9
By the time school ended on Monday, everyone in the neighborhood had heard about the new baseball field. The excitement had spread to other kids, even if they did not belong to the Ascension of Our Lord parish. Everyone was making plans to start baseball leagues with schedules and umpires. Kids from Fishtown and other neighborhoods were asking if they would be able to use the field. It was going to be a great phenomenon for the kids of Kensington.
About a dozen boys met outside the entrance to the cemetery that day to play baseball, but instead of playing, we sat on the grass and talked about the new field.
“Who is going to stop us if we want to use your field?” Billy Smith from Fishtown asked.
“It’s gonna be our field and we’ll decide who gets to play on it,” Johnny answered in a harsh enough tone that kept Billy from asking any follow up questions.
“Maybe we can play a world series between our parish and yours on the new field,” Sam Jenkins said.
Sam belonged to St. Monica’s, but sometimes he played baseball with us.
“You St. Monica creeps would have no chance against us,” Johnny laughed.
Johnny and I fielded one question after another since everyone knew we had been in church Sunday, and had heard the announcement. We answered every question, even though we did not know any of the real details. I guess we just gave the answers that we hoped would end up being right. We did not know when the field would be built, or how it was going to be paid for. We did not know who could use it or how big it would be. We really were not certain of a single fact. Nevertheless, we answered every single question confident that our answers were all correct.
Dinnertime rolled around, we never did play any baseball that day. We all walked home thinking about future afternoons playing baseball at Boger Field. I walked with Johnny, and the rest of the kids split up and walked home with the people that lived in their own neighborhoods.
After dinner, Johnny and I met up on my front stoop. A few of the other local kids were in the middle of the street down by the corner playing a game of wireball. Wireball was another neighborhood game that I did not imagine existed anywhere else in the world. It was played, and scored along the lines of regular baseball. You would take a rubber ball and throw it straight up in air trying to hit the overhead wires in the street. If the ball did not hit the wires and the other team caught it the batter was out. If the other team dropped the ball, it counted as a single. If your throw hit the wire and the other team could not catch it, it counted as a home run. The great thing about wireball was that all you needed was a ball and an overhead street wire and you were ready to play.
When Johnny and I arrived at the wireball field, there was already a game in progress.
“Hey let us get in!” Johnny said loudly as he walked right into the middle of the game. “You can split us two up.”
“OK,” said Jimmy Ryan, “we’ll take your friend and you can be on Monahan’s team since we’re already winning.”
I guess Jimmy was saying that Johnny was the better player so that was why he picked me. So, I played on Jimmy Ryan’s team and Johnny was on Pat Monahan’s. This was a good for me as Jimmy Ryan was the greatest wireball player in the history of Kensington. He had the strongest arm any of us had ever seen. He was left handed, so naturally he got the nickname Lefty.
“You play the outfield,” Lefty said as he directed me towards the back end of the street. “You gotta make sure you cover the whole area between there and the curb. And you better not let anything drop,” he added. I guess he was also the manager of this team.
When Lefty threw the ball up in the air it would go so high that for a few seconds it was no longer visible. The players on the other team were left to guess where to position themselves to try to catch it when it returned to earth. The best strategy for catching one of Lefty’s throws was to spread out all over the street and maybe someone would happen to be in the right spot. Unfortunately, his balls returned from the heavens with such force that they would usually pop out of the fielder’s bare hands as they tried to catch them.
“Lefty’s having a good game,” whispered Harry Perkins one of the other players on my team.
Harry was one of those kids that did not normally play with us, but seemed to show up from time to time. He always seemed to be dirty, and in our neighborhood, it took a lot to stand out as being dirty. I don’t think Harry owned a single article of clothing that was not ripped. I never saw him wear clothes that ever looked like his mother had washed them.
“Yea, Lefty always has a good game,” I replied.
