Clorox Hockey League MVP ~ Freddy Muller

Freddy Muller was the MVP of the one quart Clorox Hockey League. His goaltending was terrific. Nothing got by him. A shifty center or wing, Freddy faked left, faked right, went left and put the boot to the puck and drove the plastic quart bottle past the hapless goalie. Freddy was a fearless player.

Eddie Ekis & Freddy Muller @1974

He was our game king. We had no where to play in the winter, and you had to keep moving or freeze. Freddy found the perfect hockey ring. Right off First Avenue on 83rd Street, was a shoe store with a similar frontage to the Frame Shop in the photo below. The guy closed early and had no gate. It was a double wide store with a deep entrance that had dimensions very close to the width and depth of a hockey net. Once we decided to play we'd scatter like rats and scavenge the garbage cans looking for a thrown out one quart Clorox bottle. We chose this bottle because of it's durability and it was easy to pass from foot to foot.

Ted Green on the Boston Bruins was the devil for spearing Phil Goyette on the Rangers. No one wanted to be Ted Green. But everyone wanted to be Ed Giacomin or Jean Beliveau, and if you were a jerk we called you Dickie Duff. 
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Other favorite non-Ranger hockey names, JacquesLaperriere, Gilles Tremblay, and Yvan Cournoyer because they were so much fun to say and that was the best part of the game everyone would be yelling commentary throughout the match. Sometimes even the fifth or sixth place Rangers scored.

southwest corner of 82nd & Lexington
perfect Clorox hockey goal net opening.

"Howell brings it up the ice, passes to Ratelle who moves it over to Gilbert, Gilbert slips the defenseman, shovels the puck to Hatfield, slap shot, he scores! A rocket right pass Gump Worsley."

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Off The Point

Yesterday, it warmed up to the point if you were a kid and playing in the street the coat definitely would have come off. Because of the five week snow cover going back to the holidays, spring games would have popped up in 1969. The best and easiest to start spring game was Off The Point. All you needed was a Spauldeen, a wall, and two players (ideally four players or up to six).

In the picture below taken by Jan Chapman in 1969, Freddy Muller is about to whack the ball off the point of 400 East 83rd Street (the lip/edge at the bottom of the wall). Two odd things about this photograph: Freddy was right handed, but he's using his left. Probably someone dared him to play with his left hand, or sometimes for a goof we all would play a whole game of Off The Point or Whiffle Ball with our opposite hand. Freddy was close to be ambidextrous, he excelled when we switched hands.

The second odd thing about this photo is the game is being played south to north. We usually used the point on the north side of the street making the south side building the outfield wall. We probably had a string of bad luck with Mr. Moylan. He lived on the second floor of 400 and if he was home when we played Off The Point, he'd open all four of his windows facing the game and wait. Inevitably, someone would sail a high flying shot over the outfielder's head high enough to reach the second floor then it was only a matter of luck whether it hit the wall or dove through the window, gone forever. He never gave a ball back. Spauldeens were expensive, each one lost was painful to the pocket. We thought Mr. Moylan was a sourpuss, looking back, we tortured him and deserved more than open windows.

We usually had a large radio/cassette player positioned on top of a car to entertain us while we played. In 1969, this song was still in heavy rotation, we played it loud.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saJdS7t_oOM

Ekis's Friday Night ~ 1969 ~ 1976

Having Michele Carlo on the Yorkville radio show tonight @ 9pm, reading Michele’s terrific memoir, “Fish Out of Agua,” brought back a strong Friday night memory.

Eddie Ekis’s mom worked at the local Five & Ten store, you know the ones with the mechanical jalopies and wild horses outside the store, a dime a ride. Friday night, Mrs. Ekis had to close the store at 9pm, that put Mrs. Ekis home at about 9:15pm.

Starting in 1969, every Friday the cocktail lamp was lit at 5pm and the first wave would roll in. There were eight to ten regulars, a poker game always got going, and the music blasted. J Geils, “Looking For a Love,” “Floyd’s Hotel,” Jeff Beck, "Truth," Humble Pie, “Thirty Days In The Hole,” Black Sabbath, “Paranoid,” Black Oak Arkansas, “Jim Dandy,” Jacksons, “Never Can Say Goodbye,” Led Zep, “Everything,” The Who, “Who’s Next,” “Quad,” Beatles, “Rubber Soul & Revolver”, Sly, “Everything, “Billy Preston, “Outer Space,” and every worth while 45 single from 1962 through the mid 70s.

Ekis had two monkeys, Chiquita & Toto. They loved beer and lived in the kitchen and had a terrace out the window when the weather was nice. Eddie fenced in the small tar roof of the beauty parlor under his second floor apartment that extended out the window about six by five feet towards York Avenue. A fine little terrace for everybody. If the weather was right we’d move the chairs out there and hang out with the monkeys, but if they didn’t like the music they went a little nuts and started pulling hair, so we had to watch what we played (they were not big fans of Black Oak Arkansas).

Most of the guys in the football team photo were regulars up Ekis’s. At five to nine everyone knew the drill. The brown bags came out, all the empties into the garbage, Ekis would move to the turntable for the “Go out,” song and we'd march out of the building on our way to somewhere never as much fun as Ekis's apartment.

I'm looking, I'm looking, I'm looking,

Somebody help me find my baby!

You go, Wolfman...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRezwP_znTc

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Freddy Muller Slips a Tag

When Ralph and Norton snuck out on the girls to go fishing early Saturday morning, they borrowed Freddy Muller's car. They got caught.

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Fifteen years later, that same Freddy Muller showed up in St. Stephen of Hungary 4th grade and stayed until graduation on June 16, 1968.

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Never questioning Freddy on how an old television character became a ten year old boy we instantly became friends when we found two green derby hats with a bunch of fake money stapled to them in a garbage can on 83rd Street in front of Leo Clairborne's house. It was St. Patrick's 1964, we hit all the bars with the money hats. Most of the guys were loaded by 3pm, and either gave us change or threw it at us. Freddy never missed catching a coin. I knew then, I was in the presence of superior athletic ability.

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Whatever sport Freddy played he was good at, but his best game was running the bases. Freddy could slip a tag like Phil Rizzuto. I miss playing ball with Freddy.

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http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/r/rizzuph01.shtml?redir