#chalkles Coleman Oval: The Orginal LMRC Photo 2

#chalkLES at Coleman Oval part 2 pic.twitter.com/hBOD0CxCAj

— kvillage (@kvillage) May 5, 2014

The original photo

#chalkles Coleman Oval:Spot of Historic 1959 LMRC Team Photo

#chalkLES. at Coleman Oval pic.twitter.com/x5C90EolgO

— kvillage (@kvillage) May 5, 2014

The original photo

Lamula Opposes Santangelo, 1951

He supported KVer Pat Picariello instead. I'm sure Lamula's claim of Santangelo's residency is true. It would be highly unlikely that a Judge would be residing at 9 Monroe in 1951. In 1946 Santangelo has 55 Oak Street as his address. That address would be eliminated by the construction of the Smith Projects.

Questions Over Location Of Lower Manhattan Republican Club

image directly below from the mcny collection

below, screen shots from a previous post

After many of the former LMRC players viewed the lost treasure Weiner film recently posted a comment was made about the location of the Lower Manhattan Republican Club. Howie remarked:

this stuff is awesome - better than the treasure trove from Abbottabad ... who needs a time machine? ... overall look is more like the '50s than 1960 .. great picking out some subtle stuff like that wall that was behind the 3rd base dugout with the cutout leading to the 177 schoolyard ... loved seeing Marty mess with me in the team photo - the price for being a batboy ... btw anyone who might have guessed the address of LMRC was 90 Market - please pick up your prize. Thanks Barry , Dave.

I remarked, using the above photos, as proof

I used to think it was on Market too, but that was the democractic club.
90 Market didn't exist at that time. That address was to the right of PS 177 and those buildings were torn down by that date.
lmrc was at 90 Madison

Murray made a good point, however

I remember the club being across from the A & P in the space that was the delli.
Marty & I held a New Years eve party their one year

My response:

I'm sure you are right. maybe it moved there after leaving madison street. that party probably was after the exodus to warbasse

Two Bridges Little League Awards Ceremony 1960

Take Me Out To The LMRC Ball Game: Spring 1959

Elena Kagan Playing For LMRC?

Good hitter, but not quite a "beauty in there." Elena's father, Robert, grew up at 2935 Ocean Parkway, not far from where many ex-lmrc'ers migrated to in the mid 1960's.

The JT Project Reaches Out In Harlem

Connecting Jazz to Harlem's Youth from Olivia Manders on Vimeo.

Harlem and jazz share a rich history. For it to remain history – and nothing more – for younger Harlem audiences is a problem that one jazz band is seeking to remedy.

Todd Schefflin, we are proud to say, is a son of former KVer and LMRC lefty fire-baller Murray and his lovely wife Arlene.

Coleman Oval Pitching Star And Son

Considered by most to be the best pitcher ever in Two Bridges Little League History.
Sorry Murray.
about Vinny Adimando, from Joe Bruno

After little league, where he dominated for three years, Vinny was all-city at LaSalle High School. And a two-time All American at St. John's. Also a member of the United States Nation team for two years. He also played in the Cape Cod League, and made the all-star team twice.
In his first year in Pony League for Transfiguration, Vinnie pitched, played the outfield, and batted third. He was 13 years old. It was my third year in Pony League. I was 15, played shortstop and was the lead off hitter.
During the season, our coach Frank Mosco, told me there was going to be a bunch of scouts at our game to watch Vinnie. He told me he wanted Vinnie to lead off, so he'd get more at bats. I was moved down to the second slot. No problem.
In the first inning, Vinnie was up, and I was standing on deck. We were playing at DeWitt Clinton Field at 53th Street, and 11th ave. in Manhattan.
In the first inning, Vinnie hit the first, or second pitch, a heat-seeking missile over the left centerfield fence, and all the way across 11th Avenue, which was a 2-way street. You could hear the jaws dropping all over the field. I don't think anybody ever saw an 8th grader hit a ball that far.
So I'm up next. There was no way for me to follow that act. In fact, I don't think anyone was actually watching my at bat. Not even the pitcher.
Not even my father.
So I did what I did best. I bunted down the third base line for a base hit.
Nobody noticed. And rightfully so.

Congratulations Slugger

A brief sojourn from the Alman story to congratulate LMRC's Slugger Silverstein on his winning the Hempstead Town Tennis Tournament with his double's partner Bill. Slugger Al is a force to be reckoned with on the USTA Senior Circuit

Not This Day In Knickerbocker Day History: May 26, 1959

an excerpt from the nytimes of May 24th 2009 The 1959 LMRC team certainly remember this game.

