There were titans in those days, part 2
Well, that'd be okay, because at that moment I was suddenly swept back to my boyhood, when the neighborhood gang played softball in the big vacant lot between Phillip Daitch's and J. Fred Coots's houses. We called that field "Cootzeslot." It had no carefully manicured grass, as did this stadium, only a wild profusion of tall green weeds. Most important, we could run and yell in it, and no one complained. Cootzeslot was our sub-teen sanctuary. Another life. Another world. Childhood freedom. There was nothing like it.
In the stadium, and having found our seats, we sat and looked around. A few grounds keepers were slowly pulling a long rake around the outfield, and a few players -- whether Red Sox or Yankees I couldn't tell because, my eyes being such, I couldn't distinguish between the two uniforms -- were tossing a ball around semi-seriously. No one was batting. A few fans were drifting in, but not many, and my main impression was of a hush, the kind you notice before a church service. It was as if the immensity of the stadium stifled the sounds that might have been audible in a smaller park. Out in left field I noticed the famous monuments to Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and the third Yankee (whose name escapes me now), but didn't wonder if their three bodies lay beneath the sod. They just somehow contributed to the churchish atmosphere of the place.
I suddenly remembered the only other time I'd been to the stadium, in 1951. My mother had brought my cousin Sam Crawford, visiting with his family from Portsmouth, Ohio, and me to see the last game to be played by the great Joe DiMaggio. Sam and I were both 11 years old. In the first inning, I'd discovered that fans were letting the fascinating metal tops from their Rheingold beer bottles fall onto the concrete floor -- you could hear the little blup as the metallic opener lifted the top from the bottle, then the faint metallic click as the top hit the concrete floor. A small trove of bottle tops, in fact, lay scattered beneath my own seat. When I told Sam, he joined me in dropping to the concrete and, crawling around on our knees in our good pants, between the two of us, we must have gathered half a bushel.
I can almost hear my mother hailing us when DiMaggio came up to bat: "Buzz! [my nickname in those early days, I'm afraid] Sam! Get up now and watch Joe DiMaggio at bat! Boys, he's the greatest baseball player alive! So stop playing with those silly bottle tops!" But to no avail, I'm afraid. If we had to choose between creased metal Rheingold beer bottle tops and the sight of the greatest baseball player alive, the bottle tops would've won -- hands down.
Now, in 1964, the solemn aura of the pre-game wait must have struck Henry Jackson, too, because as the stream of the in-coming fans began to grow, he suddenly sprang from his seat and, at the top of his considerable voice, bellowed, "Hey, Mickey! You belt four home-runs today, hear? We're all rootin' for ya!" Well, we were all fans of the great Mantle that day, but I don't remember that the Mick hit even one.
I don't remember what any of the individual players did that day, although I knew each of that year's Yankees by name -- Mantle, Maris, Cox, Berra, Kubek, and all the others. I don't even remember who won the game. What I remember best is that stunning sudden sight and delicious smell of the Yankee Stadium's carpet of green, freshly manicured, simply pampered (this was before the introduction of Astroturf, the fake grass). I had a momentary urge to dart onto the field and run the bases. This was the real grass, on which the Mick had already tripped and ruined his left leg, having wrenched it in an exposed drainpipe, in his hasty and ill-advised attempt to retreat from DiMaggio's sacrosanct right field. The players were wholly visible; they weren't yet wearing the helmets that left their faces invisible to fans. They were wearing on their heads only the skimpy cloth caps that couldn't protect them from an in-coming mosquito. And the bats they used were ash wood, Louisville Sluggers, not metal; so when the bat connected with the baseball, it made a satisfying and familiar "thunk," not the odious and artificial "clang" of aluminum against horsehide.
Funny. The next day, when the dozen of us gathered in the office to do the office work for which we were paid, there was a bond connecting us that hadn't been there the day before. Within a couple of years, most of us had left for greener pastures, but after these 46 years, I can still remember all their faces -- as if it was yesterday.