Brooklyn, 1955, and raw ( Thanks Keith ):
There is no way to understand Oct. 4, 1955 and the great explosive release of giddy, tearful, fist-pumping emotion at 3:45 that Tuesday afternoon without understanding the place from which it all came. These were the Brooklyn Dodgers and they had traveled from Brooklyn, our country, into the heart of darkness, into the majestic confines of Yankee Stadium, into the House that Ruth Built, into the place of long October shadows where doom had so often awaited them. And us. This time, at last, it was different. In a very important way the tale properly began on that day in August 1945 when the war ended. I was 10 years old. And everywhere in New York church bells were ringing and foghorns blowing. On tenement fire escapes people beat on pots with huge spoons and all work ended and there were kegs of beer in front of all the saloons in my neighborhood. My father, Billy Hamill of the lower Falls Road in Belfast, was among them, singing.
In the midst of the most immense New York block party ever held, some women wept because their sons were coming home from the war. Others because their sons would never come home. Their sons had died in the Hurtgen Forest, on the beach at Anzio, at Guadalcanal or Okinawa. Their names were listed on the sign erected by the Arrows at 13th St. and Eighth Ave. in our neighborhood. The Arrows had played ball for the joy of it before going off to kick the crap out of Hitler and Tojo, and on that day I saw an old man stand on the steps of Gallagher's saloon and salute the sign and the names of those who would never, ever play ball again.
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