Brooklyn Heights Blog

Photo by Mrs. Fink

Saturday morning, we checked out the controversial soccer players at Cadman Plaza Park. Overall the group of players, mostly men and over 30, seemed downright mellow. While they did take up most of the turf field, there didn’t seem to be much competition for using it. One family played frisbee on the turf while the game was being played. And the only casualty there seemed to be the little boy’s interest in frisbee — seems like he caught “futbol fever” after seeing a goal scored.

From the BHB Inbox comes word of the start of softball season from Eastern Athletic Club: Read more »

Amber and Autumn Lau, basketball playing twins from York, Pennsylvania will be taking the court for the St. Francis Terriers next year according to their hometown newspaper.   Currently seniors at Northeastern High,  Autumn averaged 24.1 points last season while Amber averaged 17.

Flickr photo by Stefen Chow, taken at Trinity Boxing Club in 2007

The first rule of Gleason’s Gym in DUMBO’s White Collar Boxing should have been “don’t talk about White Collar Boxing.”  The amateur competition held there and at other gyms in the city stopped in late 2005 after someone dropped a dime to the NYS Athletic  Commission.  Now, according to Maxboxing.com, Gleason’s owner Bruce Silverglade is thisclose to getting the tourneys back on track: Read more »

This just in from Paping Soapbox Derby organizer John Meijas:

The Paping Soapbox Derby 2008 will take place Sat Aug 23 in wonderful Brooklyn Hts. NYC! The website www.papingsoapboxderby.org will be updated within the next week with details and directions. In the meantime, if you have any questions please feel free to write me. Live clean, drive fast. Read more »

Brigate Bocce, the official bocce team of BHB, won its first game of the Summer season in league play at FloydNY on Sunday. The Brigates faced off against the Holy Rollers, taking the match in two tight games: 7 - 5, 7 - 6. Read more »

The Brooklyn Cyclones, the Borough’s professional baseball team and Class A affiliate of the New York Mets, have begun their season by winning two series, two games to one each, the first against their archrivals from across the water, the Staten Island Yankees, and the second against the Orioles’ affiliate, the Aberdeen Iron Birds. The Cyclones play their home games at Keyspan Park, on Coney Island.

Brigate Bocce, the official Bocce team of BHB, engaged in league play at FloydNY for the first time in over a year Sunday. Read more »

This season's spectacular collapse of the New York Mets is much like that of the 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers, the team felled by Bobby Thompson's "shot heard around the world". Today's New York Times makes the comparison, including a passage about the reaction in Brooklyn Heights to the Dodgers' loss:

The New York Times: When the Losers Were Loved…: The Dodgers may have blown a pennant. But unlike the Mets’ final loss, defeat did not raise doubts about their character and worth.

This is not to say that Brooklyn was happy. In the moments after Thomson’s home run against Ralph Branca, Brooklyn swung between melancholy and bursts of rage. In front of the Dodger offices on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, a man paced before the scoreboard drawn on the window and cried out: “I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!”

The banquet manager of the Towers Hotel on Clark Street calculated that the hotel had just lost $30,000 from the 500 extra guests, the 100 booked rooms and the party in the Pedro Room that the team had reserved to celebrate its pennant. “We are very miserable,” he said.