Listening to the World Series
In 1960 I was in Fifth Grade at a big elementary school in Atlanta, Ashford Park School. There was no Major league baseball in Dixie back then, the closest team was the Washington [DC] Senators, 600 miles away. I didn't know anybody who had ever attended a major league game.
Still, all of us boys were big baseball fans. In the summer we all played Little League. We all collected baseball cards, every time we bought that bubblegum, we hoped we could luck out and get a Mickey Mantle card.
Back then, the World Series was played in daytime. Some of the teams didn't even have lights in their stadiums. So the World Series was played while we were in school. I wanted to listen to the games. I wore a long sleeved shirt. I stuck my transistor radio in my belt. I ran the cord for the ear piece up the sleeve and had it in the palm of my hand. There I was in Ms. Cofield's class, my Math book was open on my desk as we studied long division, but I had my elbow on the desk, and my head was leaning onto my palm. I was listening to the game, Pirates vs Yankees!
At the top of every hour, we took a 5 minute break. All the boys knew about my scam, and they would run up to me in the hall and ask what the score was. Of course the girls were clueless. A girl aka "teacher's pet" would have immediately ratted me out to Ms. Cofield, and it would have been "goodbye" to my radio, and "hello" to Dr. Thomas the Principal and his paddle. Probably worth 3 licks.
In this situation, I got to listen to the greatest home run in World Series history, Bill Mazeroski and his walk off homer in the bottom of the ninth of Game Seven.
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Still a hero, if not a deity, today, they put up this bronze statue of Mazeroski in downtown Pittsburg running the bases for his home run.
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I still had rather listen to the game on radio 😊, real baseball players with the "real world" experiences are usually the best announcers rather than the personalities on TV today.
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Way back........
I can recall laying on my grandmother's living room floor.......and watching Stan "The Man" with my uncle Jerry Don. If we were lucky, Dizzy Dean would be calling the game. The Cardinals were "our" favorite in those early years. Later on..…we included the Cincinnati Reds........after local boy Johnny Bench had made good.
They say you can't go home again........God knows, there are times I wish I could.🥲
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