By Tom S.

It felt as if a piece of me had been violently wrenched off my body. Thatâs really the only way to describe it. I couldnât restrain the tears of anger, frustration, and sorrow from slipping out under my eye. A sense of nostalgia and grief loomed over Brooklyn that day÷the Dodgers were heading west. Never before had the American credo been so painful: it was capitalism and the frontier all over again. Walter OâMalley apparently saw more economic opportunity out west, and apparently didnât see what baseball was÷what baseball meant to us denizens of Brooklyn. I sighed as I passed a small fruit store, and then was struck by something. A very distinct smell wafted through that doorway, filling my nose. The smell excited a small chamber of my memory, and soon this small chamber exploded into a chain of images and sentiments that transported me back to the place with which I will always associate nuts: Ebbets field, 1934.

Gazing into the sky and cracking a peanut between my teeth I realized that there was no place in the world I would rather be. Well, I guess I would rather be on the field, effortlessly hurling the ball across the diamond, with thousands of fans, fixed in baseball revelries, eagerly eying my every move. But considering that in all likelihood Iâd never find myself there, I would have to be content tranquilly watching from the bleachers.

ăHey, Tony.ä John called to me, his eyes never moving from the game as he called. ăGive me a few peanuts.ä

I looked down into the bag and saw that only a few nuts remained. Giving them up, I reached into my pocket for any spare change that could purchase more. I knew very well that I wouldnât find anything in there; it was one of those unfounded hopes that Ebbetâs Field (brimming with the summer sun, basking in its glistening green, pulsing with energy) can bring. I sighed thinking about that empty pocket, the gaping hole at my side; a tangible reminder of my, even New Yorkâs, hell the countryâs indigence. Now the peanuts were gone.

ăHow many games out are we?ä I casually inquired, not directed at anyone specifically. The ăwe,ä of course, referred to the Dodgers.

ăI think nine and a half,ä responded John, audibly disappointed and frustrated. There was an air of despair in that voice, as he saw his÷our÷team waning. He sat, eyes fixed, waiting, hoping for that pennant.

A lazy fly ball floated through the air, dropping softly into Buzz Boyleâs glove, making that familiar smack of leather on leather in right field. Buzz caught the ball and jogged towards the dugout; the Dodgerâs now wielded the bats.

ăNine and a half isnât impossible to get back,ä I brought up. I didnât expect a response; I donât even know why I said it. I guess it was just one of those things you say to project high hopes when you know very well that the Bums are in for another year without a pennant. Not that it matters all that much÷doesnât a parent still love a child that gets bad grades? ÷but I canât deny it would be nice. Damn.

I looked down at my feet, the peanut shells haphazardly strewn about ground. There was something to those peanut shells÷they just lay there, discarded with the utmost carelessness, speckling the darkened cement with an image of freedom. That was it! I threw those peanut shells straight onto the floor, without a second thought, without a single concern. Where else can you do that?

John turned to me and subtly pointed to a guard down by the gate. ăYou think heâs on to us?ä (I had known John for as long as I can remember. Our parents knew each other well before we were born, I think, and he lived just a block away from me.)

My attention found the guard. He stood completely motionless except for his head, which swiveled on his neck and scanned the crowd. John was right. He did seem to hesitate when his eyes met our section of the bleachers.

ăI donât know,ä I told John. ăI doubt heâll come up to us.ä

We did, after all, have reason to be uneasy. Johnâs pockets were as empty as mine, and our parents would find it ridiculous that anyone could be willing to pay 55 cents to sit for three hours. Whatâd they know?

Anyway, we werenât going to let empty pockets bar our entrance into the abode of the Bums. At least an hour before the game, having nothing in particular to interest us at home, we had been furtively lurking outside the stadium÷waiting. We watched the moneyed throngs pass by, drawing their bills and coins from their pockets to get in the easy way. We just lurked. And finally, glancing our opportunity, (for some reason, the stolid guard had deserted his post), we pried through the mass and surreptitiously slipped under the bar. In!

Perhaps the best part of going to a baseball game is that first moment you see the field. After what seems like an endless climb up the centerfield ramp, I am always awe-struck by the diamondâs perfection, its immaculate grasses, its bright foul lines, its flawless flatness, its sheer size, its lights, the sound of the mob, the excitement, the players÷the heroes, all right there! The legends! All within reach.

