Mr. Dunn says it was "the best Jets game ever," and forgive him for being a little nostalgic. He's not the only middle-aged guy who wonders what happened to pickup baseball, especially in summer. Nor is he the only middle-aged guy who mistakenly thinks it was all free-form back in the day. It wasn't.
Parents seized control of youth baseball a long time ago. Little League came to be in the late 1930s. What's missing today is that other phenomenon to which Mr. Dunn refers - the just-show-up summer baseball that we all remember. It fell victim to all sorts of forces: suburbanization, the decline of city neighborhoods and small-town life, parental zeal to protect their children from evils real and perceived, the invention of air-conditioning, television and digital games, the notion that all activities must have a payoff - that participating in sports must lead to a college scholarship or signing bonus.
