There are several hints to be found in the text that the story takes place in a working class environment. You know what the setting is from the very first paragraph in which the dads’ arrive in ‘coughing machines with payment plans that always outlived the engines.’ The working class environment is focused on as an all-important theme throughout the text. There are various descriptions of how the families’ housing situations, the unstable security they have to offer to their children, and how the money just barely covers the expenditures.
The families of the neighborhood are third generation immigrants. Their grandfathers are described as great adventures that braved the pond with nothing to their names but hope. The men of this generation, however, have never even made it out of the neighborhood.
The ambitions of these people are few: They want to raise their children in a safe neighborhood (with one good ball field) and see to it that they get an education. Now and then a family will have made it big enough to be able to move to the suburbs.
‘Baseball was what had gotten them through winter, and now it was what pulled them through school.’ This sentence says it all; baseball, to these kids, is the Something that brings them together and gives them a sense of purpose and direction.
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