I'm talking baseball....Mickey and the Duke...

Back to the Day Care Centerat "The Backstop.

In addition to playing sandlot baseball every day of the summer, The Boys of Highland Avenue also collected baseball cards.  Yep, these are the same cards that our Mothers threw away when they cleaned the attic/closet, etc when we went off to school.   The same ones we attached to our bicycles to make noise.  The same ones that would be worth a lot of money today if we would have kept them.

In the 50's baseball cards could be bought for a penny and each one included a piece of bubble gum.

With a nickle you could get five cards and five pieces of pink bubble gum.  Today cards cost a lot more and there is no gum.  The bubble gum was not of good bubble blowing quality and after getting the taste from it you would normally throw it away.  In the hot, humid Texas summers it could make a big mess on your shoes if it didn't hit the trash can.  Not everyone threw their gum away.  My little brother had begun a collection with his purchases. Somehow, he had managed to chew 25 or 50 pieces of gum into one large ball.  He kept it in the refrigerator at home and on game day he would retrieve it and put it in his mouth.  It gave the appearance he had a wad of tobacco much like Nellie Fox.

On one of those hot days my brother, Chub, and his bubble gum "wad" were at the back stop for our daily game.  Since he was about three years younger than the rest of us and could catch the ball, he got to play first base.  The game progressed with Chub on my team and George Fortune on the other.  George batted left handed.  When he came to bat, the outfielders (2) moved to center and right as left field was now out of play for him.   Chub was day dreaming when George hit a screaming line drive down the base line.  The ball caught Chub above the left eye.  He hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.  With blood gushing from the wound over his eye, he looked up and said,  "Where's My Gum".    Bobby Kinnear retrieved the "wad" and when Chub got home from the doctor with about ten stitches in his head, the "wad" was waiting for him in the refrigerator. 

If we had a museum at "The Backstop", the gum would be on display