Linked to Haddix’s Perfection by Western Union Ticker Tape, By GERALD ESKENAZI. The ticker tape in the bell jar began to click.
It was May 26, 1959, my first night at The New York Times. I was a $38-a-week copy boy.
I knew that Western Union ticker was important — it was the sports department’s lifeline to baseball games that were increasingly being played at night. Why, they were even playing on the West Coast now.
The yellow ribbon unfurled out of the jar. Usually, it gave bare information, a line score. This time, it read, in shorthand, as I recall: “Harvey Haddix Pittsburgh Pirates pitching perfect game through eight innings.”
Wow! What a business, I thought. What a way to start what was to be a sportswriting career with the paper for more than 40 years.
The game was in Milwaukee, another place that symbolized baseball’s break with its longtime franchise cities. But for me, baseball life, a part of my soul, had ended when the Dodgers left Brooklyn only a couple of years earlier. Here I was, a budding sportswriter, yet disenchanted with the American pastime. Oh, sure, I knew about the Columbia University cultural historian Jacques Barzun’s famous claim, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.”
I had come in to work at 7 that night — I was on the 7 p.m. to 3 a.m. shift. But some of the other copy boys had whispered to me that you never had to stay that late, that usually you’d get a slide, be out by 2 in the morning. Even with stuff going on in the West Coast, nothing happened that late at night.
I watched what the other copy boys did: They brought the editors on the copy desk coffee. Like them, I tore off the stories from the Associated Press and the United Press machines. I took the “copy,” the edited stories that the head desk man gave me, and I rolled them up, put them in a plastic tube and sent it up the pneumatic tube toward the composing room. I went up to the composing room for the first edition, a noisy place clanging with metal, where men had ink on their fingers, where Linotype machines from the 1890s were going through some convoluted mechanics to punch out six metal words a minute.
Meanwhile, halfway across America, Haddix, the Kitten, was mowing them down, playing by the same rules they had played by for all the 20th century — 60 feet 6 inches from home, three strikes and you’re out — while I was part of an operation that, similarly, was unchanged over that course of time.
The ticker continued clacking: nine innings, no base runners; 10 innings; 11 innings; 12 innings! No one in the history of baseball had ever had such a performance, and I was there, tethered to the game through Western Union ticker tape.

LMRC Labeled

Still not found are Marty Grossman and Michael Lehrer. If anyone knows there whereabouts please email me, davidbellel@mac.com

The New And Improved LMRC Photo

Thanks to Natalie Sosinsky I got a copy of the John Lamula commemorative book at the April 2nd reunion. It was issued on June 18th, 1960 at the Hotel Statler by the Lower Manhattan Republican Club. On the back flap of the book was this very special picture. We've had other copies of this on the blog, but this is a higher resolution scan.

Harry's Tell All Book About Managing LMRC

Joe Torre's book on his Yankee year's has caused a lot of controversy. A lost manuscript of Harry Liebowitz was found and it promises to do much of the same in Lower East Side circles

KV Chatter: Secrets Of The Slugger

Some reactions to the post about the anatomy of the kv slugger

You were swinging too much from just your upper body and not using the strength and leverage of your legs. Your legs are the key to driving the ball-strong legs doesn't necessarily mean you're a fast runner, so don't fret about that. Work on your lower body strength and then at the next re-union we'll test your progress.  Or just follow manager Harry's advice and don't swing-wait for the walk!

Bruce Bueller was wildly pitching for an opposition team and Harry placed me in my first year playing for LMRC about two-three feet from home plate. There was no way I could reach anything over the plate. He told me if the pitch was anywhere near the plate, I could step into it but to be careful because Bueller was pitching. Harry was lookin' for the walk.

Interesting stuff Dave. I always thought that the greatest factors in hitting came from .
1. Hand eye coordination (wow what a surprise)
2. Bat speed.
3. A level cut: "hitting down".
Helped me in softball.

Al, in your case another factor was the tuna sandwiches from The King  and staying away from ham & cheese.

Chicken fats and rye bread could've had something to do with it.

Not to mention home-made malteds and milk shakes.  Oh how I envied that green mixer. Just as professional as the K & K's.

... I still have that green blender ... actually it's turquoise, and an original Hamilton Beach from the 1920's ... I think we got it from our uncles (Mom's brothers) who owned a toy store in Lakewood N.J. and at one time served up malteds and ice cream sodas .. Paul might remember that we used it to make malteds in the mid - late '70s when I was living at 19th St.& Avenue M in Brooklyn, usually after playing basketball - the key was to include ice cubes and a spoonful of malt ... Marty, you probably remember it from Knickerbocker days, today the blender is in retirement but still proud enough to pose for it's fans ... Marty .. here it is again in all it's glory ..enjoy. ... and just for the record - Ebay is not an option .. this is hard core KV memorabilia.

The New LMRC Manny Ramirez Skullcaps Are In

Pick them up from Harry at 40 Monroe Street before the next game.

