Tales From The Hood – The Boys Of Summer (1969)

The Summer of 1969 was magical. The moon landing took place July 20, 1969, Woodstock happened on August 15, 1969, the New York Jets became the first AFL team to defeat an NFL team in the Super Bowl, and the “Amazin Mets” beat the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles in the 1969 World Series. As incredible as these events were, the highlight of the summer for a group of 12-year-old boys in East Harlem was the chance to be part of what was one of the greatest assemblages of Little League baseball talent ever.

Ironically, the popularity of baseball was very high in East Harlem. Still, other than several leagues for older athletes in places like Central Park, there were next to no opportunities to play organized baseball for kids under 13. Well, that changed in 1969 when Little League baseball came to East Harlem. The East Harlem Youth Federation Association (EHFYA), better known as Chuck’s Center, had established itself as one of the premier football organizations in the New York City area by fielding football teams in five different age groups and winning championships in each. Chuck also developed championship basketball teams, but until 1969, baseball was virgin territory.

Chuck Griffin was never one to ignore a challenge or opportunity, so he, of course, said, “Let’s do baseball.” His first task was to select someone that would lead this effort. Chuck chose a young man named Ronnie Brown that starred on the Chargers Senior football team and, up until then, was well known for his trash-talking and storytelling abilities, but Chuck saw something in Ronnie that I’m not sure Ronnie knew was there. He was a leader, disciplined, and his youth was an asset that helped him relate to a bunch of 12-year-old boys.

Until then, most of us played a combination of sandlot baseball and stickball to hone our fielding and bat-to-ball skills, but that gave us a sound foundation in the rudimentary skills needed to play baseball. Most of our team was from East Harlem, but we also had players who made the trek from the Westside (West of 5th Ave). Our coach, Ronnie, did everything in his power to train and treat us like mini professionals.  Ronnie put us straight to work. In addition to calisthenics twice a day, we had classroom sessions learning about defensive positioning, cut-offs, running bases, and backing each other up on defense. There were also specific instructions by position. Throw in fielding and batting practice, and we’re talking about some serious preparation; you could even call it Spring Training. Our team consisted of about 20 boys during the summer, and the talent on our team, the East Harlem Chargers, was phenomenal.

Anyone that has played youth sports knows that one of the most significant events almost on a par with making the team is what we used to call Uni-Day. Uni-Day is when the team uniforms arrive and are seen by the players for the first time. Unlike the other teams in our league, we had a tradition to live up to. The Charger tradition and Ronnie’s choice did not disappoint. The uniforms consisted of gold baseball shirts and pants with black embroidered trim and a black shamrock on the left side of the shirt. The shirts had satin numbers on the back, and the uniform came with baseball stirrup socks. Add a black cap with a gold C and top it off with white baseball cleats; we were ready for prime time.

We were ready to conquer the world. However, one problem got in the way of our path to world domination. We had a couple of weeks before the season started, and we thought it would be a great idea to have a party at Chuck’s Center to raise funds for the team. Great idea, lousy execution. During the party, some of us on the team came upon a bottle of our coaches God awful drink of choice called Barton Reserve. Even though the label said Scotch, it tasted more like a cleaning product. It was the first time putting anything in our system stronger than Coca-Cola for most of us. For some of us, it diminished inhibitions, but for others, the reaction was much worse; a couple of us wound up shit-faced drunk. We knew we had screwed up, so a bunch of us took off looking for our coach.  Most of us had strict parents and instinctively knew that this could be the end of our team.

Ronnie was like the cool older brother that could exert authority based on his being just a bit over a one-half decade more senior than us, but in retrospect, I’ve come to realize he was still figuring out this adult thing for himself. Ronnie had taken extraordinary measures to earn respect and trust from our parents, but he knew an episode like this would turn things on its head.

One of the best things about that summer was that Chuck secured what was officially called a perambulator room in one of the Jefferson Housing Project buildings. We usually used this room as our locker room, but it was used as a detox center for some of our teammates that night. Chuck’s Center had a tradition of conducting what we used to call Sleep-Ins for our football teams. Before football games, football players would spend the night at Chuck’s Center, of course, with parents’ permission. Chuck had procured dozens of old U.S. Army cots earlier that we used to triage. After contacting our parents, Ronnie instituted an impromptu Sleep-In, and even though we still had to deal with our parents the next day, our transgressions were effectively downsized from a felony (drinking) to a misdemeanor (staying out late) in most cases

Right about now, I think I’m supposed to regale or spin a yarn about some climactic, drama-inducing moment that our team overcame to become champions, but frankly, I’ve got nothing.

This team was that good. We had All-Star caliber players at every position. On the mound, we had pitchers, like Andre, who distinguished himself by pitching strategically when most kids our age were just hurlers. Victor could play three of the four infield positions and was a pint-sized replica of Jose Altuve. Then there was Barker, who primarily played third base, had an electric arm, and at 12 years wielded a 32-ounce bat that made the baseball holler when it made contact. Fire balling Ray disarmed the best hitters on opposing teams and a curveball that broke so sharply he was discouraged from throwing it. Our team fielded both right and left-handed catchers (Blake and Jeffrey) that had cannons for arms and, at the tender age of 12, knew how to manage games from the backstop. The quiet and consistent leadership of Lex was invaluable, and Cesa’s athleticism, who would come to be known as the Puerto Rican Doctor J, produced highlight after highlight during the season.

