Memoirs of a Toledo Childhood: Softball

"Memoirs of a Toledo Childhood" follows the recollections and reflections of Michael Murray, a Toledoan born in 1944 and raised in the South Side. These snippets of childhood from the previous generation, released as moments rather than a chronological timeline, remind us of what once was and the experiences and legacies that built our present. The excerpts are adapted from Murray's Memoir of a Toledoan and are released with permission of the author.

Graphic by Bethany Morgan.

My best friend Tom Erdman, who lived down my block, and I were playing softball in the street with John Welter at his house in the six hundred block of Brighton Avenue, two blocks away from my home. Unintentionally, my ball went into John’s neighbor’s yard across the street. Mr. Hitchsky was a grouchy old man and would give us hard time about playing ball in the street and the ball occasionally rolling in his yard. Several times that day our ball ran into his yard. We’d run over and retrieve it. We didn’t hurt his yard. Then it happened: he came off the porch and took our ball and wouldn’t give it back.

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