The Old (LMRC) Boys Of Summer

From the nytimes 8/7/09, with altered photos:

Still Boys at Play on a Field They Love, By JAVIER C. HERNANDEZ
The Old Boys of Summer, as they call themselves, trailed by seven runs in the seventh inning. As they readied for their final at-bats, looking for an improbable rally, pills for heart ailments were in the dugout, just in case. Each hitter planted his feet in the dirt, grumbling while trying to keep creaky bodies loose.
Tony Famular, 75, gripped his bat tightly, knocked the ball to the right side of the field and began his arduous dash to first base. The pitcher fielded the ball and threw him out at first for the final out of the game.
At the Prospect Park Parade Ground on Wednesday, the Old Boys played their annual ballgame against staff members of the Brooklyn Cyclones, a minor league affiliate of the New York Mets. For many of them, it has been a half-century since they took their first swings at the fields, a cradle of Brooklyn baseball that has been a training ground for the likes of Joe Torre, Sandy Koufax and Shawon Dunston, to name a few.
The players were a little grayer, a little slower and a little less optimistic about the future of their sport. But this was their diamond, the field where they spent many of their childhood summer days — and all they wanted was victory.

“This is what I live to do now,” Mr. Famular said. “It all started here.”
Growing up in Brooklyn, Mr. Famular said, he and his friends played baseball and its variants — stickball, slapball, punchball, stoopball, boxball — in the streets.
“Everyone talked baseball all the time,” he said, standing near the pitcher’s mound after the game.
He used to ride his bicycle the four miles from his house to play on the Parade Ground. Back then, the diamonds were so crowded that fields would overlap and they had to be reserved in advance. Today, the veteran players said, the park is much different.
“The kids today have too many options to have fun,” Mr. Famular said. “Whatever we saw in baseball, they don’t see.”
The Old Boys, many of whom did not know one another until they started playing together in 1995, practice once a week and try to schedule at least four games each year. Their ages range from 60 to 76.
During the fourth inning, the Old Boys manager, Andrew P. Mele, 69, went to bat. Mr. Mele has written a book, “The Boys of Brooklyn,” a history of the Parade Ground, which came out in May. The fields opened in 1869 and had by 1930 become the place to see new baseball talent, attracting crowds of more than 20,000, according to Mr. Mele’s book.
“It was a place where there was always a lot of activity going on,” Mr. Mele said. “It was something you always looked forward to. It was our life.”
Mr. Mele estimated that 40 Parade Ground graduates have earned World Series rings. As Mr. Mele, No. 7, hit a ball into right field, an old friend from the bleachers cried out.

“There you go!” shouted Gil Bassetti, who used to play against Mr. Mele as a pitcher for the Brooklyn Bisons, once a Kiwanis League team. Mr. Bassetti, 74, later became a professional baseball player and is now a part-time scout for the Baltimore Orioles. “That’s exactly the way he hit when he was young,” he told other spectators.
The Bisons’ former manager, Clarence L. Irving, sat in the bleachers cheering some of his former players. Mr. Irving, 83, recited the year-by-year history of the Bisons, reliving the championships that his team had won in the 1950s.
He said that being on the field again and seeing how his former players had embarked on diverse career paths — law, marketing, major league baseball — brought him a sense of pride.
“They are role models and the most generous of people,” Mr. Irving said.
Halfway through the game, as the Cyclones tallied up their runs (they ultimately secured an 8-1 victory), an Old Boys player, Frank Chiarello, took a moment in front of his fellow players to gripe about youthful energy.
“Life stinks,” he joked. “I hate young guys. I hate every guy on that team.”
Mr. Chiarello, a retired police officer, remembered his days as a centerfielder who would play until sunset. One day in the late 1950s, his wife came to the field to remind him they had a wedding to attend. He decided to skip it. “I’m going to finish the game,” he told her.
Mr. Chiarello said the team had developed a special camaraderie because of a shared history on the fields of Brooklyn.
“I learned how to make friends,” he said. “I learned how to be a human.”
Now that his vision is failing, Mr. Chiarello has trouble tracking the ball. Other team members said that they could still summon the strength for a powerful hit, but that running could be difficult.
“As long as we can stand up for a little bit longer,” Mr. Mele said, “we’ll keep doing it.”

Who's Who In Knickerbocker Village History: Harry Liebowitz

Harry has been discussed on many occasions here, but I've been remiss for not yet awarding him a "who's who" honor. Just a few days ago his son Larry found the site and he sent us the first of what I hope will be many pieces of KV and LES memorabilia. Here is part of a 1966 Two Bridges Newspaper that Larry incorporated into a surprise 70th Birthday card for Harry back in 1983 (I think). Click to enlarge. I did my best to get most of the autographs included here. Among the ones I can recognize are the just recently mentioned, Judge Leonard Sandler, also KV/LMRC best-looking mother, Natalie Sosinsky, Joe Moscarella and Lou Lamula.

