Read Online Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir by Doris Kearns Goodwin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
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spending the car ride home in sticky bathing suits on sandy towels.
The most memorable of our neighborhood Yankee fans was Gene Bartha, because of his peculiar dog-walking ritual with Clipper, the family sheepdog. Apparently, Clipper had originally been trained to relieve himself on newspaper in the house, for Gene was obliged to carry a paper with him and intermittently place several sheets on the sidewalk as they walked along. I was walking beside him one night when he mistakenly laid down on the sidewalk the sports page, which had a photograph and lead article on Yogi Berra. Seeing what he had done, he snatched it away from Clipper just in time, deftly replacing the sports page with the front page.
The ultimate aristocrats in the neighborhood—the family with the largest lawn—should, by rights, have been Yankee fans, but the Greenes, like the Rusts and our family, were staunch Dodger fans. The Greenes’ home was the only one on our block with a side yard as well as a front yard. I would play with Marilyn, the youngest of their three children, turning cartwheels on their soft grass, lying on my back to divine the shapes of different animals in the clouds, and feeding the rabbits they kept in a hutch on the corner of their lawn. The Rusts’ loyalty to the Dodgers followed the more typical pattern. A large Catholic family with five children, the Rusts had carried their allegiance with them when they moved to Long Island from SheepsheadBay in Brooklyn. And, of course, in Flatbush, my father had literally grown up with Ebbets Field, his devotion to the Dodgers so intertwined with his own biography that my sisters and I could no more have conceived of rooting for another team than of rooting against him.
For all of us, the love was personal and familiar. We spent hours arguing about whether Duke Snider, Willie Mays, or Mickey Mantle was the best center fielder. The handsome, smooth-fielding Duke Snider was the most consistent home-run hitter of the three, but Mays had a balletic grace and a joyful fury, while the switch-hitting Mantle had the greatest raw power and speed. Who was the best announcer: Russ Hodges, Mel Allen, or Red Barber? Who was the better catcher: Roy Campanella, steady behind the plate, unequaled in calling pitches, but a streaky hitter, or the short-armed swarthy Yogi Berra, the most dangerous hitter in baseball in late innings? Was Pee Wee Reese, the “Little Colonel,” who held the Dodgers together, a better shortstop than Phil Rizzuto, who led the American League in fielding? And which team had the better double-play combination: the Dodgers with Reese and Robinson, or the Giants with Alvin Dark and Eddie Stanky, whom we called “Eddie Stinky”? For support, we each mustered our own statistics and anecdotes. We carried on our arguments on the street, in the corner stores, and in each other’s homes. If no minds were changed, we took great pleasure in our endless debates and our shared love for the sport.
O UR NEIGHBORHOOD LIFE converged on a cluster of stores at the corner of our residential area: the drugstore and butcher shop; the soda shop, which sold papers, magazines, and comics; the delicatessen; and the combination barber shop and beauty parlor. The storekeepers were asmuch a part of my daily life as the families who lived on my street. When I entered the drugstore for a soda, or went into the delicatessen to buy some potato salad for my mother, the proprietors would greet me by name and, if not occupied, indulge my relentless curiosity. Since the families who operated these stores also owned them, their work was more than a job; it was a way of life. The quality of the goods they sold was as much a manifestation of their pride and self-respect as my father’s lawn was to him. The personal services they provided were not motivated merely by a desire for good “customer relations” but by their felt relationship to the larger community which they served and looked upon as neighbors.
The most memorable of our neighborhood Yankee fans was Gene Bartha, because of his peculiar dog-walking ritual with Clipper, the family sheepdog. Apparently, Clipper had originally been trained to relieve himself on newspaper in the house, for Gene was obliged to carry a paper with him and intermittently place several sheets on the sidewalk as they walked along. I was walking beside him one night when he mistakenly laid down on the sidewalk the sports page, which had a photograph and lead article on Yogi Berra. Seeing what he had done, he snatched it away from Clipper just in time, deftly replacing the sports page with the front page.
The ultimate aristocrats in the neighborhood—the family with the largest lawn—should, by rights, have been Yankee fans, but the Greenes, like the Rusts and our family, were staunch Dodger fans. The Greenes’ home was the only one on our block with a side yard as well as a front yard. I would play with Marilyn, the youngest of their three children, turning cartwheels on their soft grass, lying on my back to divine the shapes of different animals in the clouds, and feeding the rabbits they kept in a hutch on the corner of their lawn. The Rusts’ loyalty to the Dodgers followed the more typical pattern. A large Catholic family with five children, the Rusts had carried their allegiance with them when they moved to Long Island from SheepsheadBay in Brooklyn. And, of course, in Flatbush, my father had literally grown up with Ebbets Field, his devotion to the Dodgers so intertwined with his own biography that my sisters and I could no more have conceived of rooting for another team than of rooting against him.
For all of us, the love was personal and familiar. We spent hours arguing about whether Duke Snider, Willie Mays, or Mickey Mantle was the best center fielder. The handsome, smooth-fielding Duke Snider was the most consistent home-run hitter of the three, but Mays had a balletic grace and a joyful fury, while the switch-hitting Mantle had the greatest raw power and speed. Who was the best announcer: Russ Hodges, Mel Allen, or Red Barber? Who was the better catcher: Roy Campanella, steady behind the plate, unequaled in calling pitches, but a streaky hitter, or the short-armed swarthy Yogi Berra, the most dangerous hitter in baseball in late innings? Was Pee Wee Reese, the “Little Colonel,” who held the Dodgers together, a better shortstop than Phil Rizzuto, who led the American League in fielding? And which team had the better double-play combination: the Dodgers with Reese and Robinson, or the Giants with Alvin Dark and Eddie Stanky, whom we called “Eddie Stinky”? For support, we each mustered our own statistics and anecdotes. We carried on our arguments on the street, in the corner stores, and in each other’s homes. If no minds were changed, we took great pleasure in our endless debates and our shared love for the sport.
O UR NEIGHBORHOOD LIFE converged on a cluster of stores at the corner of our residential area: the drugstore and butcher shop; the soda shop, which sold papers, magazines, and comics; the delicatessen; and the combination barber shop and beauty parlor. The storekeepers were asmuch a part of my daily life as the families who lived on my street. When I entered the drugstore for a soda, or went into the delicatessen to buy some potato salad for my mother, the proprietors would greet me by name and, if not occupied, indulge my relentless curiosity. Since the families who operated these stores also owned them, their work was more than a job; it was a way of life. The quality of the goods they sold was as much a manifestation of their pride and self-respect as my father’s lawn was to him. The personal services they provided were not motivated merely by a desire for good “customer relations” but by their felt relationship to the larger community which they served and looked upon as neighbors.
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