b"there. I asked the kids why they didnt play in the park across thestreet, the Five Diamond Park. They said no one wanted to coachthem. I had played semipro football with the Black Hawks inBrooklyn years before, so I said I would.The team was called the Falcons. We started out with 30 or40 kids. We had nothing. Some of the kids didnt even have football shoes, never mind uniforms. Their parents were poor and didnt have extra money for those things.Heres where the union, Local 237, comes in. Like I said, we had nothing. A nice Project man, a maintenance worker at Team members hold their trophiesBreukelen Houses, a business agent, Tom Abruzzo, said, Spicer,why dont you go see the union president, Barry Feinstein?I said, why would one of the biggest labor leaders in the state want to see me? He said I should try, so I called Barry.He told me to come down to the office. I did, I sat down and I told him about the team, that we wanted to play in theleague (it was the Narrows Channel Civic Association Football League) but we had no uniforms, we had nothing. The onlything Barry said when I finished was, How can we help? What do you want us to do?I said, We need uniforms. Barry said, Im going to give you money for uniforms every year until you stop. Theunion did it for 16 years. We started in 1970 and continued until 1986. We also had cheerleaders, and the union put outmoney for our cheerleading teams, too.The kids were all from public housing, from Breukelen,Brownsville, Pink, Bay View, and Glenwood Houses. Some ofthem walked a pretty far distance. We practiced four days a weekand played once a week from August to December. Anyone whowanted to could try out for the team. We had about 45 kids everyyear, from ages 11 to 13. I gave every kid a chance to play in everygame. Everyone gets to play, I said. Theyre not there to be pros,theyre there to enjoy themselves and to learn how to be part of ateam. We didnt have to winbut we did.We won 15 championships in the League. We played in James Spicer's Little League Football Teamevery championship game for 16 years and only lost once, in1975, to a team in Harlem, the Harlem Chargers. We played against the Pop Warner Football League and the BuddyYoung Football League. We represented the Triborough Football League in Downing Stadium.One year the Daily News gave a trophy for the All-League Championship, and we gave it to Barry. I came to the officewith eight kids, in uniform. We went to Barrys office. He was surprised, and very gracious. He told the boys,Youre doinga great job, keep it up, the Teamsters are proud of you.A lot of children who played on our team now work for the Housing Authority and are members of Local 237. One ofthe young men who played against my team later worked for me as an HPT; hes still thereRobinson. Lisa Desheer, oneof our cheerleaders, is a borough coordinator in Queens for NYCHA. We also have firefighters and police officers. One of119 "