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. (source: Daily News)
