On Sunday, October 3, 1937, in a battle for Brooklyn semipro supremacy played out not more than two miles from where I presently live, the visiting Bay Ridge Club and host Bay Parkway Dukes split games of a twin bill at Erasmus Field, McDonald Avenue at the Avenue M station along the Culver Line.
GAME ONE - Bay Ridge starter Bill Simmons and Harry Eisenstat of Bay Parkway stage a classic pitcher's duel. Neither pitcher yields a run through the game's first eight innings.
Eisenstat allows but six hits and strikeouts ten. He is relieved in the ninth by Johnny Ubinksi, who promptly surrenders the go-ahead run. Bay Ridge center fielder Babe Fisher tripled to right field and scored on left fielder Vincent Liddy's base hit. But Bill Simmons does himself no favors in the home ninth by walking two batters and surrendering the game-tying hit by Max Posnack.
Into extra innings, they go at Erasmus Field.
Bill Simmons and Johnny Ubinski duel through two more scoreless frames. But in the visiting twelfth, Ubinski unleashed a wild pitch permitting the go-ahead run to score from third base. Afterwhich, Bay Ridge tacks on another. Simmons retires Bay Parkway in the bottom half of the twelfth for the win. He holds the Dukes to one on just four hits with seven strikeouts. Max Posnack accounts for two of the Duke's four hits. Ubinksi takes the loss.
GAME TWO - Bay Parkway secures a twin bill split in an abbreviated five-inning game called on account of darkness. Johnny Ubinski again takes the mound and this time limits Bay Ridge to no runs on just two hits with four strikeouts for the win. Bay Parkway is able to bunch together all three runs in the third. Lefty Holmes leads the Dukes with two hits and a run scored.
Bay Ridge and Bay Parkway split the season series at two apiece. The matter of Brooklyn supremacy goes unresolved. But we really know who's number one ...
