Ebbets Field

           Baseball stadiums live out their allotted spans just as people do, and, like people, are remembered long afterward by those who knew them best.  Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was opened in 1913 and demolished in 1965, yet I and thousands like me remember games played there in the 1950s as if we had seen them yesterday.  Those long summer afternoons in Ebbets Field gave me a sense of community spirit and taught me some important childhood lessons, and the memories I took home on the subway after the last out have stayed with me to this day.

           Rooting for the Dodgers gave me my first sense of participating in something larger than myself, pulling with the crowd for the good of the team.  I often sat in the left-field grandstand next to the opponents' bull pen, close enough to see the chewing tobacco bulge in a relief pitcher's cheek as he warmed up.  The crowd had a way of waiting until the pitcher was just about to release the ball and then shouting “Whoooooosh” in unison.  Occasionally a pitcher would go through his motion and then hold the ball, trying to catch us out, but somehow we always knew not to whoosh until the ball had actually left his hand.  We in the whooshing brigade were convinced we were contributing to the Dodger cause by destroying the opponents' morale.

           I also learned other useful lessons, such as that one can't back a winner all the time and that bending the rules is permissible on occasion.  Although the Dodgers were the best team in the National League in those years, I saw some horrendous defeats, including a Sunday double-header loss, 10-1 and 11-0, to the last-place Pittsburgh Pirates.  After the eighth inning of the second game my friend Robert Shatkin insisted we sneak down into the box seats.  Although only about 200 people were left in the stands, and the drowsing ushers wouldn't have minded even if they saw us, I was terrified.  Robert finally got his way by calling me chicken, thus starting me off on a career of petty lawlessness that has lasted to this day.

           The way I remember the scores of that disastrous double header shows how clearly the sights and sounds of those afternoons have stayed with me.  I can still recall minute details of the park, even to the advertising that adorned the outfield.  At the base of the right-field wall, for example, ran an ad for a men's clothing store that said “Hit Sign, Win Suit.”  On the Schaefer beer sign atop the scoreboard the “h” would light up for a hit and the “e” for an error.  Whenever I see someone drop a drink at a party or witness a minor traffic accident, I still mutter “An ‘e’ lights up on the Schaefer scoreboard,” to the confusion of my uninitiated friends.

           Baseball is still a ruling passion in my life.  During the off season I read books on baseball and play simulation games on my home computer.  I have recently started collecting baseball cards, the kind that came five for a nickel when I was a boy, along with an all but unchewable slab of pinkish bubble gum.  The cards that give me greatest pleasure are duplicates of those I owned when I was ten.  I like them best because they remind me of Ebbets Field, a ballpark where games will continue in my imagination as long as I live.  In those games, the Dodgers will always win.