Day before yesterday, I admired the newly rehabbed Day Street Rec Center, with its beautifully manicured baseball diamond surrounded by a verdantly lush outfield. The urge was still there. Wanted to jump off the bus and hit fungo to any available kid who might chase after my high fly balls. Back in my Brooklyn days, my buddies and I would have been all over a place like this, every day during baseball season, playing until sunset, sometimes later.

Where are the San Francisco kids? I see these gorgeous fields and no one on them. No more pick-up games and practice, only league games? Kids don’t go anywhere unless mom or dad drives them there?

Wingate Field was my sandy field of dreams, just a six-block walk from my house. I played centerfield for a local Babe Ruth League team called the Black Sox, #13. And then as a teenager in the Parade Ground League, #44. I usually batted third or fourth in the line-up. I had a good arm and fairly accurate peg to third or home. But Wingate’s turf was stony and sandy, not grassy, and an outfielder learned to deal with bad hops or bounces right over your head.

I probably learned humility there. I started out with a fairly simple Rawling’s mitt. To cushion the hard drives, I sewed a cloth thumb slot on the backside of the glove. I must have been about 10. At that age, very often the only action you got in centerfield resulted from an infield error. But one day a high fly ball lofted in my direction and I caught it. In an exuberant moment of bravado, I flexed my biceps in a victorious pose. My teammates watched in dismay as an opposing player on third tagged home before I could hurl the ball to my catcher. I don’t believe The Coach said anything to me as I came in at the end of the inning. His look of disappointment was sufficient.

More than anything, I loved to hit fungo, (batting the ball without pitching for practice.) I’d call for double-plays from the infield, alert the lonely rightfielder that the next shot was coming his way. Became quite adept at sending a high fly straight up above home plate. If there was no catcher, I’d grab it bare-handed. We often fetched lost balls from behind the stadium bleachers and repaired them with thin strips of white adhesive tape, making them extremely live and long-flying.

Charles Anderson managed and maintained Wingate Field. I wrote a song about him and his daily ritual titled "Haul Down the Flag, Charlie and We’ll All Go Home." That’s what Charlie did. He’d bring down the flag from the high pole signaling it was time for us to leave our sandy lot. We sang our anthem. We followed Charlie out the gate, which he locked, and drove off. Then we climbed back in through stretched bars in a side fence and kept on playing till dark.