Edgar Santana prepares for his fight at Mendez Boxing Gym. (Photo by Gabriel Stargardter)

Edgar “Chamaco” Santana, a/k/a The Pride of Spanish Harlem, walks into the Mendez Boxing gym in Manhattan’s Flatiron District and approachs a duct-taped punch bag. He’s compact and wiry, like a tourniquet wound tight. Dipping his left shoulder while he jabs with his right, he clamps his jaw in concentration.

The gym walls are lined with images of famous Latino fighters – Salvador Sanchez, Julio Cesar Chavez – intermingled with the giants who, like Ali and Tyson, require no first name. Its clientele is mainly comprised of white-collar boxers who come to work out. These days, Santana is one of a few remaining pros.*

In 2008, Santana was one of the country’s most promising light welterweights with 24 wins and 17 knockouts to his name. ESPN televised his fights and talk of world titles was not unrealistic. But by late 2009, he was behind bars, a convicted drug trafficker.

Since his release from Riker’s Island two years ago, Santana has fought twice, both bouts ending in knockouts. In the second, against Omri Lowther, Santana was crowned North American Boxing Association champion. With the next step a bout against Wilfredo Negron, his comeback is on.

Edgar Santana,born in Manatí, Puerto Rico, moved with his family to El Barrio in 1986, when he was seven.

“It was definitely rough, a lot of drugs on the street,” Santana recalls, his soft voice barely registering over the thud of fists hitting bags. “There were people lined up to get drugs. That was a shock.”

He found his calling at 15, when José “Chegüi” Torres, a Puerto Rican light heavyweight, came to speak to students at his high school.  Santana, already practicing martial arts, decided to switch to boxing.

By 20, he’d turned pro, but struggled without a manager or promoter, bouncing back and forth between Puerto Rico and East Harlem. He changed trainers frequently, until by 2005 he’d begun to attract enthusiastic headlines. He also opened a barbershop, Santana Cuts, on East 106th Street, populating it with a coterie of childhood friends.

“He was on the cusp of his career,” said Hector Sarria, a trainer at Mendez Boxing. “He was close to fighting a world championship fight.”

Everything changed on July 18, 2008, when Santana was arrested at his East 102nd Street home. He was just weeks from an ESPN-televised fight, but officers of the New York Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Strike Force, listening in for over a year on his conversations with two suspected drug traffickers, had little concern about that.

That morning, Santana emerged from his apartment in handcuffs wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with one of the many enigmatic slogans of local artist and friend James De La Vega, which now line his barbershop walls: “The pressure of survival in the big city will make you lose sight of your dream. Hang in there.”

Accused of brokering a deal to mail a kilo of cocaine from Puerto Rico to New York, Santana posted $150,000 bail. He eventually served four months on Riker’s Island, convicted of conspiracy to sell narcotics. He emerged a free man in January, 2010.

His arrest and imprisonment affected fans at Mendez Boxing. “It was kind of deflating for everyone,” says patron Mitch McMahon while Santana lays into an Everlast bag. “You live in the jungle and there’s a lot of alligators. The longer you live there, the more likely you are to get bitten.”

“Believe none of what you hear and half of what you know,” adds trainer Joey Gamache. “Boxing’s an unforgiving sport.”

Santana himself remains cagey about the episode – “Sometimes you’re at the wrong place at the wrong time,” he says – but is more willing to talk about prison’s impact on his physical state. He was well known on Riker’s, even respected, but struggled to keep in shape. It was, he says, more a waste of time than anything.

Once out, Santana decided to take a break from boxing and focus his attention on the barbershop. But soon he longed for the ring, and sought out Leon Taylor, a trainer he’d long admired, to orchestrate his comeback. He hopes to be challenging for a world title within a year.

“I have the ability to go many places,” Santana says.

At Santana’s barbershop on East 106th Street, sandwiched between an aromatic botanica and a Hispanic church, the unprepossessing red awning seems to herald a down-at-heel interior. But De La Vega’s Basquiat-meets-Haring scrawls give it a gritty sophistication. Santana points to his favorite inscription, daubed on the shop’s white wall: “Your mind has the amazing ability to organize chaos.”

As he sits by the window, slugging water from a gallon Poland Spring bottle, Santana moans about being unable to eat much over the holidays. But he’s about to travel with his manager, Brian Cohen, and his trainer, Taylor, to Dover Downs Casino in Delaware. When he weighs in, Santana needs to hit 143 pounds. He’s currently at 147, but doesn’t seem fazed by losing four pounds in two days. “What I have now is water weight,” he says. “Not fat.”

With his tight cheekbones and long lashes, Santana doesn’t look like your average cauliflower-nosed prizefighter. He dresses differently, too: his jeans tucked into ankle-high boots, the ensemble accessorized with an elegant fedora, complete with feather. He admires Picasso who, Santana says, made people think differently about art.

“I was always a little bit more open-minded about things,” he says, displaying his arm as an example. “You’ve never seen someone with a red sleeve.” A red-inked tattoo circles his bicep, a work in progress.

It’s a busy afternoon. Carlos Flores walks in with his mother and son. He’s wants his beard trimmed before he jets off to Jamaica the next morning. “I’m the subway hero,” he says, getting out his phone to display a video of his appearance on the Rachel Ray show.

Last year, Flores jumped onto the 6 train tracks at the 103rd Street station to save a man who’d fainted, a celebrated act that brought, among other rewards, this free family trip.

Antony Marquez, one of the shop’s barbers, arrives, and greets Edgar knuckle to knuckle. “Jefe,” he says in acknowledgement and respect. “No matter how famous he gets,” Marquez says of his boss, “he stays in the Barrio and that’s why he’s loved round here.”

Armando Alequin, waiting for a cut, bemoans the decline of boxing in Spanish Harlem. When he was growing up, the sport produced role models. Boxers, Alequin says, demand respect; they eat well, look after themselves and don’t use drugs. “You’re a badass but clean cut,” he says.

Santana looks nervous at that. “I hope I inspire people, most especially kids,” he says. “But I don’t know. Being a role model is tricky. There’s so many things that come with it, so much expected from you. I can do without that.”

The bright façade of Dover Downs Hotel & Casino emerges from an endless ribbon of strip malls and chain motels.

A function room serves as the boxing arena; a giant chandelier hangs above the ring. A few rows away, with a look of furious disappointment, Santana sits watching the action: Anthony “The Bull” Smith knocking out Douglas “Al Capone” Otieno in the sixth round; Epifanio “Diamante” Mendoza’s corner staff throwing in the towel against Amir “Hardcore” Mansour, also in the sixth.

