I like baseball and I like to read, so I was happy to tag along last Wednesday with a group of students who were rewarded with baseball tickets, lunch and green t-shirts for reading, on average, a book a month during the school year. The young people, from
P.S. 307 in Vinegar Hill, saw the Braves beat the Yankees in a game that featured the long ball.
It's a great story—the kids, not the baseball game—and I wish I had the time to write it; it would practically write itself. I pitched the story to the publisher of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, but nothing yet has come of that.
P.S. 307 is across the street from the Farragut Houses, a public housing development near the Brooklyn Navy Yard. A real estate developer, Jed Walentas, has been investing his time and money in the school. His family's company has profited from its development of DUMBO, which is nearby but not so close that Jed couldn't easily direct his philanthropy elsewhere.
The principal since 2004, Roberta Davenport, grew up in Farragut and returned to the school she attended as a girl to give back to the community. Insideschools.org paints a mixed picture, but one that includes innovation and incremental improvements.
And then there are those cute kids. I would love to hear what books they liked and why. But that would have taken more prep' and follow-up than I had time for in the week before our next road-trip. I settled for handing out hot dogs and soda, a surefire way to become popular.
On the field, the Braves doubled up the Yankees, 10-5. There were nine home runs. The visitors knocked the ball over the wall in the first, third, fourth, fifth and eighth innings. The home team banged theirs in the first and fifth, with a pair in the sixth. There goes another one.
There were even more pitchers than home runs, 11 in total, and that made for slow paced game. Neither starter lasted longer than five innings, and both were responsible for most of the damage.
Box Score
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