Mustache Ball: Separated At Birth 2

Once again we have the LMRC slugger making it into the pantheon of mustached baseball stars. From an article from the Times' Sports' Blog called Bats musical version by Rockapella

Much has been written lately about Jason Giambi’s new facial hair. On Monday, Giambi got two mustache-related boosts for his all-star candidacy: the American Mustache Institute officially offered its support for him, and the Yankees issued a press release urging fans to “Support the ‘Stache.'’What to make of all this? PLAY decided to consult an expert, John Allan Meing, a men’s grooming connoisseur whose upscale salon, John Allan’s, celebrates its 20th anniversary in New York later this year. The key to facial hair on a ballplayer, he says, is that the look needs to reflect the player’s style on the field. That’s why Meing is so disappointed with Johnny Damon’s new “primetime” clean look. “I always pictured Damon as scrappier, harder, like he plays ball,” he says. “He doesn’t try to match how he plays ball. Jeter is clean, it matches how he plays ball.”
Before he went into styling, Meing was an all-state shortstop in New Jersey and says he tried out for the Royals and Cardinals before selling his Firebird and heading to Paris in the late 1970s. He remains a die-hard Yankees fan. Now, with Giambi’s new mustache (”he’s such a beast, he can carry if off,” Meing says) causing Yankee fans to don fake mustaches in his honor, PLAY takes a look, with Meing’s eye for style, at some Yankee mustaches through the years.

A Walk Is As Good As A Hit: From 1/9/07

Yes, those were the immortal words of coaching advice from my little league manager, Harry Leibowitz, seated on the left. Harry couldn't compete with the coaching prowess and deep farm systems of the likes of St. Joseph and Transfiguration and the other teams of our church dominated little league on the lower east side. He also didn't have 11 year olds who may have known Barry Bonds' trainer and looked like they were 15. Among them were Tommy Red, Joey Maldonado, Marty Ricco (who I think knew a few Goodfellas of the neighborhood and met an early demise) and Richie LaGrippo. Tommy Red once hit a home run off of me that disintegrated a good section of rock from part of the Manhattan Bridge arch. That arch loomed over our Cherry Street dirt field. I think the ball disintegrated as well. Otherwise I didn't do too badly by just getting the ball over the plate. Murray on the extreme right of the first row (who sent me this treasured picture) was my southpaw counterpart. He had less control, but more heat. To his left is Barry Dolinko. We also won a few games when we followed Harry's advice of not swinging, since most of us were sub par hitters (except for Allan Silverstein, who to this day probably remembers his batting average and slugging percentage. I would too). I'm sitting in the first row, third from left. Next to me Glenn Farber is practicing his stroke and then Marty B. is doing a more circumspect interpretation of the same. In the back row on the extreme right was our fastest runner, Marvin Kuperstein. Marvin just retired from being the Chief Exec of Portland's Jewish Center. To Marvin's left is Mr. Energy Star of USDOE, Richard (Rocky) Karney. Next to Richard is Bob Simmons. He played linebacker for Stuyvesant and was known for his acumen in stripping away the skin on your knuckles in games of Nucks. He probably also did some science experiments with stray cats. Bob's father was another coach for our team who is sitting in the first row. Actually, I don't remember if he was a coach or just there to supervise Bob. Mr. Simmons was Irish, but his wife Helen was Jewish. Next to Bob is Joel Sosinsky from the Orchard Street shirt store dynasty, "Sosinsky and Sons." Joel was a pretty sick kid who had many operations. Now he is a lawyer for the Teamsters! Then (going to the left there's Stephen Leibowitz, Professor Bobby Nathanson of L.I.U and the grim looking Stewart Brokowsky. I don't know why he's looking that way, because Stewie actually got some nooky before any of us even knew what it was. I don't remember who's next to Stewie. Next to that guy is Slugger Silverstein. Noted, but not in the picture, is Eddie Tobey. Eddie's dad was Mark Tobey who wrote, "The Courtship of Eddie's father. Ernie Bliey is also listed, but not present. He was the only "brother" on our team. The Bliey's lived in the Smith Projects along with Luther Vandross. Ernie'solder brother?, Ronnie, later starred as a halfback at Notre Dame and had a short stint as a kickoff specialist for the Giants. The bat boys were Richie Weiner and Howie Silverstein. Howie went on to play for LMRC as well and later "fame" as a summertime food vendor at Yankee Stadium where he got an autograph from a naked Jimmy Piersall.
Note after this was posted in 1/9/07 my friends and I learned that Stewie was gravely ill. He later passed away in April of 2007. This web site is in part a dedication to him and other KV friends and family who are no longer with us.