Talkin Baseball

One of the few things in life that ever made real sense to me is baseball. You could discuss religion or politics all day and night and never come to a conclusion. With baseball you at least get short term decisions. My friend Marty is a lifetime Yankees fan. No matter what's going on in his life if the Yankees are winning he's happy. He's leaving for New Hampshire tonight, a six hour drive. Normally he would not be looking forward to it. But the Yankees are playing the Red Sox; half the trip will be spent listening to the game, unless it's rained out.

I was originally a Dodgers fan. Later, I, amazingly, evolved into a Phillies fan. You can't control who you root for. I noticed about fifteen years ago that when the Phillies were playing the Dodgers I wanted the Phillies to win. I didn't choose to change loyalties. It just happened. Although I presently like the Phillies my level of fanaticism is not close to what it was for the Dodgers. There were times when I was younger that I would make deals with God. If he would let the Dodgers win I would agree to go to shule for one day, or do some other task that I thought he would like.

Marty and I have argued about baseball for over forty-five years. I remember, like it was yesterday, watching the 1963 World Series in his house. This was their first clash since 1956. The Dodgers had won the Series in 1955 for the first time ever. This was one of the greatest moments of my childhood, Brooklyn's finest hour. They closed the schools for two days. In 1956 the Yankees won back the championship, catapulted by Don Larsen's perfect game.

We were sixteen, mature enough to have a discussion based on reason, not on pure emotion. The Dodgers had had a great year, led by Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale's brilliant pitching. The Yankees had Whitey Ford (24-7 that year) and a powerful lineup, including Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Roger Maris, Bill Skowron, and Bobby Richardson. I was a nervous wreck. The Dodgers had to beat the Yankees. Marty was confident. There was no way Frank Howard could touch Whitey Ford, Marty argued.

Koufax struck out the first five Yankees including Bobby Richardson. He struck out Richardson three times that day. Bobby had struck out only eleven times the whole year. Truly brilliant. In the bottom of the first, Frank Howard hit a mammoth 450 foot drive over Mantle's head for a double. The Dodgers scored first and ended up beating the Yankees 5-2, although Mantle did hit a late inning homer off Koufax which I must admit did impress me. The Dodgers ended up beating the Yankees four straight. I tormented Marty about this for years.

There are many great things about baseball. My favorite movies (including "A Field of Dreams") are about baseball. One of my favorite books, "The Boys of Summer," is about the 1955 Dodgers. "Talkin Baseball," the song, makes me cry every time I hear it. In a world of fear and confusion, where my mind is occupied by tons of practical daily problems and unsolveable philosophical issues, I still look at the box scores every day. I know I'm not alone in this.

Glenwood Projects

I lived at 1736 Ralph Avenue from three to twenty-one. It was a six story building with five apartments on each floor, thirty apartments in all. There were forty building exactly like this in the Glenwood Projects, 1200 total families. Each family had approximately two children. There were at least 2500 kids in the projects and the homes surrounding the projects. I knew almost everyone of them. And because I was interested in people I knew them more than superficially.

This was a tremendous educational experience for me. I learned to deal with all types of personalities and temperaments. Every type you could imagine was represented in this mix. Brilliant musicians and aggressive bullies. Super athletes and flaming homosexuals. Beautiful women and deformed Mongoloids. There were seven foot giants and four foot midgets. There were those who died in Vietnam, in car crashes, from suicides, or fatal diseases. Some ended up in jail; many more who should have, but never got caught. There were those who dropped out of school in elementary school and others who ended up with PHDs. There were kind and generous kids, mean and selfish ones. There was someone who was talented in every possible activity you could consider; others whose sociopath proclivities were frightening. There were neurotics and psychotics, religious fanatics, and crusaders for all conceivable causes and movements.

My friend of fifty years, Campi, compiled some of the nicknames he remembered that might give you a flavor of the neighborhood:

Toes Fischer- (walked on his Toes)
Arnie the Gangster- (tough guy, or thought he was)
King Anthony- (ruled the lots around the projects)
Corny- (wore a Cornell sweatshirt)
Tuba- (professional gambler; announcer of all neighborhood sports events)
Ocky- (long arms flailing around)
Lennie the Beak- (obvious)
Tony the Bagel Man- (sold bagels; had sex with the project slut)
Mook- (hard core druggie)
Richie King (con man extraordinaire; worth a few blogs himself; real name forgotten)
Killer Cohen- (very gentle guy)
Stinky- (went out with my sister, became Hasidic Jew)
Clarabelle- (fired bullets over Campi's head while he was filming porno film)
Big Took and Little Took- (athletes and gamblers)
Iggy Rats, Piggy, and Puppy
Harry the Horse- (father a cop; became a fugitive, also worth a few blogs)
Buck, Bucky, and Ducky
Beef, Bull, Buffalo, Goose, Snake, Beaver (became wealthy, interested in Roman civilization)
The Mayor- (stayed in his room for two years smoking pot and taking LSD, produced an incredible painting that if ever discovered by a future generation would be revered as a religious masterpiece.)
Walter Stringbean (on the thin side)
Dingleberry (female impersonator at age ten)
Paula Pineapple (nice pineapples)
Shtunk- (became a life insurance exec, probably never revealed nickname)
Instructor- (suspected of pedophilia, probably in jail)
Junior Sirico -(tough guy, frightening, supposedly killed a woman, became Paulie on the Sopranos)

I could go on, but you get the drift. The main point is even in a small one square mile neighborhood, there were all types of people. Our world is made up of billions of individuals. We each are unique but in a fundamental way connected. I learned early on that it was easier to survive when you were more accepting of differences, when you could make fun of each other and not hold on to it the next day. There were those in the neighborhood who were dangerous and needed to be restrained or rehabilitated, but the overwhelming majority were just unique characters with there own views and idiosyncrasies.

We have created a website, glenwoodprojects.net.