Guest Column

Does anybody here remember sandlot baseball?

Baldwin native recalls sharing bats and gloves with opponents during the Depression

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This is part one of a four-part series.

Did you happen to read the news article that reported a scuffle between Little League baseball players that prompted family members to rush onto the field and join the fray?

Times change, certainly, but sandlot baseball as I knew it has gone the way of the dinosaur. Today’s version is so organized and requires such a high degree of adult participation, I sometimes wonder whose game it really is.


When I was growing up on Long Island, the kids in our neighborhood formed our own sandlot baseball team. Besides my brother, Theo, and I, there were Eddie and Bobby Cheviot, Don Vives, George Baldwin and Jimmy Gallagher. We also picked up Don Clute and Dave Stead from around the Plaza School area where we played our games. Frankie Nelson, who was a couple of years younger than us, was our batboy. We called ourselves the Ramblers.

We raked and lined the field ourselves, made up our own ground rules, and chipped in our own nickels and dimes for baseballs. We shared our bats with opposing teams, and gloves too, if there weren’t enough to go around. Traveling by bike to play cross-town rivals made it difficult to lug bats and balls and other equipment. But we somehow managed.

Rarely did our parents come to see us play. They loved us and encouraged us but they didn’t want to be umpires or coaches or spectators, either. It was our game — they liked it that way, and so did we.

We didn’t have an official team leader, but there were a couple of us who were eager to jump in during disputes with other teams. Eddie Cheviot, who was a year or two older than the rest of us, proved to be our best arguer. He didn’t know the rules but gave the impression he did. In fact, knowing the rules wasn’t important — making believe you did was. He was good at that.

Negotiating our differences during those childhood conflicts helped us maintain friendly rivalries with kids from other parts of town. We soon discovered that talking is better than fighting, especially when you’re in enemy territory.

Because of Eddie, we were the only sandlot team in Baldwin with uniforms. Without them, we would have no identity, no panache and no tradition to build on. Or so he told us. He convinced us that we should sell chances on a five-dollar grand prize and buy uniforms with the proceeds. He also took on the job of having the raffle tickets printed and the prices for the uniforms. Come to think of it, he also decided that our uniforms would be gray with maroon lettering and come with a gray baseball cap featuring a maroon peak.

Team members went scurrying around the neighborhood selling chances until all the books were gone. We didn’t even know about the drawing until it was over. Eddie conducted it in secret. He told us afterwards that the winner, who was from the next town, had donated the grand prize back to the team to make it easier for us to buy the uniforms.

Eddie never did tell us the winner’s name, and we never asked. We were skeptical that the payoff was ever made, but even at that tender age we discovered that it’s easy to convince yourself that something is true if you really want it to be.

Every once in a while, when I look at a picture of the Ramblers hanging on my dining room wall, those childhood memories come back with a rush. Although that photo is cracked, faded and more than 70 years old now, it’s hard not to laugh when I look at those little kids, gawky, ill at ease, wearing uniforms too big for them.

As I look closer, I can see Eddie, still with that knowing grin. A few years later he would prove his mettle with the U.S. Marines in the South Pacific. Eddie returned safely from the war, as did most of the Ramblers, except for my brother, Theo. He was a foot soldier with the U.S. Army’s 85th Custer Division, and died fighting in Italy.

The Ramblers were my childhood friends. We chipped in our own money, scheduled our own games, picked our own leaders and worked out our own conflicts. And the mistakes we made and the games we lost, perhaps more than anything else, helped us learn more about ourselves, and about life, too.

Brian Masterson grew up in Baldwin in the 1930s. He now lives in Melbourne, Fla.