By Alex Berger
A guy answers a knock at his door. He looks down and sees a snail on his doormat. He picks it up and hurls it across the street. Four months later, there is another knock on the door. He opens it and again sees the snail. “Hey!” the snail hollers, “What was that all about?”
Like the snail, I may be a little late, but I want to write about baseball. The World Series has come and gone, and sports columnists have long finished recounting memories of previous Subway Series and players of eras passed. Although we are deep into the football, basketball, and hockey seasons, I think it only fair that I finally have a turn (although rather tardy) stirring up a little baseball “diamond dust” memories of my own.
Of course, I'm a football fanatic, particularly when it involves my beloved Giants. I live and bleed “Giants Blue.” However, strange as it may seem, when I was very young, and I mean very, very young, I was a baseball fanatic.
My team wasn't the New York Yankees. It wasn't the Brooklyn Dodgers and, for Heaven's sake, it wasn't the New York Baseball Giants. Surprise, surprise, it was the St. Louis Cardinals.
Don't be shocked. Didn't I see Mike Piazza (Mr. Mets himself) sitting near the Philadelphia Eagles bench, wearing an Eagles jacket and hat, at a recent Giants-Eagle football game at Giants Stadium? Talk about biting the hand that feeds
I began following the St. Louis Cardinals before I was even old enough to read. My older brother, Larry (whom I idolized) was a Cardinals fan, and so I was one also. They were a great team and those fierce pennant fights with the Brooklyn Dodgers, and once, With the New York Giants, still burn brightly in my memory.
I never will forget the Cardinals legends who passed before my adoring eyes. Players like Stan Musial (in my opinion, no one was better), Marty Marion (no shortstop fielded better), Johnny Mite (no first-baseman was a better slugger), Terry Moore (no center-fielder was better defensively), Mort Cooper (a pitching ace for many years), and the other players, added to my joy of baseball. I seldom went to the games when the Cardinals came to town because teen-aged Larry was always too busy with girls to take me. Since I was too young to travel by myself, I did the next best thing,
Every day when I got home from school, I filled a bowl with corn flakes and milk, ran with it to the bedroom where my trusty Philco radio was waiting and glued my ear to the little box to get the Cardinals scores. Then, whenever they won (and it was often), I would head out the door to greet my friends (Yankees, Dodgers, or Giants fans) with a wide grin.
But on days when they lost, I stayed home to avoid the inevitable teasing that awaited me. Once, the Cardinals lost three straight games and my mother was quite pleased that I devoted so much time to my homework assignments.
On my 6th birthday, Brother Larry took me to Brooklyn's Ebbets Field to see my heroes play, and to this day I could relate every aspect of that game. I even remember the fight. The Dodgers' Joe (Muscles) Medwick slid spikes first into our skinny shortstop, Marty (Slats) Marion, and then tried to punch him. Our second baseman, Frank (Creepy) Crespi, stepped between the two and hit Medwick with a punch that was heard all the way out to my bleacher seat. Medwick never bothered a Cardinal again.
When the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Jackie Robinson to become the first black baseball player in the major leagues, I was elated.
But, when my Cardinals refused to sign a black ballplayer, and even began taunting Robinson unmercifully during the games, I knew then and there, it was time to switch allegiance. I became a die-hard Brooklyn Dodgers fan.
By this time, I was a teenager and old enough to trek to Ebbets Field by myself. I saw Jackie, Duke Snider, Poy Campanella , Carl Furillo, Pee Wee Reese, and the other Dodger stars of the 1950s. But, sad to say, they were usually eclipsed by the mighty New York Yankees in every Subway Series except one. Oh, the agony of it all.
Once the Brooklyn Dodgers and The New York Giants were cruelly moved to California, I decided to forsake baseball entirely and switched to football.
But, the recent World Series rekindled my baseball fervor as I watched every game, bleary-eyed, until the wee hours of the morning.
Watching the games at Shea Stadium also brought me back to 1964 when the ballpark first opened. The New York City World's Fair was in full bloom and, to commemorate the occasion, the annual baseball All-Star game was played there.
So I decided to visit the spanking new stadium and see the game. As a soon- to-be father of two sports-minded sons, and living so close to Shea, I was destined to visit Shea many times with them.
But to be honest, I still prefer football.
