ERNIE HARWELL | At the time of my boyhood in Atlanta, Georgia, there was no Little League. Our youth baseball was stricly pickup. We'd get four or five boys together and take a hopped-up bat and a taped-up ball to the vacant lot at the end of the Piedmont Avenue streetcar line.

We'd hit the old ball into the woods, and if we couldn't find it, the game was over. When I was ten or eleven, an ex-semipro player named Blackie Blackstock would pick us up in his Ford and we'd all go to Piedmont Park to play all day long. We took infield and batting practice and then we'd choose up for a game.

Two ex-Georgia tech football stars, Everett Struper and Pup Phillips, organized a kids' league. I played for the Piedmont Pirates and was an all-star second baseman.

Later, I was second baseman on the Northside Terrors. My predecessor at second base was the future great shortstop Marty Marion. I gave up playing when I became batboy for the Atlanta Crackers.

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