What else is new? Not another book about baseball? Well yes & no. It’s about baseball, but it’s not a book. I plan to publish this onto the Internet on Homestead as a web-page. This is going to be a brief story of my life and how baseball played (and didn’t play) a part in it. I am going to name names, at least first names.
Why electric fan? My dad called me one when I was in elementary school because I was off and on regarding my feelings towards my favorite baseball team – the New York Yankees – and the sport itself. Actually, from elementary school to May 1983 it was off and on again. So I guess the term fit for about 30 years.
I first saw the light of day in the mid 20th century at St. Francis Hospital in the South Bronx. The hospital is not there any longer, but you can still walk from the site to Yankee Stadium without getting too tired. Unfortunately the neighborhood started to go south by then and my mom and dad and I packed up and followed my maternal relatives to the green spaces of Flushing New York. At that time we had 3 baseball teams, but none in Queens. I remember my dad taking me to Flushing Meadow Park, which was down the block from our house, for games of catch and also to watch Little League and semi-pro teams play. Looking back, I remember that most of the neighborhood – Queensboro Hill – was comprised of Yankee fans. That is probably because a large number of ex-Bronx residents like us crossed the East River and settled there. Yankee Stadium was also the easiest ballpark to reach, both by car (Grand Central Parkway over the Triborough Bridge) and by subway via the Flushing line to Grand Central, then the Woodlawn line to 161st Street, just like today. Notice that I did not say #4 and #7 lines. The #4 Woodlawn line ran old 1910's vintage cars that did not have route markers. What I also remember about them is that their electric motors made a hideous sound when they started up after a station stop.
It was in the pre-school years that I had my first exposure to baseball and perhaps my first event that I can still remember, 50+ years later. Since I have a large number of relatives, we tended to do a lot of visiting. One of my dad's cousins lived on the other side of Flushing Meadow Park in Corona, then a large Italian enclave. His cousin had a daughter named Carol who was about 8 months older than I am, so we tended to visit fairly often. One day Carol's first cousin Barbara was over the house in Corona and I remember being in the living room with the two girls and Barbara said "I like the Yankees" and I promptly responded "me too". So it looks as if I was a fan of the Pinstripes before I was in kindergarten!!
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