The summer of 1957 influenced my life. My best friend, Jim Gearhart (nickname Junky), and I went to about 20 Milwaukee Braves baseball games. His parents had two season tickets and could only attend evening or weekend games, so Junky and I could attend weekday day games if we could get transportation.
The Milwaukee Braves had a great baseball team. Warren Spahn and Lou Burdett were the star pitchers, and Hank Aaron, Eddie Matthews, Wes Covington, Billy Burton and Joe Adcock were some of the other great players.
Covington was black, and earlier in his career had to be hospitalized in northern Wisconsin. The white nurses took turns taking care of him so that they could all learn about Black Americans.
Junky’s parents owned a fruit store, which was not far from the baseball stadium, and they often dropped us off for a day game. Sometimes we were left off at about 11 in the morning, and before going into the stadium we often got signatures from the players as they got out of their cars. Inside the stadium, we could walk all over the place before the game. We would try to catch baseballs, and Junky almost got one, but tall adults grabbed it above him.
I listened to evening baseball games as late I could. I would go to bed after brushing my teeth, and put the baseball game on the radio. I remember one game in which our relief pitcher, Don McMahon, struck out Willie Mays to end the game. However, that’s about the only time I remember the end of a game. Instead, my parents would come into my bedroom when they went to bed, and quietly turned off the radio. I was fast asleep.
My parents gave me something that I’ve never seen since. It was a booklet with several pages for keeping baseball scores. I filled the booklet, and on the last few empty pages received signatures from all the players. I probably discarded the booklet at the end of high school, before going to college. I kept it close to me prior to then.
My parents got tickets for a World Series game. When the game approached, they could not find their previously purchased tickets. I believe that one of them had by mistake put the tickets into the garbage. They went to the stadium anyway, and the people running the stadium listened to them. They knew which seats they had bought, and when those seats were not attended, they were allowed into the stadium. The Milwaukee Braves won that game in ten innings with a home run by Eddie Mathews.
They somehow got a single ticket for me and I sat by myself during a different game, and watched the Braves win. Burdette won three games of the seven and two of them were shut-outs.
The seventh game was played in New York City, and our teachers or others brought televisions into classrooms. All of us at Leland School celebrated wildly and crazily when the Braves won. There was a huge banner in the New York City stadium celebrating the Milwaukee Braves.
The games in the years thereafter where not as happy. The Milwaukee Braves were ahead of the Yankees three games to one in the 1958 World Series, but the Yankees came back and won the next three games. In 1959 the Braves were tied with the Los Angeles Dodgers to go to the World Series, and they lost in the extra innings. I was very upset, and my father was angry at me for showing my excessive temper.