Santana’s own fight was abruptly cancelled. The explanations vary: Santana’s manager, Brian Cohen, says opponent Wilfredo Negron had a car crash on the way to the airport. In the press box, veteran boxing journalist Rick Scharmberg has heard rumors that Negron wasn’t allowed time off from work. One of Santana’s corner staff, Emmanuel Brujan, provides a different narrative: “He was scared.”

Cohen, an affable bull of a man wearing a thick silver chain, takes the disappointment in stride. His client gets paid anyway – Santana’s promoter Dave Escalet suggests anywhere between $3,000 and $10,000. In the boxing world, Cohen says, such disruptions aren’t unusual. “I’ve seen fighters fake an anxiety attack before a fight,” he says. “I’ve seen it all.”

Santana seems strangely distracted. As his entourage makes its way to an after-party in the casino’s oyster bar, he drops behind, walking alone, carrying a bottle of iced tea. “I only came to get paid,” he says.

Cohen, however, leads Santana off to a table where three white-haired men are sitting. Santana shakes their hands; they talk a bit. Pleasantries exchanged, he and Cohen return to the table.

Ordering a second vodka, Cohen struggles to contain his excitement. He doesn’t want to “jinx” anything, but the discussions bode well for his client’s future. Santana, declining another drink, doesn’t seem to share Cohen’s enthusiasm. “People offer me a lot of things,” he says.

Santana hopes to defend his NABA title in February, again in Dover. But at 32, he knows he’s only got four or five more years left to fight, so Negron’s no-show represents a setback. The comeback is still on, he insists, but it’s been delayed.

A few weeks before he’s due back in Dover to defend his title, Santana walks into the Mendez gym wearing a black t-shirt featuring De La Vega’s latest aphorism: “Be Mindful, Even if Your Mind is Full.”

Taylor, his coach, greets him with a clasped hand and a shoulder barge that knocks his charge sideways. In mock retaliation, Santana clips him lightly with a weightless fist.

After a half hour’s shadow-boxing, Santana leaves the ring, sweating through his pants at the knee. He looks in good shape.

“Whatever I did before; now I’m doing twice as much,” he says. “It’s a good opportunity. This fight is very important to me.”

Santana and his team then head to another Mendez gym a few blocks away to work on conditioning.

“I definitely started 2012 with a whole different head on my shoulders,” Santana declares. “I want to show everybody I’m the real deal.”

*The Uptowner originally reported that Santana was the only professional boxer training at Mendez gym; in fact, there are several others.

Harlem children take penalty shots at Edwin van der Sar (Photo by Gabriel Stargardter)

A cold and blustery Harlem welcomed a soccer superstar, a windsurfing champion and a Dutch prince on Friday. Here to highlight the importance of sports as a tool for social change, Robbie Naish, Edwin van der Sar and Prince Pieter-Christiaan van Oranje got their hands dirty, joining in a soccer match between fourth and fifth graders from PS 192 and PS 325.

The 64 youngsters were participating in an after-school development course run by America SCORES, a national program that provides soccer, poetry and community service lessons to children from low-income families.

“It’s a great program for the kids both academically and physically,” saidPS 192 soccer coach, Larry Wingate, as he stood on the side, cheering on his team.

He proudly watched his boys run up and down the pitch exhaustively, unafraid to get stuck in, sometimes falling over, always enthusiastic. The cheers when they scored were matched only by their groans a few minutes later when they conceded, the goalkeeper apparently having fallen asleep.

Wingate is part of the Coach Across America program, which places sports coaches in youth organizations like America SCORES. James Kallusky, the executive director, described these coaches as “mentors” who analyze not just the children’s physical health, but their “emotional, the moral and the cognitive well-being, too.”

Empowerment and self-confidence are crucial to the program, said Paul Caccomo, executive director of Up2Us, the umbrella organization that runs Coach Across America.  Caccomo highlighted some of the problems facing the young soccer players.

“We have a very high dropout rate in our public schools, an enormous childhood obesity rate, about 800,000 of our kids are in gangs,” he said.

His program aims to use sports to inspire young people, but Caccomo believes that the $3.5 billion cuts to public school sports programs will have a devastating effect on communities like Harlem; “they’ll hit the low-income communities the worst,” he said.

The three celebrities came to Harlem as ambassadors of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, a London-based organization that celebrates the power of sports to effect social change. Friday was the launch of their partnership with Coach Across America to provide 115 coaches throughout Manhattan. The foundation runs 89 sports-community projects in 39 countries, and its famous ambassadors visit to encourage both participants and coaches, explained its global director, Ned Wills.

“A lot of these guys have taken a lot of benefit from sports personally and want to give back,” Wills said.

It was difficult to get Van der Sar off the pitch on Friday. The goalkeeper, who retired from Manchester United and Holland this summer, showed off his skills to his adoring audience, and at one point ran to tend to a boy on the ground with an injury. At the end of the game he challenged some of the youngsters to a penalty shootout.

Windsurfer Robby Naish said: “Sports sure did an awful lot for me, and it’s crucial for kids’ development. Just the right bit of steering at the right time in their lives is crucial at steering them in the right path.”

Van der Sar said he believed the shouts and cheers that engulfed the Jacob Schiff Field were a sign of soccer’s popularity.

“I spoke to a girl and her mother and if you see how into soccer they were, it’s so cool,” he said during his first visit to Harlem.

Jaden Pitman, 8, scored a goal as his mother looked on proudly. A pupil at PS 325, Jaden said soccer was his favorite sport. Today his team ended up on the losing side of a 2-1 match with PS 192.  When players on the winning team were asked whether they enjoyed the after-school program, they all screamed “yes.”

Nine-year-old Jose Henriques, who scored the winning goal, said he’d heard of Manchester United, though not directly of van der Sar.  But Henriques was sure of one thing: He wants to continue to play sports, especially soccer.

Prince Pieter-Christiaan admitted he has “two left feet” when it comes to soccer, but said he’d come to Harlem to celebrate “the many people who start these programs and who change lives. It’s not easy in this part of Manhattan, especially with the school dropouts, so I greatly admire them.”

Today’s event was planned to deliberately coincide with the New York City Marathon, which he and van der Sar are running in Sunday.

“The marathon weekend is one of the largest single days of physical activity in the nation, and yet it’s taking place right here in New York where many of our kids have obesity problems,” Caccamo said. “There’s a message there.”

