Growing up in Brooklyn with the old Dodger baseball team at Ebbets Field was so exciting and such a great part of my early childhood. It Was Personal!
We lived and breathed baseball, even though our ball field and diamond was paved in concrete and had two-way traffic at inconvenient times. In our version of the game the sewers on the streets were the boundaries and the curbs were the bases. Our comparable game was either stick-ball or punch-ball. We slept with our well oiled and folded baseball gloves under the pillows every evening, and dreamt of being a Dodger hero. To me and many Brooklynites the Civil Rights Movement started with second baseman, Jackie Robinson,, in the late 1940's , long before our Government finally passed that landmark law in 1964.
During my early youth in Brooklyn I was quite pugnacious and constantly getting into trouble. I was expelled from parochial school { Yeshiva } for hitting a teacher, frequently got into fist fights with other children, and the police often would visit our home apartment to render complaints about my behavior to my father. To say the least it was an odd beginning for anyone to eventually become a well respected and responsible physician.
Stay tuned for more on The Hard Bargain.