sandlot baseball

Arguably, the best place to play baseball is the sandlot. In my old neighborhood, we had a nice field tucked amidst our industrial “projects” row houses in Chester, PA, just south of Philly. The “back field” was where we played baseball and football. Neighborhood parents kept the field mowed nicely for us and we fashioned a pretty cool pitching mound and diamond. A left field homerun was anything over the fences of the neighbors, although we became pretty adept at jumping fences and catching fly balls. Any ball entering a house was an automatic grand slam, even if no one was on base. Centerfield was tricky. An old widow with a big house (unlike our industrial row houses) would keep any ball that entered her yard. Her two dogs made the retrieval process hard. I was always amazed how she would run out into her back yard and get our baseballs. She seemed ancient at the time and probably secretly enjoyed our games. Right Field: a row of garages and a big house in the alley. I don’t remember many homers over the garages. We became good at place-hitting because it was not cool to lose a ball, uncooler still to break a neighbor’s window, not to mention having to pay for it from your newspaper delivery profits. Our parents tolerated the occasional broken window and fist fight, but really liked having us in view. A great plus were the occasional snacks delivered to players from Moms. Other than that, it seemed to be an unwritten rule that parents stayed away from the backfield…no coaching or cheerleading.