The republic was situated on islands, separated by rivers and a great harbor, and its streets were often luminous with a marine light. The climate was drastic: winters of deep snows and black ice, summers of thick smothering heat. But one month of the year was filled with a special dazzle. Nights in that month were cool but not bitter cold. Breezes tossed the hair of women, and men walked the avenues without overcoats. The month was called October. The island republic was called New York.

The snows and heat and the month of October were, of course, common to each of the five sections that made up the city: Manhattan, Brooklyn and the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island. They were connected by bridges, ferries, and an underground railroad system that the inhabitants called the subway. Since there were few automobiles in the time of which I speak (citizens could not afford them), millions used the subway. It was as essential to their lives as breathing. They took the subway when they went to work in the glittering towers of Manhattan, or to shop in the great bazaars, to attend schools, or to sample the bawdy entertainments of a soul called Times Square. On the subway, there were usually only two destinations: a place of endless possibility or a place called home.

Home was located in one of the urban hamlets that we called neighborhoods. In essence, these resembled every other hamlet in America, possessing their own local dialects and myths, fools and wastrels and big shots, their few wise men and their busy gossips. In New York, ethnicity and class also played a role. There were Irish neighborhoods and Italian neighborhoods, Jewish neighborhoods and African American neighborhoods. There were well-defended hamlets for the rich and dead zones for the poor. But all had a common denominator in the form of a secular religion. That religion was called baseball.