This pertains to people from Williamstown because of the Hart brothers - no, not the WWF Hart brothers of whom Bobby 'The Brain' Heenan once said 'Yeah, they really love the Hart brothers in  Texas.' (sarcastic tone inserted) 'Their neighbors put up for sale signs on their (the Hart brothers') lawns.'

Dad had said Billy Hart was the best baseball player he had ever seen play in any league.

The Hart brothers in our town when they were growing up had put up a sandlot baseball field on the North-Western corner of Ide Road and Water Street.

Dad and Aunt Sally were born near where Blair Road and Luce Road met below the Stony Ledge on Mt Greylock, and used to play in sandlot games with the Hart brothers at their field.

Somewhere between 1973 and 1976 when I was still in T Shirt League - dad built a batting cage out of steel plumbing pipe and chicken wire and mowed a baseball diamond in front of it with the electric lawn mower, which could cut really low.

He probably built it because of the Hart brothers' sandlot field.

About the same time, John Weedon had taken over as our neighborhood's paper boy for delivering 'The North Adams Transcript's from the old paperboy, Chris Van Luling, who Had graduated Highschool.

The post below mentions how Jeff Young, Jim Guiden and I who were on the Williamstown Savings Bank T - Shirt League team were related, but in one game Jeff, who was our catcher, accidently hit Chris Gerlach, who was the other team's catcher, in the back of the head while batting.

These were tough little 7 and 8 year old kids! Chris did not let on that he had been hit as Jeff complained to the umpire that Chris had obstructed Jeff's swing, but the umpire did not believe Jeff until Jeff yelled 'Look at him ! He's crying !'

And it was true, Chris, who had stayed in the crouch position the whole time had a tear track coming down his face from his left eye, but otherwise you would not have known anything was wrong !

I mention this for two reasons, the first being Chris's older sister would later become our highschool baseball and football teammate Jeff Grande's steady lady friend, and secondly because 'Gerlach' was the last name of the real person who inspired 'The Great Gatsby' by F Scott Fitzgerald, and in the Gatsby novel, Gatsby had worked for the guy who allegedly rigged the 1919 World Series which caused 'Shoeless Joe' Jackson to be banned from Major League Baseball.

In high school I had become a pitcher, and the best game I ever had was against Wacohnah high school in Pittsfield, mass where I had pitched a shut out and gotten a few singles.

I first remember seeing Jeff Grande play in Little League, and he looked just like a MLB player even back then !  I think he was batting around .600 when we played the game I pitched in, and he had hit 3 home runs in the game.

'Meyer Wolfshiem is an underworld figure, who associates with gangsters such as Rosy Rosenthal and is involved in various illegal activities. Gatsby tells Nick he is famous for having fixed the 1919 World Series . His character was based on Arnold Rothstein, a real life gambler whom Fitzgerald had met.'



https://www.bbc.co.uk › guides › re...

Meyer Wolfshiem - Characters - Higher English Revision - BBC Bitesize

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zm4bd6f/revision/8