My cousin and I grew up together in the 1950s, giving a new meaning to the word. inseparable. We delivered newspapers, went to the same high school, shared the same relatives, attended the same church, exchanged names at confirmation, celebrated the holidays, and dreamed of playing professional baseball players. Nothing else was on our sports radar or a possible career choice.
Growing up in Queens, and then Lindenhurst on Long Island, we were just a train ride from three professional stadiums. Yes, three: Yankee Stadium, Ebbetts Field, and Polo Grounds. We wanted to be a somebody in our lives, a Major League Baseball player.
We were cousins and best friends. We lived about two miles from each other. As long as our single speed bike was close by, we would be a rotary phone call away. When we were young, what united us like magnets was the prospect of playing ball, any kind of ball. John and I made our own lineups, ground rules, and stadiums. At my house we play endless hours of stoopball. With a twenty-nine cent “Spaldeen Hi-Bounce Ball,” we’d shoot it up the brick steps in front of the door, trying to hit the mark and fly it across the fairway into the maples for a home run. Most of the time we hit ground balls that were caught for one out.
Aside from hitting a home run to the trees across the street, the biggest thrill was precisely charting the path of a potential home run as he lunged through the leaves, and then grabbing it to “get out” just before he hit the ball. ground. Sometimes John and I got in big trouble if we forgot to turn off the porch bug light and ended up smashing it with a foul ball. Then it was time to change stadiums in a hurry.
At John’s house we often played wiffleball, using the back of the house as a backup. Once his mother, my Aunt Francis, came out to inform us that the backyard was not a good place to play ball. We could break a window. To be clear, we had smashed a neighbor’s basement window two seasons in a row with a hard ball, while practicing our skills on the field. How to break a window with a plastic ball? No way, right?
John assured Aunt Francis that a wiffleball couldn’t break a window. As I held my breath, he threw it away Lasted against the nearest window. It did not break. With a knack for dramaturgy, John relaunched it. Aunt Francis did not faint and the window remained intact. Defeated by John’s demonstration, his mom returned to the kitchen without saying another word.
I got up first. I wanted to hit a home run with my first swing. I cut the ball out of plastic and with our wooden broomstick, and the bat came through the kitchen window.
In disbelief, Aunt Francis poked her head out of the window and yelled, “I thought you couldn’t break a window.” John muttered something about “Not with a wiffle ball“, and we immediately found an alternate stadium at the end of the block, a factory wall, and a rarely used truck entrance.
After drawing the strike zone on the wall, we played stick-ball one on one. The pitcher was the infield, the outfields and the umpire as well. A home run was a hit at the factory across the street. How about getting back that priceless pink ball?
Climbing the wall like Spider Man connecting pipes between the two buildings, we were able to recover home runs on top of the factory. At 29 ¢ an injection, it was worth the challenge.
John and I never played regularly on the high school baseball team. We watched Major League Baseball games together at Yankee Stadium, Polo Grounds, and Ebbetts Field. We argued a lot about who was the better baseball player, Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays, but we always remained friends, even as we grew up, when our professional baseball dream became beyond our reach.
When that dream disappeared, we decided to become different kinds of “professionals.” We call it “Plan B”. John traded in his invisible baseball uniform for a white jacket and stethoscope. I traded in for a tie, a sports coat, and a piece of putty. When we visit now, we remember the broken windows and dreams of yesterday. And then we’re going to play in a big room with a racket and a blue ball.
Together, again, playing and dreaming new dreams.