There are certain childhoods that feel stitched together by a single sound, a single smell, or a single place. For Peter Scariano, growing up in 1950s Chicago meant living inside the heartbeat of baseball long before dreams had names or positions had meanings. The dust of summer fields, the thud of a ball finding its pocket, and the steady chorus of kids shouting, arguing, laughing, and hitting until daylight faded were not just memories. They were the architecture of his youth.
Chicago in the mid-50s was a city in transition, neighborhoods rising, families moving, and children discovering new worlds as quickly as the streets were laid. Peter spent his early childhood on the north side, surrounded by narrow yards, crowded sidewalks, and the hum of city life. But everything shifted when his family moved south to Garfield Ridge, two miles west of Midway Airport. What awaited him there was a place still figuring itself out, part construction zone, part prairie, and part blank canvas where friendships were formed not through introductions but through play.
In 1956, Garfield Ridge was still young. Streets were mostly gravel strips that puffed dust into the air with every step. Houses stood scattered across oversized lots as if waiting for the neighborhood to catch up to them. To adults, it looked unfinished. To children, it was endless possibility. At the end of Peter’s block, the prairie stretched wide with tall grass swaying, marshy dips that trapped dragonflies, and the distant thunder of Midway’s engines reminding every kid that there was a bigger world beyond their street.
This was the kingdom of imagination. Mounds of construction dirt became mountains to conquer. Half built basements transformed into forts, hideouts, and battlegrounds. Kids slid, climbed, raced, and wore the land on their clothes like badges of honor. But no matter the game of the day, everything always circled back to baseball.
Baseball was not a pastime. It was childhood’s currency. Gloves were handed down from fathers or older brothers. Bats were taped and retaped until they survived one more season. Baseballs stayed in use long after their leather gave up, rebuilt with electrical tape until they resembled lumpy gray comets. Every kid understood one thing: a glove was not gear. It was identity.
Down by the prairie’s edge, Peter and the neighborhood kids carved out their own diamond. They scratched bases into dirt, measured outfields by instinct, and let the rules bend depending on who showed up. If a ball reached the railroad tracks beyond the right field ditch, it was a double. When players were few, they called ghost runners or played pitcher’s hand. The game never stopped. It simply adapted.
And amid all this improvisation, there was one object that felt almost mythical: the Wilson A2000.
Introduced in 1957, the A2000 was not just a glove. It was a revolution. Crafted with deeper pockets, reinforced lacing, and fingers designed to extend a player’s reach, it was the kind of equipment that made ordinary players feel extraordinary. Most kids only saw it in the pages of baseball magazines or heard about it in dugout whispers. Professionals trusted it. Coaches praised it. And neighborhood kids dreamed of it.
Peter remembered the first time he ever saw one in person. An older boy a few blocks away, taller, quicker, and already playing in organized leagues, walked onto the local field with an A2000 that looked like it belonged in a major stadium. Its leather was rich, darker, and smoother than anything the neighborhood kids owned. When the older boy pounded a ball into its pocket, the sound was different, not the hollow clap of worn gloves but a deep, confident thud. It captured every kid’s attention. For Peter and his friends, it was less a glove and more a glimpse of what someday could look like.
In a neighborhood where so much was borrowed, patched, or improvised, the A2000 symbolized possibility. It was proof that the game they loved, the one played on dusty fields with ghost runners and taped up balls, connected them to something bigger. To the pros. To real stadiums. To dreams that felt far away but suddenly not unreachable.
The glove did not just represent quality. It represented aspiration. Kids argued about who might one day own one, who would grow into the kind of player worthy of it, and what it would feel like to slip their hand into leather built for greatness. Even if they never touched it, the A2000 lived in their imaginations, shaping the way they saw the game and themselves.
But childhood was not all easy triumphs. Shortly after the move to Garfield Ridge, the Scariano family faced a moment that left a lasting mark. A loose German Shepherd broke free and attacked Peter’s brothers, Tony and Bruce. The chaos, the fear, the rushed hospital visits, and the painful rabies shots became part of the family’s story. It was one of those early life shocks when joy is interrupted by fear and the world suddenly feels less predictable. Yet relief came, healing followed, and as soon as spring thawed the fields, the brothers returned outside. Childhood has a way of insisting that life resume.
And baseball restored that rhythm. School days, chores, and long evenings on the dusty lots brought the Scariano boys back into the heart of their community. The neighborhood grew, more houses, more kids, more memories. But the stories formed there remained uniquely theirs, built on makeshift fields, taped baseballs, mismatched gloves, and the quiet hope that one day they might have a glove like the A2000 in their own hands.
Looking back now, it is clear these early years were more than a collection of moments. They were the foundation of a life shaped not by perfect equipment or professional instruction but by belonging. Those fields, those friends, those afternoons under the sun, they were sacred. Baseball was not spectacle. It was connection. It settled into the bones and stayed long after the last pitch of summer.
As Peter would later reflect, baseball did not need perfection to matter. It needed heart. But every now and then, something like the A2000 came along and reminded a kid that even in the dusty lots of 1950s Chicago, greatness, real and tangible greatness, could be just within reach.