It surprises me somewhat that New York City doesn’t have more streets named for baseball players, as there have been four MLB teams playing in NYC since the start of the modern baseball era: the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants and New York Mets in the National League, and the New York Yankees, who have won 27 World Series victories to the Giants’ five, the Mets’ two and the Dodgers’ one. To be sure, there’s Ruth and Gehrig Plazas near Yankee Stadium, and the recently renamed (from 126th Street) Seaver Way near Citifield. And, there’s Edward L. Grant Highway in the Bronx, named for Edward Leslie “Harvard Eddie” Grant who played in the major leagues between 1905 and 1915 for the Phils, Reds and New York Giants, hardly a superstar but a workaday infielder. He was killed at Argonnes, France in October 1918, 3 years after his baseball career ended. That’s about it in the five boroughs.
If we cast our glance east to Commack in mid-Suffolk County, there’s a section just north of Jericho Turnpike and west of the Sunken Meadow Parkway that has plenty of baseball names; whoever laid out that section was a true baseball fanatic, with superstars from the early 20th Century represented on the map: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Walter Johnson, Ty Cobb, Bill Dickey, Tris Speaker, Dizzy Dean, Dazzy Vance, Carl Hubbell, Bill Terry, either Paul or Lloyd Waner, Mel Ott, Johnny Evers and Jimmie Foxx, whose name here is misspelled with just one x.
Update: I have been reminded of the Jackie Robinson Parkway, DiMaggio Highway (which nobody calls West Street) and the Gil Hodges Marine Parkway Bridge. Stay tuned, I may do a separate page.
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3/31/22