Once upon a time in New York…
What was it like, to be alive then? When New York City was the capital of baseball, with three of its five boroughs hosting big-league clubs and the World Series seeming to be municipal property? When the city hosted the greatest game, the greatest pennant race, the greatest teams, greatest center fielders? When everything seemed bigger but somehow personal?
What was it like, to be home from the battle or to welcome a loved one’s return? To arrive at the golden door after surviving the ravages of war? To witness the welcome, to the nation and its pastime, of those formerly rebuked and scorned?
What was it like? For those of us old enough to remember, it was both glorious and sad and distant … yet seems only yesterday.
The glory days of baseball in New York have been tinged in sepia, recalled with syrupy nostalgia. Nostalgia as the Greeks understood that word was not sweet but painful: literally the ache of not being able to return home. Neither New York nor baseball, nor any of us who recall the period, can turn back the clock. Maybe this single photo summons up for you the era the way it really was: colorful, raucous, hopeful, thrilling, crushing. Glorious.
The Glory Days was originally published in Our Game on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.