If your sneakers slip and slide, Get the ones with the star on the side Ask your moms to empty her purse To get the ones that say Converse. >>> It would be difficult to overstate the impact of sports on our lives in Brooklyn. Basketball was another piece of fabric in a crazy quilt of games. Back then even the way we followed sports was different. Kids growing up today like whichever team is winning because they can see every team play on television. SportsCenter, 24-7. But back in the day, you only saw your local teams on the news, so there was much more loyalty to the team you grew up with. You were more inclined to follow the teams in your hometown, felt connected to and represented by them in a personal way, which was why Brooklyn took it hard when the Dodgers left for Los Angeles after the 1957 season, the year of my birth. And that was the moment when ball really began to change.... >>> A pair of high-top Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars cost eight bucks. I normally wore P. F. Flyers or Keds, but I begged my parents for my first pair of Cons. Only little kids wore those sissy P. F. Flyers or Keds. I was an athlete and I needed to wear what the other athletes wore. There is something about a new pair of sneakers that makes a boy feel he can run faster and jump higher, and they also made a fashion statement not so different from how it is today, although there's much more to covet in this day and time. But back then the most coveted legitimizing agent for the discerning youth was white high-top canvas Chuck Taylor All-Stars. The Knicks wore them. So did the Lakers. Everybody did. They were the only right thing to wear. If you wanted to get fancy, you'd adorn them with colorful shoelaces. I vividly recall getting my first pair of Chucks and wearing them proudly as all my friends' eyes sought out their glory. I'd also wanted this baseball glove, a sweet leather MacGregor, a Claude Osteen model. I would go and stare at that glove, right there in the window of Modell's, the sporting goods store on Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn. This was back in 1965. The Los Angeles Dodgers were still Brooklyn's team as far as most of Brooklyn saw it. Koufax, Drysdale, and Osteen were the money pitchers. My father said it was important to have left-handed starters if you were going to win. The Dodgers did win the World Series that year over the Minnesota Twins, behind Koufax, Drysdale, and the crafty lefty, Osteen. I wanted that glove. Only problem was, it cost fifty dollars, a ton of money back then. But to my surprise my father bought it for me. My mother said he was crazy. He replied, "If the boy wants that glove, I'm gonna get it for him." And he did, too. My eye was good, even then. There was an older guy, a teenager, a Puerto Rican named Carlos. He liked my glove. Everybody did. It was sweet. Carlos had a big softball game coming up, he said, and he wanted to borrow it. No way was I giving it up. I wasn't doing it. Carlos tells me if I let him use my Claude Osteen MacGregor, he'll take me to the first game of the World Series. Imagine this. Carlos must have thought I was crazy. But the first game of the World Series was a grand temptation. Carlos did have friends named Oliva, and the fine hitter from Minnesota was named Oliva. Mind you, we would have had to get on a plane and fly to the Twin Cities to go to this World Series game. I was young and dumb--I had to be, because I believed him and gave him my glove. Of course he didn't go to any such thing resembling a World Series game, let alone take me. Finally I got my glove back. But my bag was packed, ready to go to the World Series, just in case. I wore that glove out over the next decade. Played catch with my father wearing it. A father playing catch with his son. I don't want to sound like Eisenhower, but there is something powerful in that. One day I'll play catch with our daughter, Satchel. Tonya wanted that name. She knew nothing about baseball, didn't know of Satchel Paige, the great pitcher of the Kansas City Monarchs and the Cleveland Indians. She liked the name. Satchel will be athletic. Maybe soccer. She has a good left foot. At the age of two, Satchel can kick a ball proficiently. You have to start 'em young. >>>   ....Mostly, I was carefree. The only problem kids had in those days was finding money to buy candy or baseball cards. If there was a fight, somebody might end up with a fat lip or a black eye, but the combatants would be friends again the next day. Or brothers again the next day. [My brother] Chris proved this to me. We were playing two-hand touch football one day, and the Lees had been broken up, and Chris was playing for the opposition. I was the quarterback, and [my youngest brother] David was my receiver. David always was the best athlete among us. He was more muscular, had a better base, more strength, and he ran and changed direction well, would become a good tennis player one day. Chris may have had such aspirations, but now they were crushed with finality as I threw the deep ball to David, our younger brother, who reached up over Chris, took the ball away, and scored a touchdown. I ran down to celebrate with David, and a good thing, too, for now I was in position to break up the fight between them. Chris had not hesitated. As David scored, Chris raced to him and waded in with both hands, his face a mask of anger and grief. At first David covered up, but then he began to apply himself in return and they were going at it hammer-and-tongs when I got to them and broke it up. "Quit it! Quit it!" I stood between my younger brothers, pushing out with both hands, trying to keep the pillars of a temple from crumbling. I made no mention of this fracas at dinner. Chris was already in Dutch with my mother. He gave her a lot of trouble. Chris resented authority. He was looking for a place to express himself, as I look back on it. That place was not the classroom; it wasn't the football field, as he had just found out. But by the next day, the incident was forgotten. There was another ball game to play. Or watch. I was at Shea Stadium for Willie Mays's first game as a New York Met. He hit a home run, too, and I think it was his first time up. My friend Eric Wilkins and I had gone to Shea Stadium, and Eric was a Willie Mays fanatic, as many New Yorkers and sons of New Yorkers were and still are. But when the Giants (and Dodgers) moved away in the late 1950s, that took Mays away. Back then, as today, the teams came east twice a year for four-game sets, and Eric, he would go to every game when the San Francisco Giants came to town. He loved Mays so much. He liked Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal--could imitate Marichal's high leg kick perfectly--and the Perrys, Gaylord and Jim, Jim Davenport, Tito Fuentes, José Pagan, and Jim Ray Hart, but he liked them because they played with Willie. Eric insisted Jim Ray was going to be a great hitter, and he would have been if he hadn't offended Bob Gibson by digging into the batter's box too deep for too long at Candlestick Park one day. Gibson, the St. Louis Cardinals' fireballing right-hander and former Globetrotter, was a notoriously fast and ill-tempered worker on the mound. He waited with arms akimbo while Hart had called time and dug in, dug in, dug in with his spikes, and after he'd gotten himself comfortably situated and settled in, Gibby looked in and said, "You finished?" Hart looked up, confused, had no reply. "I said, are you through?" Gibson snarled. He wound up and brushed Jim Ray back with a heavy, blazing fastball. Actually, Jim Ray was dug in too deep and couldn't evade, so Gibson's pitch hit Hart in the shoulder blade, broke it, and Jim Ray never was the same after that. Mays and his teammates had probably warned him about digging in so deep against Gibby, but Hart didn't listen to veterans telling him how the game is often played on the highest level. Joe Morgan, the former All-Star and two-time MVP second baseman, now a great baseball television commentator, recalls that he got a line drive base hit off Gibson once, a shot right past Gibson's ear into right center on a fastball tailing away from Morgan. When Morgan later scored a run after the hit and arrived back in the dugout looking for hand slaps and pats on the back, he was surprised when his teammates shunned him. Absolutely shunned him. Would not even look him in the face. Because nobody wanted to be seen by Gibson celebrating with some guy who had just nearly taken off Gibson's ear. The shunning gave Joe pause. No wonder Gibson had quit the Globetrotters. No need for killer instinct there. I took these stories as lessons. Of what, I was not sure, but I knew they were lessons. Never dig in too deep against a mean guy throwing high heat. Take the outside pitch the other way. And sometimes brothers will fight over a lousy touchdown pass.