Friday was about shining the celebrity spotlight on programs intended to tackle the stark problems many poor children face. The public school dropout rate in New York is around 35 percent, according to the Mayor’s office, and with state and federal budget cuts, the education, health and crime problems will worsen, Wills said.

“This is the time you should be increasing investment in these programs,” he said.

With their coaches watching, Team Taino players practice a proper defensive stance. After three months of basketball practice in the gym at Taino Towers, organizers plan to expand the program. (Photo by Jason Tomassini)

Conclusion of a four-part series. For previous installments, visit here.

Ikay Henry is sitting on a stage at the north end of the Taino Towers gym, leafing through a manila folder and smiling. He’s perusing 13-year-old Daquan Clarke’s math homework, several worksheets of word problems and complex fractions, adorned by near-perfect scores.

Henry has known Clarke most of his life. He coaches Clarke in Taino Towers’ embryonic youth basketball team; in the past, he’s worked at Clarke’s junior high school and at a YMCA where Clarke took acting classes. Both grew up at Taino Towers.

Henry is smiling because Clarke never used to earn grades like this; in fact, he never seemed to care about school at all.

“Just the growth that I see now is amazing,” says Henry, 28, a tall, broad man with a thin mustache.

Clarke acknowledges the transformation, too. “Before my grades were terrible,” he says at the end of practice. “Now it’s a B and up.” Clarke shrugs off the improvement, noting that he brought his homework to practice because he wants to show it to his parents later, in hopes of landing an improved Christmas bounty.

To Henry, though, that a kid would even think to show his coaches his homework means that, at least in one case, the basketball program—after a rocky start—is paying off.

It began in September after a particularly violent year at Taino Towers, a federally-subsidized apartment complex in East Harlem that houses about 3,000 residents and became the site of frequent fights between rival youth gangs over the spring and summer. Basketball, every Tuesday and Thursday in the gym beneath the complex, marks the start of a larger effort at Taino, to offer classes, leadership training and other sports like football, baseball and skiing. Some of the educational programs were supposed to begin by now in a new learning center that has been delayed, but is slated to open by the new year.

Team Taino also serves as a case study in the complexities of starting a program that targets at-risk kids in urban neighborhoods. As a holiday break approaches, its organizers are simultaneously reflecting on the impact they’ve already made and considering how to expand into the future.

“So far it has been able to maintain itself on the strength of the participants,” says William Thomas, a technology entrepreneur from Vermont who helped organize the team. “The long-term planning and financing will be a challenge.”

Aris Martin, a volunteer basketball coach, runs a drill during Team Taino’s recent practice. With more funding, Martin hopes the team can soon enter more tournaments around the city. (Photo by Jason Tomassini)

Its ambitious future plans will require money, but so far Team Taino hasn’t needed much. The gym is rent-free, reopened after being empty for years due to vandalism and misuse. Thomas and the team’s five volunteer coaches are unpaid. Basketball is a sport that requires only a hoop and a ball.

Still, for the team to survive, it needs to expand beyond Taino, the coaches say. That means tournaments, jerseys and transportation for a consistent roster of players.

“It’s about looking presentable and putting the resources together,” says Sherrod Kersey, 25, a coach from the Bronx who, like all the coaches, was a classmate of either Henry or his childhood friend Aris Martin, another team coach. “We need to look official. We go to tournaments and it’s embarrassing sometimes.”

White and gold jerseys are on the way, thanks to donations from Midtown Elevator Company and the Magic Johnson Foundation, housed in Taino Towers. Arco Management, the complex’s property manager, kicks in some money and several of Arco and Thomas’ corporate connections—the publisher of a high-end golf magazine plans to run a golf clinic; a scout from the New York Yankees has promised baseball training—have offered time and equipment.  But there’s no actual budget yet, says Thomas who, along with Taino Towers property manager Maria Cruz, handles most of the program’s financial and organizational responsibilities.

In all, the program so far has amassed “a couple thousand dollars” for an expanding roster of 40 kids aged 6 to 18 years, Thomas says, and organizers are actively looking for more money.

At a similar neighborhood program, the Children’s Aid Society’s East Harlem Center, the annual budget is about $90,000, about 80 percent of which comes from government grants, says the center’s director, David Giordano. Children’s Aid Society is larger than Taino, serving about 120 kids, but they are of comparable age and organized similarly, with younger kids there from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. and the older kids from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Like Taino, it has a basketball gym—but kids have to enroll in educational and “personal development” programs before they can play. One difference, to date, is that $90,000 gives Giordano’s kids opportunities, from traveling the country for youth conferences to participating in UPS-sponsored driving safety initiatives.

Money helps. As a boy, Henry was selected for Merrill Lynch’s Scholarship Builders, which guaranteed full tuition to any child in his first-grade class later accepted by a college. Along the way, Henry met with personal mentors, visited far-flung locales on college tours and interned on Wall Street before studying business management at Hampton University in Virginia. About 15 of the 25 students in the program attended college and 20 graduated high school, according to a 1999 report by The New York Times. In his own work—at Taino, the YMCA or his own nonprofit, Harlem Mentors—Henry knows he will never have such substantial resources.

Some funding comes with a catch, Giordano says; most grants must be used in very specific ways, often restricting his autonomy. But without resources, there’s scant incentive for volunteers and participants to stay with the program through the inevitable tribulations. “It becomes a little limited, what you can ask of people and what you can’t,” says Giordano, who has worked with teens since 1980. “When you’re paying people, that adds another level.”

But Henry insists money isn’t everything. Merrill Lynch paid Henry’s college bills but, more importantly, his mentors taught “manners and how to act,” he says. “That’s what I’m trying to do here.”

His childhood friend, Aris Martin, wasn’t involved with Scholarship Builders but did attend prestigious Rice High School along with Henry. Martin didn’t enjoy the same perks and didn’t go on to a university. However, he says what he’s learned from his mistakes—he’s now working for Arco Management and, after some initial doubts, is perhaps the most omnipresent and enthusiastic of the team’s coaches—is just as valuable to teens.

“I see them doing better than me,” he says.

There is no magic formula for starting a youth program—at a basic level, the youth workers must relate to the kids. It’s unclear whether Team Taino will do enough to have a long-term effect on children, but perhaps its most valuable capital is the goodwill building between its coaches and players.

“I see them on a daily basis so they get more out of it,” says Martin, who lives at Taino. “When they see me in the streets they pick their head up.”

