Baseball National Past time/My Past time
from 1959 to 1961

I did not know about Baseball until the fall of 1959. That was the year that the Chicago White Sox won the American League pennant. There was excitement in 4th grade about this and many of my friends brought their transistor radios to school to listen to the World Series. I was hooked. After the Sox lost the series to the Dodgers, I went to the local sports store to buy a White Sox cap. They were out of them. I really wanted a baseball cap, so my dad bought a cap for the Milwaukee Braves. And that's how I became a Braves fan! About the same time, my little brother Frank went with the winner of the World Series and became a LA Dodgers fan.

I remember about four summers of baseball really well. We use to clip out "major league standings" from the Hammond Times and paste them in a scrap book. Frank and I worked up statistics on the 16 major league teams. In 1960 there was a great World Series. The Pirates beat the Yankees in the seventh game in the ninth inning with a home run. Couldn't get much better than that. In 1961, we followed the home run race between Roger Maris and Micky Mantle -- day by day excitement. Frank rooted for the Dodgers, especially Sandy Kolfax. I rooted for the Milwaukee Braves, especially Warren Spahn. I also followed the careers of Eddy Mathews and Hank Aaron. We watched baseball all summer long on TV with Jack Brickhouse announcing "That's back -- way back -- look out -- that's out of here! Hey hey Ernie!!"

This was the 1959 World Series (Dodgers vs. White Sox)
The 1960 World Series (Pirates vs. Yankees)
The 1961 Homerun race (Maris vs. Mantle)
I continued to follow baseball in 1962 and 1963. I think that rock music and the Beatles finally pushed baseball aside in early 1964. There was no space left for baseball in my life. I look back fondly at those childhood summers spent following baseball, clipping newspapers, and watching endless games on TV. Now days, one inning of baseball bores me.