My favorite teams as a kid were the New York Yankees and the New York Giants. There were also the Rochester Red Wings and the Rochester Americans. That may seem like a limited span but things were different in the 50's. Sports were not pervasive like they are today. There was a baseball Game of the Week and a Football Game of the Week on TV and otherwise there was the radio.
I was an avid baseball fan. I knew by heart all the information on the back of the Yankee baseball cards. I was crushed by their game seven defeat in the 1960 World Series but in general I was elated by their winning, seemingly every year during my intense fandom in the late 50's and early 60's. I would listen to games on a little black Japanese portable radio while going to sleep or on a Sunday afternoon. I only ever went to one weekend of games when friends of my parents drove my brother and me to Cleveland for a weekend 3-game series in August of 1961 (Saturday afternoon and a double header on Sunday) where I snapped a black and white photo of "Mantle talking to Reporter" which I treasured for years but went missing in time. That was the year of the "M&M boys" when Maris broke Babe Ruth's home run record of 60 by hitting his 61st in the last game of the season......something I heard on that little black radio.
Football was only an 8-team professional game in those days and the Giants were the "locals". We would watch the games on Sunday afternoon and play football catch during halftime in unfenced backyards. It wasn't nearly the big deal it is in the 21st century but memorable games like the famous blizzard championship between the Giants and the Colts built the foundation.
Hockey was more of a curiosity. We did play hockey (on Steckle's pond) or in the frozen street but we knew, as in baseball, that Rochester was just a minor league town. We played basketball on driveway courts and K of C Catholic elementary teams, played football in backyard stadiums covering several lawns, baseball at the sandlots, badminton in the backyard....but no tennis, or soccer, and no karate. Besides KofC basketball, the only organized sport was baseball which everyone played through Little League, but very few played beyond that and it lost its popularity by High School. [Secretly, I really wanted to keep playing but it was too far from cool.]
One more thing that was great fun was whiffle ball (and kick ball). I remember especially some great evenings in the Muncil's back yard. Mr. Muncil would have the radio on playing the Red Wings game and we would play until we couldn't see any longer for the darkness. Those games drew gangs of people every night after dinner. I suppose that was the way before computer games and cable and worries about kids "roaming the neighborhood" after dinner.