And that’s what Team Taino is banking on, Thomas says. “You can have all the money in the world; if you don’t have the right people, the money won’t be utilized in the right way.” Though even with the right people, the children of East Harlem face many pitfalls.

Both Giordano and Taino Towers’ basketball coaches have found the distractions of the digital age a barrier in reaching teens. “The attention span is very small,” says Norman Anderson, a 28-year-old coach from Brooklyn. “You have to keep on reminding them and reminding them until it eventually sticks.”

On cue, Anderson stops to yell at Clarke, who tried unsuccessfully to outmaneuver an opponent in a drill, took a bad shot and missed. “If you had used the move we just taught you, you would’ve scored!” Anderson reminds him loudly. Clarke nods sheepishly.

Giordano blames the recession, which shuttered or cut back many local youth programs, for an increase in teen crime at housing projects like Taino Towers. As of mid-December, the 25th police precinct, which includes Taino Towers, has seen an increase from last year in murders and assaults and is on pace for an increase in robberies.

In school District 4, which includes East Harlem and parts of the Upper East Side, 67 percent of students graduate, compared to 74 percent statewide and 59 percent citywide.  In 2008, 35.6 percent of local families with children under 18 were living below the poverty line. It’s under those conditions when gangs become most attractive, Giordano says.

“That coach in the street they grew up with can give them something, but not everything,” Giordano says. From the child’s perspective, “if I’m not finding the security in a space or program that’s open, I find it in a crew,” Giordano continues. “There’s hierarchy and structure.”

At Taino Towers, structure developed slowly for the basketball team. Early practices suffered because its coaches didn’t show up consistently, because drills were less organized, and because misbehaving kids were allowed to disrupt practices. At one point, a tiff between a player and a coach escalated to a fight involving the player and a relative. That incident served as a wake-up call for the coaches.

Since then, the coaches have “weeded out the bad seeds,” as Kersey puts it, and focused on organizing a team, rather than wrangling disorganized loiterers looking for a pick-up game.

“You got to crawl before you can walk,” says Devin Johnson, an 18-year-old who had the potential to be one of Kersey’s “bad seeds,” but now attends every practice and helps coach the younger players. Johnson scored a team-high 18 points in Team Taino’s first game at a midtown YMCA recreation league. “At first it wasn’t really organized, but now everyone knows how to play with each other.”

Sherrod Kersey, a volunteer basketball coach, watches as a teen lays the ball in during a drill. “We need to look official,” Kersey says of the team as it looks to expand beyond twice-weekly basketball practices. (Photo by Jason Tomassini)

By the new year, Thomas vows,  a learning center and lounge will open above the Taino Towers gym, a place for team members to hang out after practice and a site for educational programs and video game tournaments. A teen theater production, run out of Taino Towers’ Red Carpet Theater, is slated to start by the end of January. In February, the teens will go on a ski trip and, in the spring, have a choice of baseball, golf and football clinics. A potential partnership with the Ron Brown Scholar Program would provide various classes, including leadership training that features Skype conferences with business leaders. These, however, still remain plans. And Cruz, the property manager, has even more planned. During a recent trip to her native Puerto Rico, she discussed bringing Team Taino down to play in a tournament there.

Meanwhile, architects have completed blueprints for a new $3 million fitness center at Taino, another space for youth programs, built around the complex’s pool. Eventually, Cruz hopes Taino Towers can be become a hub for teens in East Harlem.

Henry and his fellow basketball coaches are thinking more short-term. They want to enter Team Taino in upcoming basketball tournaments in the city. Their model is the Amateur Athletic Union, the top level of non-scholastic basketball; New York City boasts some of the best AAU teams in the nation. Besides basketball, Henry would like every Taino teen to have a mentor, just as he did. Martin wants to start a financial literacy course.

Whatever the future holds for Team Taino, its players don’t seem to think much beyond each Tuesday or Thursday, when they can play basketball with their friends and the worst consequences for a bad decision are running extra laps around the gym or watching an opponent put the ball through the net.

After all, it’s simple, Daquan Clarke says: “Everybody in this neighborhood likes basketball.”

For more information on Team Taino, visit www.tainoyouth.com or e-mail info@tainoyouth.com. For more information on Harlem Mentors, contact Ikay Henry at 347-756-0742 or visit www.harlem-mentors.org.

After more than two months of practicing against each other in the below-ground gym at Taino Towers, the East Harlem housing complex’s basketball team is finally getting its chance to size up against other teams. The team has entered a recreational league at the Vanderbilt YMCA in midtown, where its coach, Ikay Henry, works as a youth specialist.

“These kids want to play, these kids want to compete against other kids,” Henry says. “They want to show people that they’ve worked on something and that it’s actually working.”

For 18-year-old Devin Johnson, the YMCA league wasn’t just his first chance to play with Team Taino outside East Harlem, it was the first organized basketball game of his life. He made the most of it, ending up the star of the game.

“I’m playing for the team from the ‘hood,” he says. “It’s about our team.”

Next: As the program prepares to expand, what the future holds for Taino Towers’ youth

Players face off in a one-on-one drill at the Taino Towers gym in East Harlem. The program started two months ago in response to youth crime at the housing complex. (Photo by Paula Rogo)

Part Two of a series. For Part Three, visit here.

The Taino Towers housing complex in East Harlem is, in many ways, its own self-contained community. Nearly 3,000 people live in the federally-subsidized apartments of the complex’s four towers; dozens more work in its charter school, office space and retail operations. It stands tall in East Harlem, offering its residents, mostly Hispanic and African-American, beautiful views of the East River and the bustle of El Barrio.

Taino’s gym hosts a community within the community. It’s home to a nascent basketball team aimed at rehabilitating the teenage culture at Taino, after a rise in youth crime over the past year. Basketball is the bait to draw Taino boys into a broader program that could include classes in finance and graphic design, trips abroad and additional sports.

“I’m not the person who talks and talks and doesn’t do anything,” says Maria Cruz, Taino’s ubiquitous property manager and its de facto mayor. She called two town hall meetings last summer to discuss growing crime concerns; those meetings led to Team Taino.

In addition to managing the property, Cruz manages its many personalities, including those in the basketball program. About 40 boys gather in the gym Tuesday and Thursday nights. For some, their only apparent alternative is a life caught up in the street violence, gangs and other perils that plague East Harlem. At some practices fights break out; at others, heated arguments emerge between the boys and the team’s volunteer coaches. The program’s organizers—take five childhood friends in their late 20s, add a middle-aged technology entrepreneur from Vermont and stir—have found their own personalities clashing.

