sad passing

[Allen Wiener]

Must have been quite a moment at the Polo Grounds, all those years ago.

www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/sports/baseball/18thomson.html?_r=1&ref=obituaries

[garyzaboly]

When I was a very young kid, my brother, pals and me would sometimes climb down the wooded slope of Highbridge Park/Coogans Bluff and sneak as far into the Polo Grounds, during games, as we could get. In the mid- '60s the stadium was torn down and replaced by a low income project.

[Allen Wiener]

I remember the place quite well. Got Eddie Matthews' autograph on a Polo Grounds program, and somehow managed to lose it over the years! Did you ever read Harpo Marx's autobiography, "Harpo Speaks"? He tells how he was able to watch games as a kid from a vantage point outside the stadium that permitted a view of no more than the leftfielder! I also recall taking those Circle Line tours around Manhattan; my favorite spot was where you could see both the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium at the same time.

[garyzaboly]

Aug 18, 2010 15:09:12 GMT -5 Allen Wiener said:

I remember the place quite well. Got Eddie Matthews' autograph on a Polo Grounds program, and somehow managed to lose it over the years! Did you ever read Harpo Marx's autobiography, "Harpo Speaks"? He tells how he was able to watch games as a kid from a vantage point outside the stadium that permitted a view of no more than the leftfielder! I also recall taking those Circle Line tours around Manhattan; my favorite spot was where you could see both the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium at the same time.

That area---the park anyway---became a center for youth gang "activity" as the demographics of Washington Heights changed in the '50s and '60s, so the passing of the Polo Grounds was just another sad chapter in the changing face of the neighborhood.
That would be great---viewing parts of the games from one's residence---as long as you were a fan. Otherwise the noise would drive anyone else a little batty now and then, no pun intended.

[Allen Wiener]

Ironically, my daughter now lives behind Fenway Park and always knows when something interesting's going on by the volume of the crowd noise. A couple of years ago, she'd given up on the Sox in a playoff game vs. Tampa Bay and went to sleep. A while later, the crowd noise woke her, she flipped on the TV and saw that they'd made up a 7-run deficit and went on to win the game. She said her house literally felt like it was shaking that night.

[garyzaboly]

By the way, in the early-mid 1950s, Willie Mays lived in a brownstone on 168th Street, just one block south of where we lived (and of course not far from the Polo Grounds). I have one memory of him only, of him sitting on the steps in front of it with a lot of kids milling around him, the sun very bright. I was very young and not all that keen on baseball yet, but I knew he was a star in the game. In front of the brownstone the sidewalk had a big "WM" embedded into it with some kind of shiny stonework. Long after he moved away those initials remained.

[Allen Wiener]

Great story, Gary. I've heard that Willie used to play stickball in the street with those kids, too. Bygone days. Friends who grew up in Brooklyn at the time have similar stories about the Dodgers, many of whom lived in the neighborhood and really WERE neighborly. One guy told me he used to see Carl Erskine, who lived on his street, mowing his own lawn all the time (with a push mower, naturally).

[garyzaboly]

A friend told me earlier this year that Willie Mays lives in my current neighborhood---Riverdale NY---and can sometimes be seen walking along the sidewalks bordering the Henry Hudson Parkway that cuts through it. I've never seen him, but it's ironic that we both later moved into the same neighborhood from a mutually shared neighborhood of way back when.

[Valerie Hyatt Martin]

My son and I met Bobby Thompson in 1996 when he visited a summer camp my son attended with the (then) Prince William Cannons in Manassas, VA. I did not know Mays was on deck when he hit that homerun. I don't know how I missed that, but it does add to the story. Baseball...never can learn enough.

[Allen Wiener]

I had forgotten that Mays was on deck; good point. You couldn't make up stuff like this!