Ebbets Field must be the homiest ballpark in the country. Thereâs something incredibly personal about being in there, and all of its little idiosyncrasies grow more charming as the time passes by. You would enter through that giant marble rotunda, wind through the hallways to your seats, park yourself under the hot sun, root, and enjoy. And the park was so intimate, you felt like you were on third base in the bleachers! Everything was so close; you could see a player gesticulate after an ump made a controversial call, or the stubble on his chin.

Then of course there was Gladys Gooding on the organ. The organ can provide that unique baseball flavor to any situation, and lift a crowd out of their sixth inning doldrums. And to top it all off, there were the fans. No one can deny that Ebbets Field houses the most loyal, passionate, loud, and spontaneous fans in sport. Five fans comprised the Dodger Symphony, who would stand on dug-outs and amble through the stadium paying ragtime. When the umpires first came out, they would always play ăThree Blind Mice,ä and if the opposing team made a pitching switch they would serenade the fans and taunt the enemy with ăThe Worms Crawl In, The Worms Crawl Out.ä And then, of course, displaying their characteristic Dodger fan wit, if a batter on the opposing team struck out, as this player dejected sauntered into the dugout and slumped down, the Symphony would give off a tremendous crash symbol just as the players backside touched the bench. The crowd would roar at the humiliated ball player.

Finally, every time you went to Ebbets Field you could bet on seeing the most famous fan in sports history, a woman by the name of Hilda Chester. She was round a pink-faced, and had loved the Dodgers since childhood. Somebody told me, I canât remember who, that a few years ago she had suffered a heart attack, and her doctor proscribed screaming, and that was why she took to whacking pots and pans with her ladle. Anyhow, thatâs just how she would cheer, and in that small ballpark you could hear her anywhere. And then there was Eddie Battan, I think that was his name, who would sound his tinny whistle though the stadium at every game. No matter where you sat, you could hear his ăpeep, peep, peep,ä however faint, always. God, Ebbets Field had so much going for it.

Being at a game is one of the great joys of Brooklyn, but listening to games on the radio provides a different dimension. Not better, but different. The radio adds an air of suspense, as everything is unknown outside of the language of the announcer. Eagerly awaiting the result of an important play, reading deeply into all of the subtle intonations of the announcerâs voice, as if to be able to see the game before he says it, these are part of the joys of radio.

The night before I was submerged in a baseball broadcast, turning over a baseball in my hand as I listened. The Dodgers were winning so I was in a particularly good mood (I find that much of the time my mood fluctuates with the success of the Dodgers). I heard the low creak of a hinge, and my eyes rolled to the door. My motherâs head slid through the crack and informed me that dinner was on the table, and commanded that I come at once. She left and I kept listening, unmoving, to the game. The Pirates had the two on in the eighth, and one swoop of the bat could tie the game. Dinner could wait.

Of course, I was several minutes late to dinner and as I sat down I met the hostile faces of my family, apparently upset at my being late. My tardiness incited a heated conversation on the value of this sport.

ăYou must understand Tony,ä my father argued, ăbaseball is childish. Itâs time you grow up, get an education, build a career.ä

ăI agree,ä said my mother. ăYou canât go on playing for the rest of your life, as much as you might want to.ä

What could I say? I knew that Iâd have to give it up. But why rush?

ăI am still a kid you know. Thereâs nothing wrong with children playing childrenâs games.ä

ăYes, but itâs time you grow up,ä said my father in an exaggeratedly paternal and didactic tone. ăWhy do you think your mother and I came to America? To play games? America is the land of opportunity, thatâs why we came here. We wanted to give you the best opportunity to succeed, and baseball certainly isnât what we had in mind.ä

ăI agree,ä said my mother.

The rest of dinner was relatively silent, and afterwards I returned to my room. I lay on my bed and thought about what my father had said. America? What did he know about America? Money is America. Playing baseball is American. Being able to spend money is American. Coney Island, cars, phonographs, radios÷these are American. Paying 55 cents to go to Ebbetâs Field with thousands of fellow countrymen, rich and poor, German and Italian, Jewish and Christian÷that is American. That is democracy.