Team Taino coach Aris Martin directs some of the program's younger players. (Photo by Paula Rogo)

Aris and Ikay

Aris Martin and Ikay Henry, best friends since childhood, both grew up in Taino Towers and attended Harlem’s Rice High School, the renowned Catholic boys’ school and basketball powerhouse. Then their lives diverged. Henry, miraculously plucked in first grade for Merrill Lynch’s Scholarship Builders program, which guaranteed full tuition to any child accepted by a college, interned on Wall Street and went on to graduate from Hampton University in Virginia.

Martin lagged behind. “At Rice, I didn’t know how to play the right lane,” Martin says during a recent basketball practice last week. “I went left.”

He didn’t go off to a university like his friend. He now works for Arco Management, Taino’s property manager, doing maintenance work. But the boyhood friends are again equals in coaching Taino’s basketball team. Martin and Henry always wanted to start their own league and this summer’s meetings presented an opportunity.

“If we could do what we are doing full-time, we would,” Henry says. After the gym reopened, Henry and Martin recruited former classmates Norman Anderson, Sherrod Kersey and Calvin Griffin to coach.

Unlike those in school or nonprofit youth programs, these coaches already have a history with the players and their families. They also know what each boy lacks in his family life and move to fill that void, although it’s been more difficult than many thought.

“It’s a lot different being a mentor and disciplining someone than being a parent and disciplining someone,” Griffin says.

One practice ended in a minor brawl; others are disrupted by players’ back-talking and profanity. Because all five coaches work at least one job, practices have fallen victim to disorganization or couldn’t draw enough coaches to supervise 40 young, and sometimes unruly, boys. At times, both Martin and Henry have doubted whether or not to continue with the program. But after they rededicated themselves to their players’ welfare, practices became more structured and disciplined.

Of the pair, Henry chooses a more cerebral, business-minded approach. Martin is constantly on the court instructing and, like all the coaches, joins in many of the drills and scrimmages.

That can be humbling. During a mid-November practice, Martin ran a drill in which teams of two faced off against each other. As a participant, he found himself in a rivalry with one of the better young players, Solomon, who relished the opportunity to show up his coach. The boy darted out to play defense in a low crouch, ready to pounce. Everyone in the gym watched, hooting and hollering.

Not one to back down, Martin made a quick crossover dribble, jetted past the teen and strolled toward the hoop for a lay-up, already laughing. But the fleet-footed teen recovered and blocked Martin’s attempt, sending him to the floor, regaining the basketball and laying it in himself. Pandemonium. Solomon had toppled the coach. Martin got up with a smile, joined the drill against the same player and, uncharacteristically, waved his arms up and down, egging on the watching players.

“When I think about these kids, I have to think about every move I make,” Martin says. “No matter where I am I might see one of these kids.” But by letting down his guard down from time to time, Martin says, he allows the kids into his own life.

As he advises his young players on how to find a better life outside Taino Towers, Martin is still trying to achieve that for himself. For him, too, this is a learning experience.

“When I see them I don’t see myself, I see them doing better than me,” he says.

William Thomas, left, and Aris Martin, right, practice defensive stances with Team Taino's younger members. (Photo by Paula Rogo)

The Entrepreneur

A few weeks ago, William Thomas invited some of his business associates to a basketball practice at Taino. Dressed in suits and ties, the men sat around a folding table in the corner of the gym, discussing their own matters—Thomas runs a technology consulting firm; his associates were small business lenders—as the practice unfolded.

Their meeting was interrupted when one of the teen players tangled with a coach about playing time, the teen cursing him out in language not typically found in a boardroom. When a relative entered the gym to scold the kid for disrespecting a coach, the two scuffled and had to be separated by coaches.

After practice, Thomas immediately convened a discussion with the program’s coaches about how to prevent future disruptions. The following week’s practice ran without a hitch.

“I’m not a basketball coach, but I know how to manage,” says Thomas, a tall gregarious man in his late 40s, who works in the city during the week, sleeping at a friend’s place in Brooklyn and returning to his family in Vermont on the weekends.

Along with his wife, Thomas has a long history in philanthropy and community service. He had done previous work at Taino and developed a friendship with Cruz, the property manager. When he heard about the basketball program, he saw a springboard to a more comprehensive youth program, including fishing and golf lessons, ski trips, graphic design classes, a theater program for girls and Skype meetings between Taino kids and business leaders.

Most of those plans rely on Thomas’ wide business network of potential sponsors. He is establishing a board of directors for the team and working with Cruz to secure private donations. Before Christmas, he hopes to open a lounge where kids in the basketball program can hang out and use computers before and after practice.

“Even though this is being tagged as basketball, that’s not what this is about,” Thomas says.

His background contrasts with those of the team’s coaches, he admits. They represent more familiar faces to the boys.

“We want what’s best for the kids,” Henry says of Thomas. “What differentiates me is my relationship with the kids.”

But Thomas sees familiarity as a “huge benefit and asset, but I don’t think it’s necessary.” He often speaks of his efforts in grandiose terms, at times quoting Martin Luther King Jr. or overstating the risks some of the players face. “People don’t invest in themselves, because when they look in the mirror in the morning they give up,” he says. But despite his outsider status, he is intent on providing Taino’s youth with opportunities for an entirely different life than most of their parents—and coaches—have had.

“Most of the people in this room are used to fail,” Thomas said at an early practice. “If you are on East 123rd Street, you can still view the world globally.”

Ikay Henry, right, coaches Devin Johnson, left, during a game in a midtown YMCA recreation league. (Photo by Paula Rogo)

The Rookie

For his first 18 years, Devin Johnson never played in an organized basketball game. His sport of choice is football, with good reason. He is an imposing figure, not tall but broad with natural strength.

But football requires a level of investment—pads, helmets, a field, 11 players to a side—and Johnson was kicked out of his high school for reasons he won’t discuss. Basketball requires just a hoop and a ball. So Johnson is now a basketball player.

In addition to lacking basketball experience, Johnson initially didn’t show the attitude needed to stick with the team, Henry and Martin admit. But the team has given him structure, something to do besides getting caught up in the many distractions surrounding Taino.

“They take their time to come here and they don’t really get paid for it,” Johnson says of the volunteer coaches, whom he calls “role models,” men not much older than he is now.  “Whatever they do, they put it to the side to come here. They don’t do it for money, they do it because they are dedicated.”

