Shea Believer: My Amazin' Journey

By Bill De Cicco

Shea Believer is an amazing journey of Shea Stadium history. The journey will take you through the years of Shea from its beginning to its last day. Youll hear the firsthand experiences of a batboy working in the clubhouse with the greatest National League stars of the 60s. Shea Stadium was also the football home to the New York Jets, which Bill also worked as a field ball boy. What happened in the clubhouse when Sandy Kofax got knocked out of a game? What kind of a man was Gil Hodges? In 1965 Emil Griffith fought Nino Benvenuti. Who was the champ, and how did he react after the fight?

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Nov 4, 2015
• ISBN: 9781512718089

Bill De Cicco

Bill De Cicco was batboy and ball boy for the New York Mets from 1965 through 1968. His memories of these experiences are unique, and baseball fans will find them very interesting. Bill grew up in Bayside, Queens, and now lives in Brookhaven Hamlet on Long Island with his wife of forty-three years, Jeaneane.

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Copyright © 2015 Bill De Cicco.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-5127-1809-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-1810-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-5127-1808-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015917963

WestBow Press rev. date: 11/4/2015

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 In the Beginning

Chapter 2 How Did You Get That Job?

Chapter 3 First Game as Batboy

Chapter 4 Koufax Game

Chapter 5 Odd Couple Day

Chapter 6 Boxing

Chapter 7 Jets Football

Chapter 8 Opening Day 1969

Chapter 9 Games

Chapter 10 Shea’s Last Opening Day

Chapter 11 Games with My Dad

Chapter 12 1969 World Series

Chapter 13 Playboy Bunny Game

Chapter 14 Opening Day, April 5, 1983

Chapter 15 Opening Day 1985

Chapter 16 1986 Playoffs and World Series

Chapter 17 1988 NLCS

Chapter 18 Dad’s (Paw’s) Eightieth Birthday Game

Chapter 19 1999 NLDS

Chapter 20 9/11 Game

Chapter 21 September 18, 2006

Chapter 22 The Last Summer

Chapter 23 Odds and Ends

Chapter 24 Final Thoughts

About the Author

To My Dad

Who taught me to be a man through his actions and deeds, and as a bonus gave me the gift of baseball.

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Acknowledgments

To God for putting my wife, Jeaneane, in my life nearly fifty years ago. No one else would ever have put up with me taking almost a decade to finish this book;

To my sister-in-law, Mollyann Milius, for typing her fingers to the bone in pulling this project together;

To my lifelong friend Steve (Buzz) Brazauskus, who passed away in 2012 but was such a big influence on this book when the project began;

To my sister, Mary Linton, and niece, Carolyn Linton, for getting this project started;

To Linda Carpinone for naming the book; and

To Jim McIsaac for his masterful photography.

Introduction

This book became a labor of love and took almost ten years to complete. Shea Stadium was my work home for four years as I grew up alongside major league ballplayers who were a bit spoiled but young enough to treat a skinny young teenager from Bayside, Queens, properly.

My years as a ball boy were only a small part of the history I have with Shea Stadium. That history now spanned four generations of my family before it ended on a cold, rainy night in September 2008.

I’ll take you on my Shea Stadium journey from a young man in 1964 to a grandfather in 2008.

The stories are full of great memories that are both heartbreaking and some of my life’s happiest moments. Time can change the details of events in our minds and how we understand what we do remember. Detailed research was done to make the stories I will tell you as accurate as possible.

What I don’t do in this book is discuss certain things I saw in the clubhouse and dugout, such as racism, womanizing, chewing tobacco, smoking, cheating, and greenies (amphetamines), which were readily available to all players since it wasn’t a crime to use them without a prescription till 1970. I witnessed all of this, often at a young age. Maybe those subjects are for another time. For this book and this amazin’ journey, we’ll stick to sports and family.

Chapter 1

In the Beginning

I became a baseball fan long before Shea Stadium existed and before the Mets were even a thought in anyone’s mind. I attended my first Major League Baseball game on August 21, 1958—the Yankees versus the White Sox. I was seven years old. The Yankees won the game six to three behind Bob Turley. I remember nothing of the game, but Frankie Cammerata, the son of our family friend, was the Yankees’ batboy at that time, and before the game he took me into the Yankee clubhouse to meet the players and get autographs that I still have to this day. I couldn’t stop staring at Mickey Mantle, who was my childhood baseball idol. I was never a Yankees fan, but the Mick was the man to every young boy in New York. Mantle, in only his seventh major league season, was already a superstar. He had won the Triple Crown in 1956 with 52 home runs, 130 RBIs and a .353 batting average. The previous Triple Crown had been won in 1947 by Ted Williams, and it wasn’t until 1966 that Frank Robinson would win the next one.

Frankie Cammerata was the Yankee batboy for many years in the late fifties. He was my cousin by friendship; back then your parents’ best friends were called aunt and uncle out of respect, and their children were your cousins. Aunt Rose and Uncle Eddie’s son Frankie was my connection to becoming the Mets’ ball boy many years later.

My dad and I attended many Yankee games together, but as I remember we were never true fans. My dad was an old New York Giants fan, and they had broken his heart when they moved out of the Polo Grounds to San Francisco after the 1957 season. But baseball was the passion with my dad, so he began to watch the Yankees even though his heart wasn’t in it. We watched, talked, and played baseball at every opportunity, from my early childhood right up to his death in 1998.

Growing up, my dad’s favorite player was the Giants’ Mel