I grew up in a tiny row house in Queens. My room, the smallest in the house, was just large enough for a bed, a little dresser, and a table next to the bed, on which sat a little radio. At night, sometimes, I would lie in the dark and listen to the Dodgers baseball games. I was a rabid fan, even going once or twice to Ebbets Field for a game. I didn't know that Dixie Walker was a racist pig, just that he was a hell of an outfielder. I would cheer as Eddie Stanky, the Walkin' Man, would foul off pitch after pitch until he drew that fourth ball. I was true to them until I went off to college, but I never transferred my allegiance to the Red Sox. My passion for the game just cooled [although I did ride in a nearly deserted club car of the Shore Line train from New York to Boston with Ted Williams at the other end of the car -- I did not disturb the great man, of course.]
Christmas is approaching, so so I sent an email to my daughter-in-law, Diana, to ask what the grandchildren would like for presents. Samuel's seventh birthday is December 22nd, and having myself been born on December 27th, I know what it is like to get "one big present for both Christmas and Birthday" -- never, I was convinced, as good as what my sister got for being born in August. So I try to make sure that I find something for Samuel's birthday and something totally different for him for Christmas.
Well, Samuel lives with his father and mother and sister in San Francisco, and apparently, having finished with the phase in which he was fascinated by cell phones and the phase in which he was fascinated by button operated crossing lights, and having gotten over his brief fling with chess [always a questionable idea for him, since his father is a famous International Grandmaster], Samuel now decided that he is a baseball fan.
All well and good, and quintessentially American, except that it is the Giants who now play in San Francisco, so Samuel of course is a Giants fan. He does not know that seventy years ago, when his grandfather was his age, the L. A. Dodgers played in Brooklyn, and that it just a little bit breaks his grandfather's heart that he is a Giants fan.
How sharper than a serpent's tooth ...