Now Johnson is perhaps the most frequent presence in the Taino gym, never missing a session, often arriving early to help coach the younger kids that play from 5 to 6:30 p.m. He hopes to return to school and recently had a job interview to work at a grocery store.

And he’s quickly improving in basketball. On the court, he’s shown a knack for barreling toward the hoop and scoring over larger opponents. In Team Taino’s first game as part of a youth league at the Vanderbilt YMCA in midtown, Johnson went from its least experienced player to its star, at least for one game. He led all scorers with 18 points, using his strength to score around the rim when the opponent’s defense sagged.

“It was the first time I ever played basketball” in an organized setting, he says with a sudden wide smile. “After the game I wished I could go back in history and rewrite it.”

Johnson, raised at Taino, says he’s noticed a difference since the basketball team began. Around the complex, discussions that used to focus on crime now include other subjects.

“Residents around here, they ask about the game,” Johnson says.

Next: Team Taino hits the road. (VIDEO)

The boys of Taino Towers' youth basketball team watch one of their own sink a jump shot at a recent practice at the East Harlem housing complex's gym. The team formed two months ago to combat a rise in youth crime. (Photo by Jason Tomassini)

Part One of a series. For Part Two, visit here.

Midway through the most successful practice that the fledgling youth basketball program at Taino Towers has held to date, about 20 young boys are casually shooting at the gym’s two hoops, a brief respite after 90 tough minutes of running and drills. Older teenagers, arriving for their own practice session, banter courtside and pound basketballs against the floor. The gym, tucked below the hulking East Harlem subsidized housing complex, had been mostly unused for years until a group of coaches reclaimed it this fall as home court for a nascent basketball team and a haven for the neighborhood’s at-risk youth.

Ikay Henry, one of five volunteer coaches in their late 20s, greets the older players from his folding chair near the gym’s only open entrance. He knows them all by name, along with most of their parents and older brothers and sisters.

“Yo, write your name and your age,” Henry says, handing each teenager a pen and sheet of paper. Only regulars—the players with signed parental consent forms who know how to behave—are allowed in.

Before the youngsters, the six-to-13-year-olds, depart, another coach, Henry’s childhood friend Aris Martin, calls the group together for some parting advice. No talking back to coaches, he reminds them. No teasing your opponents and no showing up late. The week before, the older players’ practice had ended in a fight, followed by a candid meeting of program organizers intent on returning order to practices and imposing structure. Now, Martin emphasizes that using the gym is a privilege, an alternative to whatever awaits young boys in the streets surrounding Taino, plagued this past year by a rising tide of crime.

“Every kid here has a need,” says Henry, a 28-year-old Taino resident and de facto leader of the program’s volunteer coaches. “And they have been aggressive to one another mainly because they don’t have anything to do.”

Martin looks to dismiss the young players on a high note.

“All the kids who are under 13 are out of here, see you next week,” he says, leaning toward the clustered boys to “bring it in” for a huddle. But another coach whispers that near-teen players are allowed to practice with the older group.

“I mean, some of y’all can stay on, the rest head home,” Martin says, correcting himself sheepishly, losing some of the practice’s momentum. The smallest players head for the exit as the older group begins running warm-up laps and coaches bark that latecomers will be running extra laps today.

For the team’s five volunteer coaches, two of whom live at Taino, the past two months have been filled with exactly this juxtaposition: satisfaction when they feel they’re reaching East Harlem kids at risk, alternating with moments of doubt. Can a twice-weekly basketball practice really overcome the violence, poverty and crime that surrounds their young players every day?

Among those betting that it can is William Thomas, an entrepreneur and technology consultant from southern Vermont, whose history of philanthropic work occasionally brings him to East Harlem.  An unlikely benefactor, he’s got big plans for turning what started as afternoon pick-up games into an organized team that competes in citywide leagues and eventually the Amateur Athletic Union, the top level of non-scholastic basketball.

Along with Henry and his friends, Thomas intends to add computer classes, tutoring, financial literacy courses and community service projects. Kids who stick with the program will have adult mentors and access to big-name sponsors like BET, the Magic Johnson Foundation and the New York Yankees.

“If we can work together, we can take a city block in Harlem and make a difference,” Thomas says.

The idea is to give young boys at Taino—and eventually young girls— opportunities. But for now, organizers have encountered a prime example of how good intentions, financial backing and genuine concern can’t ensure inner-city youth programs will succeed.

“It’s the first time we’re doing this and it’s more than we’ve ever imagined,” says volunteer coach Sherrod Kersey, 25, of the Bronx. “It’s just a bunch of personalities.”

Those personalities include Henry and Martin, who grew up at Taino and attended Harlem’s Rice High School, the renowned Catholic boys’ school. Henry went on to Hampton University, the historically black college in Virginia. The other coaches, Norman Anderson, 28, Calvin Griffin, 30, and Kersey, attended either Rice or Hampton.

The basketball team, still unnamed, dates to an August town hall meeting called to address climbing crime at the complex, with its 678 apartments spread between four large towers built on East 123rd Street in 1979. The first half of this year had brought armed robberies of food deliverymen, menacing brawls between youth crews from Taino and rival housing projects, and gunfights where errant bullets shattered apartment windows and nearby storefronts. Building management increased security and shut down several entrances to the complex to allay residents’ fears.

“When I was coming up there was drug dealing, but the older crowd made sure the younger crowd stayed out of it,” says Juan Cotto, 27, a longtime Taino resident and occasional volunteer basketball coach. “The community raised the kid. You don’t have that anymore.”

Aris Martin, a Taino Towers resident and volunteer basketball coach, runs a drill at a recent practice at the housing complex's gym. (Photo by Jason Tomassini)

Henry and Martin had always wanted to start a basketball team at the Taino gym. At the August meeting, they found an unexpected ally: Taino property manager Maria Cruz had invited Thomas.  The group’s ambitious plan to transform Taino youth culture takes advantage of Thomas’ business connections and Henry’s relationships and experience with the kids.

“We didn’t sit around and ask if we could,” says Thomas, who often refers to the team as a “start-up.” “The youth were here and we did it.”

Despite its lofty goals, or perhaps because of them, the basketball program is behind schedule, its organizers admit. The volunteer coaches all work, some at more than one job. They find it difficult to get to the 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. twice-weekly practices, where as many as 40 kids are waiting in the gym to play.

