The different New York baseball teams during these years seemed to produce distinct types of followers. Fred Stein contrasted the typical Giant fans with the zany characters who were regulars at Ebbets Field as well as with Yankee fans, who he said were "far less demonstrative and emotionally involved. My recollection of the typical Yankee fan of that era is of a relatively quiet citizen, watching the game with casual detachment, with complete confidence in a satisfactory outcome regardless of temporary setbacks ... Giant fans were a different, more sophisticated, breed. Not for us were the emotional excesses or theatrics of the Dodger fan or the quiet calm of the Yankee adherents."

But there were more than issues of personality to determine who rooted for whom. For some, it was a matter of geography (particularly in Brooklyn, where residence in that borough normally meant allegiance to the Dodgers), but this wasn't always the case.

Larry "Moose" Stubing and Grover "Deacon" Jones are examples of fans who grew up in the New York City area in the 1940s and 1950s. Both went on to careers in professional baseball as players (with brief tenures in the major leagues) and later as coaches and scouts. Stubing grew up in the Bronx, home of Yankee Stadium, although he identified himself primarily as a Giants fan. "1 don't know why," he said. "Maybe the Polo Grounds was the stadium my dad took me to first." J ones, who was raised in White Plains in suburban Westchester County, provided a clearer explanation for why he became a Dodger fan. "It was Jackie Robinson," he said, referring to the player who broke baseball's color barrier at the time Jones was entering his teens.

Both Stubing and Jones spent time in all the New York stadiums, sometimes as spectators and sometimes as players on high school and area all star teams. They also played the game they loved in any other setting that worked -- whether it be a vacant lot or the middle of a street. Often they were forced to improvise in terms of players and equipment. "We'd play all day," recalled Jones, adding that "kids today have no imagination. They can't play unless they have 18 players [enough for two full teams]." Jones and Stubing would manage with far smaller numbers, even to the point of drawing the outline of a strike zone on the wall of a handball court and pitching to an imaginary batter. Balls were kept in service for long periods by being wrapped with tape. If a regulation ball wasn't available, a tennis ball could suffice if the fuzz was burned off. "Tennis balls were a lot fuzzier then," Stubing explained, "and all that fuzz would slow the ball down."

On the sandlots and in high school, Stubing, who is white, and Jones, who is black, played in groups that were racially diverse. Stubing said the neighborhoods he was familiar with in New York City were broken up more on the lines of nationality or other ethnic divisions rather than by color. "There were Italian or German or Jewish neighborhoods more than any that were black or white," he remembered. Neither Jones nor Stubing gave much thought to race relations until they entered pro ball and got a dose of Southern segregation -- Jones on his first trip to Florida for spring training with the Chicago White Sox organization and Stubing with his first pro team in the Georgia-Florida League.

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