Nostalgia Weekend

This was a good weekend for nostalgia buffs.

Willie Mays was in New York and there was a picture of him playing stickball in Harlem. I used to play stickball in The Bronx.

There was a retrospective about the old Polo Grounds where the New York Giants used to play baseball before they moved to the West Coast. I used to go to Giant games there as a kid. During WWII you could get in the game free if you brought scrap iron for the war effort. I did that. But the really big deal were holiday double-headers against the Brooklyn Dodgers; two games for the price of one.

On one holiday, either Memorial Day or July 4, my friends and I packed lunches and got there early to grab seats in the upper deck right behind home plate. As the stadium began to fill, we started getting offers for our seats. We held out till just before game time and made more than the $1.10 we had paid for them. Then we sat down on the steps right beside the seats we just sold to watch the games.

If memory serves, the Giants walloped the Dodgers in both games by ridiculous scores.

Then there were today's football games: Bears-Packers and Jets-Steelers. I kind of liked the Chicago-Green Bay game because it matched old rivals who last played each other in a championship game in 1941. Packers won today, too.

Although the Jets made a mighty effort in the second half of their game against Pittsburgh, they still fell five points short at the end. This sets up a Super Bowl game between to teams that were original members of the National Football League. I like that.

Let the nostalgia reign.