Besides, Henry and Thomas acknowledge a clash in their personalities and visions, despite their good intentions. Thomas, in his late 40s, comes from a upscale background, works in the city on weekdays, staying in a Brooklyn rental*, and drives north to his family on weekends. Henry, a lifelong Taino resident who now works at a midtown YMCA, has known nearly every player personally for years.

“I came in as an outsider, ” says Thomas, a six-footer with a graying beard and an affinity for dress pants and business-casual sweaters. He speaks quickly and, in private conversation, at a volume that suggests an audience larger than one. “Ikay had the turf.”

Yet, the program’s successes to date, ironically, reflect their similarities. Both Henry and Thomas want to provide Taino’s young boys with the opportunities both enjoyed during their own childhoods. In Thomas’ case, that means the mainstays of a prosperous childhood: access to computers, privileged sports like skiing and golf and a stable home life.

In Henry’s case, it’s the opportunity to get out of Taino. As a first grader, he was enrolled in Merrill Lynch’s Scholarship Builders program, which guaranteed full tuition to any child in the class accepted by a college. Along the way, Henry met with a personal mentor, traveled the country on college tours and interned on Wall Street before studying business management at Hampton. Laid off from a city job during the recent budget cuts, he co-founded a nonprofit organization, Harlem Mentors.

Now Henry, about six-foot-three and burly with a soft voice that grows forceful when interacting with players, wants to return the favor.  “I want to be that influence in the community,” he says.

Sherrod Kersey (left, in white), Aris Martin (center, in black) and Norman Anderson (right, with basketball) address the youngest Taino players at the end of a recent practice. (Photo by Jason Tomassini)

Launching the team has taxed its organizers.  At times, the team benefits from Henry’s and Thomas’ business acumen, but it’s far from a business. In mid-November, after a particularly unruly practice, Thomas and the five volunteer coaches held an impromptu meeting in the back of the gym.

That evening, after a teenager who made a mistake had been told to run laps, he informed coaches he’d injured his toe. But 15 minutes later, with a spirited five-on-five scrimmage underway, the kid wanted back in the game.

“You just said your toe hurt!” Norman Anderson, one of the coaches, argued from the sidelines.

“I’m cool, man, let me back in,” the teen demanded.

“You can’t be too hurt to run but good enough to play in the game.”

“Man, suck my dick!” the teen shot back, stomping away. Incensed, Anderson was about to follow until Kersey intervened.

Word of the altercation spread quickly. Twenty minutes later, as practice came to a close, a big man in his 30s bounded into the gym — the kid’s relative, on hand to scold him for disrespecting a coach.

When the boy yelled the same insult, his relative grabbed the boy’s shirt and pushed him back towards the nearby wall. The teen fell into a group of plastic chairs.

The teen got off the floor and charged, while the coaches got between them and directed both toward the gym exit.

Afterwards, Thomas, Henry and the other coaches decided to better enforce practice schedules and allow only registered players, who must carry identification cards, to enter the gym. So far, it’s worked: This practice ran flawlessly, with the highest level of full-court play since the team formed.

Several top players were rewarded for this. The following week, as the best of the older players entered the gym, Henry quietly invited them to join a weekly league at the midtown YMCA where he works. It will be their first taste of outside competition since the team formed two months ago and the first step toward Taino’s reaching higher levels of play.

Despite the intervening turmoil, the organizers can see incipient signs of progress. Devon Thomas, Taino Towers’ head of security, says the fall and winter have seen far fewer violent incidents than the treacherous spring and summer months—though a mid-October shooting between rival youth crews, in which no one was hurt, marred that record.

“There are a lot of bad influences, but a lot of kids, once they’re here, I see a big difference. There’s more peace of mind,” says Marilyn Castro. Her 12-year-old son, Justin Rivera, complained in early October he only came to basketball practices because his mother made him; he had no interest in taking classes, even if they were required to play sports. Now, Justin shows up for nearly every practice and has become one of the stronger young players.

“I don’t got nothing to do at home except stay upstairs,” Rivera says.

Ikay Henry, left, consoles Mikey Estrada after he stomped off the court during a scrimmage. "I listen to him more than other people," Estrada says of Henry. (Photo by Jason Tomassini)

At the most recent practice, Mikey Estrada, a lanky, fleet-footed eighth-grader with a knack for scoring around the hoop, stomped off the court during a scrimmage, cursing and claiming his opponents were fouling him too much. “They kept hitting me, but you aren’t supposed to call fouls,” Mikey later explained, lamenting the hard-line “street rules” used at practice. Henry intercepted him before the other players noticed the disruption and took him to an empty corner of the gym. His large hand on Mikey’s shoulder, he quietly calmed him down.

Minutes later, casually chatting with friends on the sidelines and waiting to play in the next full-court game, Mikey had put his tantrum aside. At least on this day, in this gym, he was a more patient and thoughtful Mikey.

“It makes me tougher,” he said of the fouls. As for Henry: “He’s a good friend. I listen to him more than other people.”

*An earlier version of this story misstated where Thomas stays while working in New York City.

Next in Team Taino: Players, Mentors and an Entrepreneur

For more information on Harlem Mentors, contact Ikay Henry at 347-756-0742 or visit www.harlem-mentors.org.

For more information about the Taino Towers youth program, e-mail tainoyouth@yahoo.com or call 347-871-6679.

Twenty-four laps around the P.S. 102 gym in East Harlem add up to a mile. Physical education teacher Steven Sloan makes his fifth graders run 25 laps.

“You tell ‘em to jog,” Sloan says, “and they just want to run, fast. They like to run all out.”

His regimen, which he admits is tough, has led P.S. 102 to the top ranks of New York Road Runners’ Mighty Milers youth program. Its 300-plus students together ran more than 50,000 miles last year.

“Here at P.S. 102, the kids really very quickly build up to where they are running a mile and sometimes more than a mile a day,” says Cliff Sperber, executive director of youth programs at New York Road Runners, at a recent event honoring the students. “It’s very impressive.”

In class, Sloan, 55, calls his students by pet names, like “Puff Cheeks,” “Muhammad Ali,” “Vanilla Smoothie” and “Hot Salsa.” He has his stars, the natural athletes who have come to love running under his tutelage. But just as important to him are the ones who come along when it’s not so easy.

Gloria Cruz, “Puff Cheeks,” counts herself among the latter; like many youth in East Harlem, she has asthma. In 2008, the disease sent 11 of every 1,000 neighborhood children to hospitals; in August, the city health department opened a youth asthma center aimed at halving that number.

