Signed Up

Little League was in Gerritsen Beach, a neighborhood with fresh shore air, and flat expanse. Mostly private houses, not apartment buildings, there was lots of sky. The streets were wide and empty.

The first night (after school; after work for the fathers who brought us), we got oriented.

We met indoors, in a big gym.

We picked up the hats and t-shirts we'd ordered. We met our coaches.

"All right, fellas, listen up. I want to introduce myself, I'm Coach Lou."

Coach Lou had a gut and glasses. In real life he probably drove a Pepsi truck. Here he was General Patton.

His charges were sitting on benches. I was among the attentive few, not the fidgety.

"We're going to learn two things in the opportunity of Little League baseball for you fellas. One, the fundamentals of the game and the nature of the game. You're going to learn the basics of the game and maybe go beyond the basics a little bit, as well of course as the basics themselves.

"Me and the other coaches and myself are going to do our best to instill in yous, also, in the course of the season, the values of competition, developing and learning your skills and all that, and playing the game the way it should be played, with respect for yourselves, your opponents, and of course the great traditions of the game that we call the game of baseball."

Something like that. Coach Lou put his unlit cigar in his mouth and gave us a meaningful look. He was not just Patton, but Casey Stengel and Winston Churchill, in one. I was smiling, not out of disrespect, but pleasure. Ready for battle, Coach Lou.

Called Up

It was paradoxical, even to myself, that a go-my-own-way kid like myself would be happy in school, and a little lost outside it.

It wasn't that I liked regimentation and rules. I wasn't an altar boy, or a choir boy. I wasn't a crossing guard.

I didn't need structure for its own sake. Some kids did. That was alright, although it seemed most such kids - the door-monitor type - soon were big on NASA, the FBI, and Hitler. See you later to them, although they tended to be polite.

I didn't need authority. I just needed things to do.

What provided that, just in time, was Little League.

It sounds a little square, of course: like, more Pennsylvania than Brooklyn.

But it was practically romantic to me. I was in love with baseball anyway. So, to be able to play with a team? It was like being a musician, and joining your first band.

It was adventurous from the start, because we played outside the neighborhood. You'd have to. There wasn't a single field of grass and dirt in all of Brooklyn 3.