When I came to this country in 1948, baseball was unrivaled by other sports, and it seemed to my 10-year-old self to be at the very center of American life.

I remember staying at the Plaza Hotel on 5th Avenue and hearing about it in the lobby and on the radio: The Yankees had lost the Pennant to the Cleveland Indians. The Indians—now called the Guardians due to political correctness—went on to win the World Series against the Boston Braves. The Braves are America’s oldest baseball team, now located in Atlanta, and have somehow managed to keep their tomahawk logo and “tomahawk chop” rallying cry despite woke dissatisfaction. 

By 1949, I was an old hand at being an American, having been sent to the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. That year, I attended my first major league game at Yankee Stadium. What a treat that was! The Yankees were playing the Washington Senators and a wild pitcher named Tommy Byrne was pitching for the Yankees. I had become such a baseball fan that my father thought it unhealthy. He of course followed classical sports like track and field, boxing, and a sport that didn’t exist in America back then, called football in Europe and soccer in America. He regarded baseball as a made-up sport and scoffed at players trying to hit a ball with a “piece of wood.” 

Never mind. There was nothing to compare with baseball back then, father or no father. And it was a remarkably different America then, when the game was played during the day and broadcast on radio instead of television. There were only 16 major league teams then, and St. Louis was the franchise farthest west. New York had three teams: the Yankees, the Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. The most famous baseball star, the Yankee’s Joe DiMaggio, was paid $100,000 a year ($1.3 million in today’s dollars) by the team’s owner Dan Topping, whose brother Bob was married to actress Lana Turner.

Management, not players, dictated salaries then, and alcohol, not drugs, was the most bothersome addiction. Most players were paid peanuts (the minimum salary was $5,000, or $66,000 today) but played as if they were being paid millions. I never saw anyone jog to first base as they do nowadays, or ever wait to see if a ball is a home run before running. 

There was an innocence to the sport then. That year an aging but still graceful DiMaggio heroically struggled through the season with a crippling foot injury. The good-looking, gifted, and brash Ted Williams was engaged in his usual fights with the Boston press and public, and refused to tip his cap to fans even when they cheered him to the rafters. The “Say Hey Kid” Willie Mays caught the uncatchable in the outfield of the Polo Grounds and hit them “where they weren’t” like no other.

The great philosopher of that time happened to be a Yankee catcher, Lawrence “Yogi” Berra. He came up with such pearls of wisdom as “If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him;” “It gets late early out there;” “Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded;” “You can observe a lot just by watching;” “It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future;” and “When you come to a fork on the road, take it.” 

Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, the Polo Grounds in Manhattan, and Ebbets Field in Brooklyn were hallowed places but without any of the modern conveniences. Bleacher seats were less than a dollar. At Ebbets Field, if a home run hit the Howard & Co. Attire sign in centerfield, the batter got a suit—a nice prize for the modestly paid players.

None of those original stadiums still exist. The last old-fashioned stadium, the Oakland Coliseum, known by fans as the “giant concrete toilet bowl,” is about to lose the Oakland Athletics to Las Vegas. The A’s were once in Philadelphia and owned by the great Connie Mack, who led the team from the dugout dressed in a three-piece suit and a stiff white collar. The Oakland Coliseum is a hulking mass of concrete, with chairs coming loose, lights failing, and trough urinals. That is the way all the old stadiums were. 

Baseball’s stadiums are now built for comfort and resemble theme parks. Their goal, it seems, is to attract casual fans into the priciest seats. Ticket prices far outpace inflation, and stadiums are no longer designed for people to simply watch sports. They are no longer grungy, unpretentious and cheap. And yet with all this so-called improvement, baseball is no longer the national pastime. I no longer attend.

In 1957, while on a date in a nightclub with the first “Bond girl,” the actress Linda Christian, the greatest Yankee of them all, Mickey Mantle, sent us a drink. I invited him and his buddy, second baseman Billy Martin, to join us. They did, and were obviously after Linda. Then I heard Mickey whisper to Billy, “He’s just a kid, let’s lay off.” I invited them to El Morocco the following week and it was the start of a wonderful friendship. Both Mickey and Billy are now gone, as are the stadiums, and my love for baseball. But my father was still wrong about the game, especially back then. ◆