There was no such strategy of collecting stars. You could buy cards two ways, for one cent you could buy a pack with one card in it, and for five cents the pack would contain 6 cards. It came by 3 days a week, and always stopped in our neighborhood, because most of our families were Italian and we had to have Italian bread with our supper. The vehicle was about the size of a self-contained RV and was like a convenience store on wheels. During the summer our neighborhood was serviced by a traveling store. During the school year, we would walk past two stores near our school that sold baseball cards and penny candy. Most of us collected and traded baseball cards.īuying cards was convenient. Basketball rims were at the playground, but many of us hung a basket from our garage and played in our driveway. Living on a quiet street was a huge plus because you wouldn’t have to keep stopping the game to let cars pass. Most football was one or two hand touch and played in the street. There was no organized football for us and very few options for playing basketball. They were made of leather and came in a couple of sizes.īut baseball was king. We had batting helmets, but they were not really helmets, but earmuffs. Our hats and stirrups were made of wool and the stirrups usually needed an elastic at the top of them to stop them from drooping every time you ran. The shirt and pants were made of flannel, so they lasted for many years, but during the heat of the summer, they were really hot. Our Little League uniforms had been used for a number of years and the knees on our pants probably had a patch or two on them. The good players make the “majors” at 10 years old, the lesser at 11 or 12 (12 year olds were not allowed to play in the “minors”). Most of us played Little League, but usually we were all on different teams. We didn’t need adults to organize us, and we didn’t need rides to get to the field. Batting gloves were not thought of at this time, and would have been perceived as unmanly. Lastly, we probably only had one or two bats between us and in most cases the bat was probably broken and was held together with either a nail in the bat, or more electrical tape (the non-shiny type acted as a nice grip). If the stitching was too far gone, the ball was covered in electrical tape, normally the shiny kind. The ball we used was probably coming unstitched and was dark and dirty. Only the catcher and first baseman had the "big gloves." The glove was small and the web was barely large enough to contain the ball. My glove was a Rawlings John Groth model (outfielder for the Tigers). If you didn’t eat lunch at the field you took a chance that the field wouldn't be empty when you returned. And besides bringing your baseball equipment, you needed to have a lunch with you. With us we needed to rise early in the morning, have a quick breakfast and ride our bikes to the closest field hoping to be there before another group staked its claim. Today you can drive past a ball field during the summer and find it empty. Growing up in the 1950’s was so different for those of us who loved to play baseball.
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