The Basketball Diaries: The Classic About Growing Up Hip On New York’s Mean Streets

Jim Carroll’s autobiography takes place in New York City during the 1960s. A 13-year-old Jim shares that his coach Lefty signed him up for the Biddy League baseball team for players 12 and under; Lefty provided a fake birth certificate. Jim observes that Lefty might be a “homosexual” (3) as he likes to “put his hand between your legs and pick you up.” He avoids telling his mother this. He describes the makeup of his baseball team as “two Italians, two spades and me” (3)—“spades” being a disparaging term for African Americans at the time. Jim describes a post-game fight between Tony Milliano and Jim’s cousin, Kevin Dolon, but he himself does not get involved—Tony is an imposing boy and Kevin told on Jim earlier that day for spitting on some six-year-olds. Jim also shares an anecdote about getting on a ferry out of town and sniffing Carbona cleaner with Tony and other boys to get high. Jim and his friends sniff too much and begin hallucinating and vomiting. They unintentionally vomit on a man and run to safety before he can catch them. It is not until nightfall when they finally take a ferry back home, “vowing [they’d] never sniff that stuff on any ferry again” (5).