Hello to all of you, my friends...
A beautiful early spring day is a call for some good old nostalgia at last... I was beginning to think that we were going to have to go through the fall and winter without some of the fondest memories of "OUR INWOOD" not being remembered...
Stickball, Strike, In the Pan... and all of those legendary Softball and Hardball Games of "Our Inwood"... now, 'ya talk’ in!
For Stickball.... I would have agree that JHS 52 schoolyard going from the apartment house towards the school building was the very best for a clear-field for stickball... and the low wall in the back of the playground to the left playing across the schoolyard with the Vermilyea Avenue apartments across the street was one of the best for "Strike" (or In the Box)...
Playing Stickball... now, hitting the ball into the second schoolyard on a fly was a tremendous shot... hitting the ball up and roofing the school building was indeed a "prodigious shot"... as was roofing the ball across the street when playing Strike (In the Box)....
Now, playing "In the Pan" in PS 152 was a good game as the metal coal-chute doors gave back an indisputable ping noise that clearly designated a strike from a ball... the boxes in JHS 52 needed a lot of Indian Chalk... so that the ball did not lie with its distinctive markings of blue, yellow, red or white.... depending on the chalk that was used...
For "school yard" Softball... the best was PS 152 in the back "stadium" field... a natural as they would say.... home plate looked out onto an immense playing field... a good left field wall with the five story school building creating a left-field wall that would rival the Green Monster of Fenway in Boston...., a deep center field with that long alley in left center that rivaled the alley of the Polo Grounds... and a tricky right field as the wall that bent around Hillside Avenue could be played for some interesting short-shots that could clear the bases in an instant and could easily be as tricky as right field in the old Polo Grounds as well....
I am being carried away here... the nostalgia is overwhelming....
For Hardball (Baseball), nothing surpassed Inwood Hill Park's Diamonds #1 and #5.... Although the Henry Hudson Ball field’s Diamond, #1 was a decent enough field in its heyday....
The "Bar League" softball games were the best around.... Garryowen’s, Sam's, The Wigwam, Barry's, McGoldrick's, Barone's, The Park Gate.... just to mention a few... their battles were the thing of legend....
The sandlot baseball games of the old Morning Glories and others in Inwood Hill Park on Sunday mornings were truly great....
Ahh those were the days, the memories are flooding back, when the games were great, the guys were even greater, and morning gave way to afternoon and evening... and there was something about the game, the friendships and the contests... and the best of it all, was that it all was done, in good sportsmanship and....
Peace,
Inwood Guy
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