Cagney On My Mind

You ever have one of these days?

Tommy's Home!

"Uh, Oh."

"Tommy's dead!"

Never left the house yesterday, I have a pissed off back and a spasm in my right calf the size of a Spaldeen. I watched several old films.  One of them,"The Public Enemy," its final scene when Tom Powers comes home to Ma is one of my favorites. Seeing it again, reminded me how often I heard Cagney's name in Yorkville as a kid in the streets and in my house.

Jimmy Cagney, his brother, Bill, and my uncle, Joe Cuccia, played together on the "Yorkville Nut Baseball Club." I believe the years were between 1912 and 1917. The "Yorkville Nuts" were a famous and successful sandlot team in New York City at the turn of the century through World War I. Their main rivals were the "John Jays."

This photograph of a group of Yorkville boys was taken around 1912 at the edge of the East River near the East Side House Settlement. Cagney is second from left in second row. My Uncle Joe whose nickname was "Cheech" is standing all the way to right in the second row. Several of these guys went to P.S. 158 together.

I'm trying to locate information on the Yorkville Nut Baseball Club, stories, pictures, box scores, etc. If Anyone has information on the "Yorkville Nut Baseball Club," and is willing to share it with me, I'd be grateful.

Cagney loved his Yorkville youth and loved the team. He kept the Nut uniform for his entire life, see the NY Times article below. My Uncle Joe had box scores, I saw as a boy, but sadly, they are lost.

Thank you. be well, Tommy

Here is a undated photo of the Yorkville Nut Baseball Club posing with some of the John Jays. My uncle is to the left of Cagney with the smirk on his face.

When Cagney's estate was auctioned off this piece appeared in The New York Times

on September 24, 1992. 
Note: baseball uniform reference

CHRONICLE
Objects and memorabilia belonging to James Cagney will be put on auction Sept. 30 at William Doyle Galleries on the Upper East Side. Fans of the actor, who died in 1986, will find mementos of some of his most famous movies, including the spats and boots he wore as George M. Cohan in the 1942 musical "Yankee Doodle Dandy," the role for which he won an Oscar.

The auction will also include his personal copy of the screenplay from "The Time of Your Life" and canisters containing various films, including "Public Enemy." A signed drawing by Al Hirschfeld and five 1930's portraits of the actor by Edward Weston are included. Also on sale will be more private items like a uniform from Cagney's childhood days on the Yorkville Nut Club baseball team and paintings and drawings that the actor made after he retired to his farm in Dutchess County.

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