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THEN: In Scotland, shepherds and sportsmen had been swatting little balls with long sticks for hundreds of years, but in the U.S. golf was just catching on circa 1900, when these young caddies gathered for a portrait at Baltusrol Golf Club, established five years earlier, in Springfield. While golf in Scotland was everyman’s game, golf here started out the province of the wealthy. Youngsters could caddie, but opportunities to play organized sports were few. City kids romped in the streets, dodging horse-drawn wagons; rural kids played in the fields—that is, when they weren’t saddled with chores.
Lauren Casselberry/AP.
NOW: Pickup basketball still thrives, often around a bare rim under the glare of a streetlight. But in New Jersey as elsewhere, children grow up playing almost nothing but organized sports. Kids barely out of kindergarten totter around the ice in Mites hockey or take loopy swings in T-ball. Then come rec leagues, travel teams and tryouts for the varsity. Top high school teams can fill stadiums, as St. Anthony’s High of Jersey City and Plainfield High did last March in the finals of the Tournament of Champions at the Izod Center in East Rutherford. When the St. Anthony’s Friars prevailed, the Jersey Journal was right there with a page-one extra.