Archive of the Day

From My Life as a Fan, a memoir by Wilfrid Sheed:

In Shibe Park of 1941, kids could scamper in a way that is impossible in any park today. God knows the Philadelphia crowds were manageable; in fact if you went on a weekday you practically had the place to yourself, and could take home all the foul balls you could carry. But even a small crowd produces a certain kind of pleasurable baseball hum punctuated by gasps, and this is your entrance music as you race behind the ramps, looking through the slits and trying to pick the strip of field you want to overlook. Outside of a few box seats on the ground floor, everything was up for grabs back then and if you had the energy you could watch every inning from a different angle. But we settled on a spot in back of first, and stepped into the appropriate tunnel, the birth canal, and into the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen: it would be another year or two before I recognized beauty in real scenery, or even understood the concept “beauty,” but I already knew this was beautiful.