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Positively Fourth Street
It seems that many of the Fourth Street Boys grew up together on the lower East Side of NY. They are a close knit group. Eddie Molina, the third baseman and co-captain commented "To tell you the truth," he said "I consider the team members my family." According to Jim Bonilla, the team's other captain. "Although some of us moved out of the neighborhood, we would still regularly get together on Sunday's for stickball. But in the last couple of years, we haven't played. That's why I knew we had to enter the Stickball Classic." Bonilla saw an ad for the tournament in the Daily News, the day before the Manhattan competition. "I spoke to Curtis and he suggested that if we couldn't make the Manhattan date, that we consider coming to one of the upcoming events. We choose August 7 in Queens." The team has never before competed in a tournament, though you'd never know that from their quality of play. The Fourth Street Boys trounced the Old-Timers in the day's opener and then decisively defeated the Woodside Boys in the second game. By the time they were to play the Generators, some of the players showed the strain of the games and heat. However, the team pulled together, playing tough defense and won 3-2 in a tight game on the narrower of the two fields. The players were generous in their praise for the opponents. The crowd watching the event was obviously cheering for the local team and Curtis Sliwa was tough on the visitors, calling them "carpetbaggers." But the positive spirit displayed by Fourth Street won them some admirers, including Billy Barrett, the captain for the Old-Timers. Barrett said "These guys are really gentlemen. We are going to go down to their neighborhood and play a choose up game sometime this summer. It was a pleasure to meet them."
Barrett rooted for his former adversaries in the finals. Residents of Queens
can feel good about these guys representing the borough in the Classic's
city-wide finals in September.
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