Silverstien Senior, no lightweight himself, reached the third base foul line at about the same time Donald Thompson hit the bag and just as his older brother in the leather jacket noticed what was going on from the other grandstand. The concerned parent grabbed the hefty youngster ignoring his own prostrate offspring; and began shaking the kid furiously by the shoulders, shouting something about dirty tactics and violence.
The benches and the grandstands cleared, but before anyone else could reach the seen of the assault Thompson the elder streaked across the field and hit Silverstein with a flying cross-body block. While those two struggle in the dirt other fights broke out here and there and fans and players from the Krolick's game hustled from the other end of the park to add to the confusion.
Later after these events were retold innumerable times, there were rumors that someone had pulled a knife on someone else and that a third person's mother had been punched in the chops by an over eager tyke she had tried to restrain. The police had eventually arrived and cleared the field carting away Silverstein and Thompson who gave each other quite a bruising before they were torn apart.
The league officials were understandably outraged by what had happened. Several open meetings were called to discuss parent interference and the future of Little League in a violent society.
No playoffs were held that year, and Krolick's was denied the opportunity to take home a well-deserved championship crown.
There was even some talk of restructuring the league, making the teams more informal to reduce competition. Do away with uniforms and playoffs and end-of-season honors ceremonies, some demanded.
People argued that this one embarrassing incident reflected a larger pattern of outside interference which was ruining the game for the players.
Luckily, none of this talk distracted the players themselves. By the time the Sunnyside Park grass turned green the next March, the recess period conversation at Stillman Elementary School turned, as usual, to baseball. An not just to the game itself, but to the exciting prospect of new uniforms and a tight pennant race. No first fight no matter how ugly was going to kill Little League in Tenafly. The older folks could worry now and yell and scream later; no one pounding the base paths at Sunnyside had time to worry about such distractions.
Silverstein and Thompston were back in action though the diminutive third baseman reportedly played left field when gold faced purple that season. Krolick's won the Intermediate League title for the second year in a rew, accomplishing, the feat without a certain catcher, who had moved up to the Major League. Where he batted somewhere around 300 and even threw out a few runners trying to steal second base.