There might not be anything that screams to the allure of nostalgia more than the gathering of those who lived special moments together in a far distant past.

Sure, the pin-point accuracy of the details might get lost over the course of a half-century or more, but the passion always lives on.

Reminiscing at a Garson watering hole earlier this week, a quartet of Garson Braves baseball men – Dave Gobbo, Eddie Gascon, Loria Dupuis and Jack MacLellan – recalled just one of the sports that they loved in their youth, but one which produced no less than three midget championships in the Nickel District League in the late fifties.

“As kids, we just played baseball all day,” said Gobbo. “We organized it ourselves. We would just get a bunch of guys together and all we had to do was find a ball field – and we would play.”

Even ball fields were optional in the days that preceded league play.

“We started playing ball young, even in our backyards on Wilbur Street where George Armstrong used to live,” said Dupuis, the slugger of the crew, blasting four home runs in a single game on one occasion. “We would play in the backyards, break some windows - and then we had to get out of there.”

“But then we played in the field near the highway, by the little lake and we would hit the cars driving by on the highway.”

When it came to finding a place to play, it certainly didn’t hurt matters that they carried around their own personal grounds crew. “When we had a ball game at night, Jack and I and about four other guys would go to the field with rakes and shovels,” said Dupuis. “We would rake the whole field, put the lines on around home plate at the old O’Neil Park.”

Well before the years that produced an 8-7 title win over the Lively Tigers in 1958 and a more lopsided 14-2 verdict over the same opponent the following summer (those scores were taken from the two newspaper clippings on hand which legitimized the tales being told), the Garson lads found a way to create a competition with not much more than a ball and a bat on hand.

“Before the leagues, after school, we would go out and play scrub or pepper ball,” noted catcher Eddie Gascon. “It was a daily thing; we looked forward to it so much.”

To be sure, there was little that could stand in the way of a ball game for these gents and their friends. “It was baseball for breakfast, lunch and dinner,” stated MacLellan, dubbed “Stan the Man” with this crew by legendary pitcher Chi Chi Farenzena, the man who typically created the nicknames that stuck.

“My mother used to tell us not to eat so fast, that the ballfield will still be there, even after our meals.”

While it was the quartet that gathered along with fellow Garson mainstay George Simard (heavily involved with the construction of Lorne Brady diamond – but not a member of this particular Braves team), countless were the names that came up during the hour-long mix of stories and laughter.

Under coach Joe Protulipac, the Braves first captured the Star Trophy in 1956 but it was with coach Rolly Gosselin at the helm that the Garson reps squeaked by Lively two years later, courtesy of a game-winning hit from Johnny McKinnon.

Sporting a 12-3 record on the mound in the regular season, Farenzena picked up his sixth victory of the playoffs in the title game, effectively spreading out the ten hits he surrendered to help keep his team in the game.

“Chi Chi was a good pitcher, just really consistent - but Johnny Caesar was the toughest pitcher to handle, a left-hander with a wicked fastball,” recalled Gascon, the man behind the plate and yet another from the area who would be coined as “The Chief”, this from Farenzena and based on the guiding role that catchers always seemed to play.

“You don’t plan things like that,” said Gascon of his position as the receiver of each and every pitch. “But at catcher, you’ve always got something to do. It’s not like the outfield where sometimes you might just be sitting and waiting.”

Still, it was Caesar who limited the Tigers to just five hits as the Braves garnered their third crown in 1959, striking out four and not allowing a runner to cross the plate until the final inning. At the plate, Garson could boast an array of weapons, from Don Malette who cracked the longest hit with a two run triple and on to Richard Koslowski, Hank Armstrong, MacLellan and Dupuis, all of whom smacked two-baggers.

Acknowledged by those on hand as likely the most talented ball player in the group, Dupuis excelled at shortstop and with the bat despite his 5’6” stature – which might be generous.

“I had pretty good strength in my arms and legs, especially my legs,” he said. “I always played shortstop. You had to cover a lot of the field and have a good strong arm. Coach Protulipac put me there when I was 11 or 12 years old.”

It wasn’t long into the sixties when the run would come to an end, through no fault of the team to beat. “We were practicing at the Greyhounds field (became Inco Field near the mine in Garson) and that’s when we were told the league was folding,” Gascon explained. “It was a sad day – but after that, we all got into fastball.”

“But in fastball, the ball comes at you quicker,” offered Gobbo with a laugh. “You had to react quicker.”

The bantering back and forth is likely as lively today as it was six decades ago. To a man, this group of 81 year-olds pointed to the closeness of the group as the key to victory way back when.

“We were good comrades; we got along so well together,” said Dupuis. “We practiced a lot and a lot of the teams didn’t practice.”

“It was just so special growing up in Garson, being close to all of the guys,” added MacLellan.

“It was like a little dream come true” – and there’s not a whole lot that is much more nostalgic than that.