I had been annoyed by what my parents were saying, so I turned to John and asked, ăWhy canât parents understand baseball?ä

ăThat right there is a good question.ä

ăWhat about threatens them so much?ä

ăItâs too much fun.ä

I laughed.

ăMy father,ä John continued, ăis one of those baseball purist types. Whenever I say to him, ÎHey, Iâm going to Ebbets Field,â he looks at me like Iâm crazy and says, ÎWhy do you want to watch those clowns? If you want to see baseball, go to Yankee stadium.â Why would I want to go to Yankee stadium? That place is huge, gray and threatening. Got no personality. Ebbets Field is small and familiar.ä He concluded, ăThere are certain things that are just outside the reach of parents, and I guess baseballä÷

ăWe have to run!ä He of course looked at me quizzically when I said that, but as I was listening to John, I had been occasionally glancing back at that guard in the corner. I was occasionally fixing my eyes on him until his eyes met mine, when I would quickly look away. He must have picked up that I was nervous about something, because he began to ascend the stairs to our section in the dugout.

ăCome on!ä I yelled to John, who still didnât understand what I was doing. I grabbed his arm, and we sprinted away from the guard and right out of the bleacher gate, leaving us in the hallway that circles the field. We ran left as fast as we could, and John must have thought I was insane because he still had no idea why we had left our peaceful perch over the ball field. I explained it all through my intermittent pants. We kept scurrying around the stadium until we felt confident we had lost the guard, and then turned into a random gate.

I have been to countless games at Ebbets Field, more than I can remember, but I think that the number of games Iâve spent in box seats, outside of the bleachers, still stands in the single digits. Needless to say, as John and I turned into the field in the box seats, having run halfway around the stadium, my eyes met an unfamiliar sight. We tried to walk around as casually as we could, while being as circumspect as possible at the same time. We walked around, observing the copious empty seats, and trying to decide where weâd settle. We didnât want to sit isolated in an empty section (how conspicuous can you get?) so we settled in right next to a father and his son, who was near my age, about fifteen rows back, on line with third base.

I took a few looks at the father and his son and that was all I needed. Everything about them, the clothing, the voices, the hands, the monocle÷everything told me they were rich. He kept giving me these suspicious, condescending, disparaging looks. I wanted to say to him, ăEven if we did sneak in here and break your sacred laws, itâs none of your business.ä

I didnât say it, of course. Instead, he said to his son, ăYou see Tommy, that was a double play! When there is no open base behind a player, all the fielder has to do is touch on the base and itâs called a force out. When you get a double playä

I couldnât listen! It was driving me insane. I put my hands on my ears and slouched over, focusing all my energy in watching the game. For some reason though, I was genuinely angered by those two rich fools. I donât think that it was because there rich, or because they didnât know baseball, I think it was because I got the impression that they were at the ballpark just to see, just so they could say at their urbane dinner parties that they had been to Ebbets Field. It was too superficial. Strangely enough, when I saw the guard from the bleachers walking slowly around the stadium, inspecting every seat, I felt a strange relief because that meant that I would have an excuse to get up and run as fast as I could from where I was. I pointed him out to John, and we were on the move again.

We dashed even farther around the stadium, this time emerging out by the right field foul line. We skipped down a few stairs, entered an arbitrary row, and parked ourselves in two vacant seats. I looked over and saw that we once again were sitting next to some wealthy folks, but I tried to forget that. Then I heard one of them say, ăDo you think theyâll pinch hit for Van Mungo with a lefty on the mound here?ä And instantly all of my prejudices disintegrated. Ha! Baseball is blind in that respect, and so am I.

Baseball may be blind to class, but when it comes to race, its vision is perfect. I was reminded of this because I saw four black kids sitting in front of us, and it got me thinking. How does it change being at a baseball game when you know the chances are youâll never find yourself down there? Are they more detached from the sport? There are the Negro leagues I guess, but those really arenât the same. At least I donât think. Iâve heard rumors that they got some of the best players in those leagues. They say that this fellow named Josh Gibson is as good as Babe Ruth, and that this other guy, Satchel Paige, could out-duel Cy Young! I donât know if I can believe all that, but Iâd sure like to see for myself someday.

