life. So many of my memories are rooted in this game. What are some of your baseball memories?