To say our team was dominant in the first year of the East Harlem Little League would be an understatement. We played our league games on three different baseball fields in Jefferson Park. Our favorite field was the one that was constructed solely for baseball. It had grass, almost no rocks, and was not a Dust Bowl like the other two adjoining fields. All the fields had in common that no fence was less than 200 feet away. Our players would regularly hit home runs or dunk balls into the public pool, approximately 300 feet from home plate. Our league did not have a” mercy rule” in place, so the score of some of our games was lopsided. It was not unusual for us to win games by scores of 24-8, 15-0, or having teams forfeit. I am very aware that in today’s world, this would be looked upon unfavorably, but in our world, at that time, this was not viewed as an effort to humiliate but instead a desire to excel. Instead of being resented, our team was revered. In retrospect, there was a bit of a Dream Team vibe about us. The teams that we beat did what people in the Hood usually do, strive to get better.

That summer, we took full advantage of a program instituted by Consolidated Edison, the largest energy company in the New York City area, that made Bleacher seat tickets available for youth groups at the least attractive games on their schedule. The irony was that we were very familiar with the Yankee Stadium area for those who played charger football. We played many football games at McCombs Dam Park, catty-cornered from Yankee Stadium. For most of us, it was the first time seeing a Major League Baseball game, and we were in awe of the emerald-green manicured grass, the perfectly chalked lines, and the sheer immensity of the stadium.

Yankee Stadium was very important to our team’s success for other reasons. Even though we were very talented and looked like a million bucks, there was the matter of equipment, things like baseball bats and balls. Back then, the Yankees held their bat days and bold days on the same days we were able to get Bleacher tickets. We brought so many kids on those days that never had to purchase bets or balls throughout the season. One of the great things about those seats was that we could hold conversations with the relief pitchers, and once, when the Detroit tigers visited, Gates Brown was one of the pitchers, had gone to high school with one of our player’s mothers. He wound up with an autographed baseball with signatures from most Tigers’ players. Another memory was a fun time we had when a rain delay occurred, and the ground crew chased us across the tarp as we used it to glide across it like a giant Slip ‘N’ Slide. Those were different times.

Our season also had a soundtrack. There’s a reason that   1969 “The Summer of Music.” In addition to Woodstock, there was also the Summer of Soul Festival in Harlem, which was grossly underappreciated until recently. For us, the music included albums like “Hot Buttered Soul” by Isaac Hayes. We grooved to the sound of Sly & The Family Stone’s “Hot Fun In The Summertime” and cosigned the harsh reality and dark message in the Temptation’s “Cloud Nine.” Many of us were into the Beatles Magical Mystery Tour, which had “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds,” which we swore was about LSD, and “Fixing A Hole,” which seemed to describe the feeling after smoking some really good weed. We, of course, learned these things vicariously. I wish we had a film of the time we enacted the lyrics of Rocky Raccoon. Youth and music can be a potent elixir to affect socialization. One of our teammates was an émigré from Eastern Europe with a last name that was very difficult for us to pronounce, so we nicknamed him Tchaibubsky (a play on Tchaikovsky). Without skipping a beat, Tchaibubsky became a competitive and inspirational asset to our team. In retrospect, one might ask, what would a White kid from the former Soviet Union have in common with a team full of Black and Puerto Rican kids. My guess would be the innocence of youth, an emphasis on similarities instead of differences, and music.

Since we only played one to two league games a week, we took to barnstorming. We played exhibition games against other Little League teams throughout the city and even traveled throughout New England to play prep school freshman teams. It helped us test and hone our skills in our quest to win our league championship and hopefully play in the Little League World Series tournament. Despite high expectations and hopes, our season ended disappointingly. After being declared champions of our league, we applied for participation in a Little League World Series, and they rejected our application. The justification was that a league wasn’t eligible to participate in its first year of existence. The news was devastating. The only consolation we had was monitoring and evaluating the teams participating and imagining how we would have fared against them if we had the opportunity to compete.

The summer of 1969 will go down in history as one that marked some of the most significant social, technological, and cultural events of the 20th Century, but it was much more personal for these boys of summer. It was a time of growth and transition. It was a time for making mistakes and hopefully learning from those mistakes. In some ways, it was our first significant step towards adulthood. We became aware of the world around us and our relationship with that world. One thing that was certain for us was that if we had to move on, we did it with great fanfare. The best way I could describe my feelings about this coming of age is by defining them as “saudade.” Saudade is a Portuguese/Brazilian word that means “a deep emotional state of nostalgia or melancholic longing for something that most likely will never happen again.” Every time I hear the “Long And Winding Road,” it triggers feelings of saudade. Although it has been more than 50 years, the spirit of The Boys of Summer 1969 still resides deep inside of me because it was one of the most formative periods in my life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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