The Sunday Memory Drawer - Growing Up Baseball

When I first became a baseball fan and selected my chosen team to root for, I had a jacket just like this one.  I wore it everywhere and proudly.  It made me feel like I was a part of the New York Mets organization.  Their #1 fan on South 15th Avenue in Mount Vernon, New York.

The only problem was that I was the only one.  An outcast.  A pariah.

A non-Yankee fan.

In light of this week's annual All-Star Game, my thoughts go back to those days of solitude as a new baseball fan.  Not only was I the lone non-Italian and lone non-Catholic on "my block," I was also the only non-Yankee fan.  Nobody quibbled with my choice of ethnicity or religion.  My baseball fandom, however, was always in question.  And ridiculed.

Now, my best friend in those days, Leo, was one of those Italian/Catholic/Yankee fans, but I never got a ribbing from him.  Good friends are quite accepting and that's why friendships last for decades.  Other kids, including his younger brothers, were continually ripping my beloved baseball team to shreds.  And me along with it.   It didn't help that, sorry to say, my favorite team in those days...well, they sucked.

It was never more evident each year when the All-Star Game came around in July.  Naturally, if you were Yankee fans, you rooted for the American League.  Me?  Behind the eight-ball again.  The Mets were in the National League.  We'd all go to our individual TV sets to watch the game.  This was a tense affair for me.  Usually, back then, the Mets only managed to have one player named to the All-Star squad.  I'd hold my breath waiting for him to be inserted in the game and I prayed for God's intervention that my Met would not screw up and change the outcome of the game negatively.  How could I then face anybody the next time I went "up the block?"

One year, the still very new Tom Seaver managed to save the game for the National League.  Wow, I could really hold my head high this year, right?

Wrong.

Unfortunately, Tom Seaver gave a post-game interview on television and his delirium showed with a high-pitched giggle.  Like a girl in the fourth grade.

Uh-oh.  The next day, I heard it from one of the urchins in the neighborhood.

"Tom Seaver is a faggot."

Oh.

Years later, my retort would be "Homophobic much?"

As a young baseball fan, I could never ever win an argument as far as the Mets were concerned.

To try and keep up with the crowd, I decided to try and play in their reindeer games by adopting my own American League team.  I can root for somebody in each league, correct?  At least, that would double my chances of having something to compete with the verbal brickbats always thrown my way.

So, on successive summers, I became a fan of the Chicago White Sox, the Boston Red Sox, the Detroit Tigers, and the California Angels.

Now, appointing another team to love was not as simple for me as just reading the box scores in the morning so I could familiarize myself with their players.  Nope, there was more to my madness.

I'd need to have their cap and yearbook.  In those days, the only place you could buy these items was at Manny's Baseball Land across the street from Yankee Stadium on River Avenue in the Bronx.  A 90-minute subway excursion was required for this journey into dual fandom.

Once I got home with my "new team," I'd crawl up to my favorite summer reading spot---next to the huge fan in the kitchen window.  There, I'd sit with my new cap on and memorize every stat in the team yearbook.  Al Kaline's RBIs.  Dean Chance's ERA.  John Buzhardt's won-loss record.  I needed to be an expert and fast.

Why my affectation for the chosen American League team never lasted more than one season is bizarre to me.

As for my hometown heroes, I frequently had to revel in them alone.  I would take to my own backyard to essentially stage pretend games with me serving as the pitcher for the Mets and their opponent.

In our yard, there was a brick staircase into my grandmother's kitchen.  We called it "the stoop."  The bricks served as my backstop against which I would throw my rubberball for strikes.  In my little world, there was much more to this all than the game I was concocting in my mind.  Nope, I needed all the pomp and circumstance that I would see at Shea Stadium.

First, in my best ten-year-old public address announcer's voice, I would announce the line-ups.  First, the opposition, then the Mets.  This would be following by my singing of "Meet the Mets."  It took me ten minutes to get through all this nonsense.

Once the game began, I'd throw my pitches.  One after another.  If I missed the brick stoop, I'd hit the house.  Quickly, a kitchen curtain would part and Grandma would peek outside.

All the while, there is my expert play-by-play.

"Galen Cisco on the mound with two strikes to Willie Mays.  Ball one."

Another hit to the house.

"Ball two."

One right into my grandmother's rose garden.

"Ball three."

The self-involvement was so intense that I was exhausted quite quickly.  No game lasted more than two innings.  I couldn't talk anymore.  Or, sometimes, my game was cancelled due to...Grandma.  She had enough of my endless play-by-play rambling.  The kitchen window would open.

"Shaddap already."

To be continued.

Dinner last night:  Hot dog at the Hollywood Bowl.