On my fifth birthday in March of 1947, my mother gave me my first baseball glove.  I grew up on the Colonial Court block in Sunnyside Gardens, and baseball ruled our lives from April through October.  Major League loyalties were taken very seriously, and New York City still hosted three teams:  the Brooklyn Dodgers, the New York Giants, and the Yankees.

 

          I had been a spectator for two years, watching the older kids, boys and girls, playing softball from morning until dark on the field in our playground.  My parents were fiercely loyal Dodger fans, and as the star athlete in the family, my mother decided that at five, I was now ready to be introduced to the rudiments of the game.  

 

          She and my dad worked during the week for a union newspaper, the UE News, he as the editor, she as a proofreader and copy editor.  But every weekend, my mother spent time with me playing catch in the long tree-lined alley that separated our apartment building from the fenced-in tennis court at our end of the block.  I seemed to have inherited some of her sports talent and was soon throwing and catching well enough to meet her exacting standards.

 

          That July, my dad decided I was ready for an even more thrilling lesson.  Not a player himself, he loved baseball and took me to my first professional game.  It was Jackie Robinson’s first year playing in the major leagues, and my dad wanted me to see him play.

 

          We took the subway to Prospect Park Station and walked the few blocks to Ebbets Field.  We sat along the first baseline, and my dad explained the game to me as it went along.  I fell in love, once and forever, with baseball, the Dodgers, and Jackie Robinson.  When we got home from the game, my dad cut a picture of Jackie Robinson out of the newspaper, framed it, and hung it over my bed.

 

          In the spring of 1953, when I turned eleven, I was now a sixth grader at PS 150 and had been an AAA traffic monitor since the fourth grade.  Wearing white sash belts and badges, we stood at the block corners on 43rd Avenue and guided students safely across the street.

 

          Each year, two of the NYC Major League teams played a game that all the traffic monitors in the city were invited to attend.  That year, the Dodgers were one of the teams, and at the end of the game, I and hundreds of other kids crowded around the stadium exits where the teams were leaving to board their team buses, shouting the names of our favorite players.  Separated from the team by police barricades and policemen who stood guard and kept shouting, “Sorry, kids, no autographs today,” we watched helplessly as the players ran past us.

​

          Suddenly, through all the hullabaloo, one young voice was heard shouting, “Mr. Robinson, Mr. Robinson.”  Jackie Robinson stopped running, turned toward the kids and called just loudly enough so that I heard him, “Who said Mr. Robinson?”  I raised my hand and called back, just loudly enough so that he heard me, “I did.”  He walked over to the barricade and looked at me.  After asking my name and chatting for a minute, he noticed the glove on my left hand, and asked, “Do you play ball?”

          “Yes, Mr. Robinson, I do,” I answered.

          “What position,” he asked.

          “Second base,” I said.

He smiled, reached over the barricade and shook my hand.  “Don’t stop,” he said, and then joined his teammates on the bus.  I could not wait to get home and tell my parents I had met my hero.

 

          That day, and the wonderful day in October, 1955 when our beloved Brooklyn Dodgers finally beat the Yankees to win the World Series for the only time in franchise history still shine like stars in my heart...

 

          And Jackie Robinson’s picture still hangs over my bed.