I was roused from my meditations by a finger tapping my shoulder, and I turned my head to see the guardâs smiling face several inches from mine. I knew any attempt at escape was futile, so I sullenly accepted my fate and stood, with the guards strong hand around my arm. I wanted to ask him if he was ever a kid, but I felt that that would not help the situation. He escorted John and I out of the stadium, out through the marble rotunda we had entered a few hours before. He was lecturing the whole way, and when we got out he said, with one gratuitous shove, ăand donât go makinâ any more trouble.ä What is there about going to a baseball game that could put us under suspicion of causing trouble? Anyway, once I was outside I looked around at all of the streets and alleys, which beckoned·

Before the automobile reigned over the streets, without question my favorite activity was stickball. Any free time I could find I would devour with stickball, or any other game we could concoct with a similar basis in baseball. All you needed to play was a stick and red rubber ball, manufactured by Spalding, which we called a Spaldeen. Home plate was almost always a manhole cover, and the pitcher would one hop the Spaldeen up the batter, who would whip around that light stick and try to line one up the middle. The pitcher could pinch the pall or snap his wrist to make the bounce unpredictable, and make hitting a challenge. And you had to be accurate with your hits too, because a ball that strayed to far from the center could end up on a roof, lost, and was an out.

My eyes left those inviting alleys when John reminded me that we were right outside of an active Ebbets Field. We knew that going back inside was probably a bit too perilous, so that left us with two options. We could try and climb on top of one of the garages out past left field, an option that didnât appeal to me too much because it involved jumping over a gap that must have been 20 feet high and was about four feet wide between two adjacent buildings; or we could watch under Exit Gate. Out in the deepest part of left field, about 400 feet from home plate, two large iron doors did not meet flushly with the ground. That left us with a few inches at the bottom under which we could peer, lying on the harsh concrete of Bedford Ave., and catch most of the game. The crack afforded a view of center and left field, and about two thirds of the infield. You couldnât see first base, so you were forced to learn the game. If a man were on first, somebody would cover second on the pitch. You began to see little things like that.

My head hit the cement and my eye found the gap in time to see a Sam Leslie line drive slide through the infield. There was a lazy applause, as Tony Cuccinello, the strong second basemen, entered the batterâs box. He peered under his helmet to get the sign from Casey Stengel, obscuring the sun with his arm.

He laid a long, loopy swing on the ball, and a tremendous crack resounded through the stadium. The ball left his bat and began on a graceful arc, as the stadium went silent for a second as every fan tried to ascertain the fate of the baseball. My instincts told me that this one was going to be long, and I realized that it might clear the forty-foot high screen fence in right field that separated the ballpark from the city. As a ran over to the screen fence, I heard a slow roar rumble up from the Dodgersâ faithful, as most could see by now that that ball was well over the right fielderâs head. Approaching the fence, I saw the ball plunging down, picking up more and more speed, plummeting closer and closer to where I stood.

The ball rebounded with a thud off the asphalt, and settled right at my feet. I was so dumbfounded that for a second I couldnât move. I stared at the ball, frozen in time, and saw the same stitches that Van Mungo (he of course, was the Dodgersâ ace) gripped just an inning before. I lunged at the ball, and like kamikaze pilot dropped to the ground and smothered it. I could feel the hard orb under me, pressing my ribcage.

No words can express the ecstasy, the euphoria, of the moment÷such are the limitations of language. No words can describe the disbelief, the wonder, of touching the same ball that had left Tony Cuccinelloâs bat just seconds before. I still have that ball now; it will always live as a reminder of my childhood love of the Bums.

This whole scene flew before my eyes as I walked ahead, kicking a pebble along the dirty street. It had been twenty-four years since that scene, but the memory still stuck out. I remembered and felt, if only for a moment, that warm feeling of pure optimism that greeted me each time I entered that ballpark. I felt like I could be a professional baseball player. Sure, it wouldnât be easy. There would always be the guard, or money, or the perilous leap from roof to roof, but it was always possible. What na•vetŽ! What ingenuity! The quest to get into Ebbets field became the quest to be a Dodger, and it is precisely this irrationality that makes childhood so enjoyable.