The funny thing about Harry was that he always brought his kid sister Emma with him and she played as well. In fact, she was a bit of a tomboy and was actually a much better player than Harry was. When we were picking teams, she always was picked ahead of him. Pretty embarrassing for Harry.
On the very next play, Duke Zimmerman threw a ball that was coming right to me. As I got into position to make the catch I felt Harry back up and bump right into me. I took my eyes off the ball just for a second to try to avoid him only to have the ball pop out of my hands.
“You stink,” Harry yelled.
Without hesitating, I shot back, “that was your fault for bumping in to me you jackass. It was clearly my ball, and if anyone stinks, it’s you. Even your little sister is a better than you.”
That shut him up pretty quick. In our neighborhood whenever you were attacked you had to be ready to fight right back right away or else you would be picked on forever.
“Don’t worry about it,” Lefty said. “I can win this game single handedly.”
Lefty was playing extremely well that evening as he hit the wire time after time, and our team was winning by so many runs after three innings that everyone decided to stop playing. Johnny did not like losing in wireball or in anything else. He was very competitive and losing always seemed to put him in a bad mood.
“I hate playing on Monahan’s team,” Johnny said. “He always loses. I can’t remember playing on his team and ever winning.”
“Who cares if you win at wireball?” I asked. “Nobody keeps track and it’s just fun to play.”
“What do you mean, if you don’t care about winning what’s the sense of playing?” Johnny countered. “The whole point of playing the game is trying to win. If there’s nobody to beat then it not fun to play”
“I guess you’re right,” I said, wanting to avoid any further arguing.
Darkness fell as the game broke up. We knew we had to be home by dark. I was never worried about anything happening to us as long as we were in our own neighborhood, but mom saw things differently.
“Bad things happen after dark,” she would say. “If you think these streets are rough during the day, you don’t want to be out at night and see what goes on.”
“I don’t want my child roaming the streets late at night and getting into all kinds of trouble,” she told me time after time. “You run into the likes of Billy Brannigan and the hoodlums he runs around with. Whatever you do, make sure you are home by dark!”
Arriving at my home, I always got a warm feeling. I loved coming home at the end of the day and having a safe place to spend my nights. When I closed the front door, I felt as though I could lock out all the bad things that might be going on in the world outside. Then there was the nightly ritual of warm milk and sugar cookies that left me feeling good about life. It was a special time where I would spend a few minutes with just my mom and me. We talked about everything that had happened during the day. How could any day that ended with warm milk and sugar cookies be a bad day?
10
Springtime brought out a wealth of opportunities for new experiences. The winter cold and endless snows that seemed to stay on the ground for months, made it hard to get excited about spending time outdoors. As spring dawned, the world seemed to open up to exciting new adventures. Even living in Kensington, we never saw limits on the world we had to explore. Johnny and I were always busy making plans for the p
laces we would visit together as we grew up and all the little detours we would take along the way.
“When I am older I am going to travel a lot and visit all the big cities in the United States,” Johnny started. “Then I’m gonna go to Europe and see all the great palaces where all the kings and queens live.”
“That’s stuff I’d like to see too, maybe I can go with you?”
“Sure, and I bet they have white sandy beaches that are a lot nicer than the ones in Atlantic City,” Johnny continued. “We’ll stay in the finest hotels and get room service brought right up to our suite.”
“We should make a list of all the places we want to go and all the things we want to do,” I said.
To us these were not just the dreams of thirteen year olds, but were things that we were definitely going to do.
On the first weekend in May, Johnny’s Uncle Eddie came to town to visit. He lived in Harrisburg and worked for the government. He was the assistant to Governor Pinchot, and I was certain that he was very rich. He had a beautiful new black Packard automobile that got everyone’s attention when he drove it down the street. He wore fine suits and always had on a crisp new hat.
Johnny and I always got excited whenever Uncle Eddie came to town. He seemed to like Johnny the best of all his nephews and nieces, and always put aside some special time to spend with him. On some of the day trips they took
Me, Johnny, and The Babe Page 9