The demands of gym class helped Gloria get healthier and more fit. Her homework, like her classmates’, is to run a mile a day, seven days a week. Regular instruction from Sloan has also helped Gloria and her mother manage her condition better, leading to fewer hospital visits.

For Gloria and her mother, Maria Santana, weekend walks from their Manhattan Avenue apartment to the school on Second Avenue used to take an hour and a half.

“Now it only takes us 40 or 45 minutes,” says Santana.

Steven "Superstar" Sloan, physical education teacher at P.S. 102 in East Harlem, chats with 5th-grade students Stephanie Azalo (center) and Darlene Salas (right), before a warm-up jog. (Photo by Jason Alcorn)

Sloan also must combat child obesity, another major issue facing Harlem youth. More than 46 percent of children between kindergarten and eighth-grade in East Harlem are obese or overweight, compared to 40 percent citywide, according to Department of Education statistics. The school serves a predominantly Hispanic student body; 96 percent have low enough household income to qualify for free lunches.

Sloan teaches his students to eat more healthily. Pizza, McDonald’s and Burger King have turned into “chicken, rice and healthy stuff,” as fifth-grader Darlene Salas puts it.

“Before I was here I used to eat a lot of junk food,” says Mohamed Yusef, a fifth-grader. “But now that I’m here I eat more healthy food and less junk food and I jog around the Jefferson Park track” across the street from the school.

Fifth-grader Melissa Lopez puts it more bluntly. “I know no one wants to be fat,” she says. “When you’re fat you can’t run anymore.”

In order to reach the students, Sloan takes a hard-line approach–one that, in the past, discomfited school administrators and teachers because he aggressively held parents accountable for students’ performance, he says.

Because of budget cuts, New York City’s public schools are producing fewer high-caliber athletes, Sloan says, and his old-school approach is meant to overcome those reductions. In class, his demeanor vacillates from playful to stern–if he feels the students are cutting corners.

“You’re out of breath because you didn’t do nothing this weekend,” Sloan shouts during a recent Monday morning gym class, as students slow their pace, doubling over, hands creeping toward their knees. “Unbelievable! It’s called that l-a-z-y word again. L-a-z-y: spells lazy.” The pace quickly picks up.

Since P.S. 102 principal Sandra Gittens approached Sloan seven years ago with the opportunity to join Mighty Milers, he’s had, as he puts it, “a happy marriage” with the school.

Last school year, over 10,000 students at 57 schools north of 96th Street in Manhattan participated in Mighty Milers or Young Runners, another New York Road Runners program.

“It’s great to teach kids a sport for life, very inexpensive, very accessible,” says Sperber, of New York Road Runners. “Running is that sport.”

New York City Marathon wheelchair athletes and runners hit the homestretch of the race outside Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem on Sunday. Fans lined Fifth Avenue and Mt. Morris Park West at mile 22 of the race on a bright but chilly day, encouraging participants with banners, thunder sticks, clappers and shouts.

Kappa IV students warm up before their first match. (Photo by Nate Rawlings)

In Harlem, basketball and football are the most popular sports. But at Kappa IV, a public middle school at St. Nicholas and 135th Street, wrestling is gaining traction. The afterschool classes started a month ago, when an organization called Beat the Streets teamed up with Jets of Harlem, the youth football league. Sonal Shah reports from Kappa IV. (Click play below to hear more.)

Dominican baseball fans flock to restaurants in Washington Heights on game nights to watch their sports heroes play. La Caridad, shown, is located at 2184 Amsterdam Ave. (Photo by Shane Snow)

Consider the places in Manhattan where contentious foreigners can set aside their differences and sit down together for a common cause. One is 3 United Nations Plaza, where the pursuits include diplomacy and human rights. A lesser known spot is La Caridad Restaurant at 168th and Amsterdam, where the common causes are beer and baseball, at least every time the Dominican heroes of the Yankees or the Red Sox are on the field.

Two camareras (waitresses) in gold embroidered red shirts of two baristas serve Coronas to the 20 men staring at the flat screens in the corners. Golden brews share table space with bowls of peanuts and tall glasses of morir soñando, a Dominican drink made from orange juice cut with milk. Pink fluorescent lights cast a rosy hue on the brick facade above the bar; mirrored walls make a full-capacity La Caridad appear twice as large as it is.

It’s a Friday night, and the Yankees, just a few days after securing a playoff berth, are squaring off against hated Boston at Yankee Stadium. La Caridad’s patrons sit glued to the game.

Trilling bachata plays in the background, interrupted by jubilant screams of “Ai!” and equally fanatical shouts of “No!” A-Rod has just hit a two-run homer in the third inning, breaking the Yankee’s stadium record of 126 home runs, according to STATS LLC.

Fans come almost every time their teams are playing, says Joanny de Jesus, a La Caridad employee.

“In they day they don’t come, not so much,” de Jesus says in mingled Spanish and English. But at night, especially during the playoffs, regulars swarm in to watch Dominican heroes like Alex Rodriguez and Pedro Martinez break bats and steal bases.

“We’re born and raised with baseball,” Fabio Hernandez explains in Spanish, slouching in a wooden chair in the corner, sipping his Corona. “From childhood all we Dominicans participate.”

Washington Heights, home to a large Dominican immigrant population, has produced a number of famous major and minor league baseball players, including Dodgers star Manny Rodriguez and Yankees power hitter Alex Rodriguez. But the spectators at La Caridad aren’t just interested in neighborhood sons; they love Robinson Cano, Vladimir Carrero, David Ortiz and anyone else with roots from the Dominican Republic, says Angel Colon.

Colon, fresh from his finance job downtown, sports a pinstripe suit and sits next to Ramon Neri, a former boxer who says his favorite is Mets shortstop Jose Reyes, another acclaimed player from the DR.

Being paisanos (countrymen) doesn’t make everyone in the neighborhood friends, but the games seem to bring people together, Colon says.

“There’s a lot of people here that don’t like each other,” says Colon. “They don’t get along, but they sit at the same table. And the minute the game is over it’s like whoosh – everybody just leaves.”

With David “Big Papi” Ortiz slugging for the Red Sox and A-Rod crushing homers for the Yankees, it’s not hard to see the division in this crowd, which mostly watches the game in silence until a big play. During commercials, the men talk and jeer at each other, but settle back into rapt attention when play resumes.

The Yankees win 9-5. The crowd gets up with one last exultation or mumble of chagrin, and leaves. They’ll be back again Friday to see the Yankees versus the Angels in game one of the American League Championship Series.