Baseball Boys Recreates 1950’s Little Baseball Youth of Heritage Hills’ Resident
Little League Baseball was born in 1939. By 1950, it made
its way from Pennsylvania to Bruce Fabricant’s
hometown of Mt.
Vernon Mt. Vernon
“I got a postcard in the mail, that said, ‘you didn’t cut
it son,’” he remembers.
He persevered to make a roster the next time - the life
lessons obvious. “You learned how to lose, dealing with adversity and rising to
a challenge. That’s what I’m trying to impart in this book,” he says.
He’s not advocating, a la Bill Cosby, that kids go back
to walking to school, in the snow, uphill, both ways, or trying out just to
play. But when he goes to his granddaughter’s soccer game, and parents aren’t
allowed to cheer, because someone might feel bad, child development is the
loser.
On the other end, Fabricant sees too many parents
transformed into agents. Jockeying managers for marquis exposure, they envision
a scholarship before shaving is even a consideration. “Parents get involved with
organized sports to a degree that they are overstepping their bounds rather than
leaving it up to the kids on the field,” he says in paraphrasing the piece Rick
Wolff of Sports Illustrated contributed.
But his dialogue on these societal deficiencies don’t
dominate Baseball Boys. Filled with
old newspaper clippings, game summaries, boxscores, anecdotes from the players
and interviews with Mt. Vernon
He also just loves his hometown, the lost youth and the
part baseball played. As such, Fabricant felt an exploration of these early
years of organized play was warranted.
Beforehand, it was all on the kids. “We played baseball
in the streets and so forth, but something was missing,” he
remembers.
World War II over and fathers coming home, an interest
emerged in organizing and a former major leaguer named Carl Stotz seized upon
it. Stotz enlisted a local newspaper editor to publicize the initiative and
Ralph Branca endorsed it. “I remember it vividly, so many kids like myself at
the first tryout,” says Fabricant of the scant 75 slots that the first few years
could support.
Additionally, Stotz made it his mission to provide a
contrast to a cultural makeup that mostly had the various ethnicities sticking
to their corners of the municipality. “The greatest thing he did was to
integrate the league so you played with all the different types of players,”
said Fabricant.
He also got out front when an entry fee was initially
proposed. “Carl said no. We won’t do
that, and local sponsors put up the tab,” says Fabricant.
The rest was left to the managers. “I heard from many
friends about the men in the dugout, and the instrumental part they played in
their lives,” he says.
As for his discussion with Ralph Branca, the exchange
stuck to the small stuff. “I didn’t talk at all about his major league career,”
says Fabricant, and the two had more in common than baseball.
Prompting Branca if he remembered the Fabricant dry
cleaning business, the Dodger great was quick with the Brooklyn wit. “Of course I do. I worked at it. I probably
made 50 cents an hour because your father was so cheap,” Fabricant relayed the
story with a smile.
Ken Singleton, on the other hand, lamented the disarray
of the fields he played on as a kid. “A sign of the times,” says Fabricant, “the
kids aren’t playing as much.”
But back then, the league expanded along with the demand.
In that, he hopes the natural order of things can be restored and rollback the
excess. “Just let the kids play,” he concluded.
The book can be found on Amazon.com at "Baseball
Boys Rediscovering 1950s Little League Baseball in Mount Vernon , NY
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