Stickball
Fans Honor Hero
Fallen firefighter loved street game
By
GREG WILSON
Daily News Staff Writer
Steve
Mercado lived to save stickball on the streets of the Bronx, but
the
firefighter died saving fellow New Yorkers at the World Trade
Center.
Now
his friends and family want to see him honored for his devotion
to the
street game played with broomsticks and Spaldeens. They are pushing
for a street to be renamed for Mercado, and maybe even stickball's
most prestigious tournament.
"He
was Mr. Stickball," said radio personality and head Guardian
Angel Curtis Sliwa. "He was a great player, but he was also
an ambassador of the game."
A
firefighter who grew up on Bronx streets swinging broomsticks
at Spaldeens, Mercado led a resurgence of the legendary New York
game. He always believed it could save kids from trouble, said
Jennifer Lippold, a board member of the New York Emperor's Stickball
League, which Mercado helped establish.
Mercado,
a firefighter with Engine Co. 40 on Manhattan's West Side, died
along with 342 other FDNY members when terrorists attacked the
World Trade Center on Sept. 11.
He
was 38, and left behind his wife, Jovianna, and two sons, Skylar,
6, and
Austin, 2.
Those
who knew him say he had three loves: his family, his job and stickball.
"Stickball
was his passion, and we want to commemorate him however we can,"
said Lippold. "Renaming Stickball Boulevard seems appropriate,
even though it still doesn't seem like enough.
"The
league is trying to continue with his passion, to take stickball
where
he wanted to take it which was pretty far."
Teams
Galore
Mercado
was famous for tape-measure home runs and an evangelistic love
for the game. He helped organize teams in San Diego, Miami and
Puerto Rico, and dreamed of stickball one day becoming an Olympic
sport.
"He
thought if New York City could get the Olympic Games, stickball
could be the demonstration sport of the host city," Sliwa
said. "He believed
foreigners would take to it the way they do to dirty-water hot
dogs, knishes and French fries."
In
the spring and summer, teams in the Emperor's League play games
all day long, every Sunday at Stickball Blvd., near Stevenson
High School. And every Memorial Day weekend for the last 16 years,
the league has offered a stickball tournament that attracts teams
from the Bronx, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Florida, California, Puerto Rico
and St. Croix.
Lippold
said this year's tourney will be dedicated to Mercado and all
of the
other fallen firefighters. She's even hoping that the games will
be played
against the backdrop of a mural, perhaps depicting Mercado playing
the game he loved along with a poem he wrote that has become the
Emperors League's credo.
Last
year, the eighth annual Daily News-WABC Stickball Classic 2001
was
canceled because of Sept. 11. But officials say the tournament,
in which
teams from the five boroughs meet for games played on Vanderbilt
Ave. near Grand Central Terminal, will be back.
Mercado
wouldn't have had it any other way.
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