Broad Street Billy: Loving baseball keeps a family together

DURING THESE DARK days for diehards, the five Kosoy cousins - native Philadelphians who have gathered at Phillies spring training in Clearwater, Fla., for 20 years - remind us why we love our Fightin's and the game of baseball:

AVRUM'S LEGACY: "Our family gathered every Sunday at my grandfather Avrum Kosoy's house on Columbia Avenue in what was once left field of Columbia Park, where the Philadelphia A's played from 1901 to 1908 before moving to Shibe Park," said Joel Cassway, 67.

"Baseball was always a hot topic of conversation at the Sunday dinner table," he said.

Cassway's cousin, Jerrold Casway, 67, a college history professor in Maryland, wrote a biography of Ed "King of Swatsville" Delahanty, a Hall of Fame 19th-century Phillies outfielder who died mysteriously in Niagara Falls.

"My dad introduced the game to me around the breakfast table, explaining the morning scores," Casway wrote in the preface.

"The names and numbers were brought to life by voices carried over summer-evening radio broadcasts and by the flickering black-and-white images on a small round television screen. The game was taught after dinner by my father in front of our small rowhouse on a narrow city street."

CRYING IN BASEBALL: Joel Cassway said he is "not ashamed to say that when I first read those words, tears came to my eyes" because they also ring true for him; his brother Robert, a Philadelphia architect, and cousins Jack Weisman, 81, who played Santa Claus in Philadelphia's Thanksgiving Day Parade for many years, and Howard Casway, 65, an assistant attorney general in Virginia.

All five Kosoy cousins - none of whom are named Kosoy because an immigration officer "Americanized" their names to Cassway and Casway - have kept the childhood bonds formed at their grandfather Avrum Kosoy's Sunday dinners alive by honoring his lifelong passion: Philadelphia baseball.

LIVE FROM GAME 5: Harry Kiehl, 71, of Norristown, a Phillies fan since the 1950s Whiz Kids, stood in the left field upper deck last night as Game 5 began, thrilled to be watching his first World Series game at the ballpark.

His grandson, Anthony Milillo, 28, of Blue Bell, bravely resisted the pressure of his Phillies' fan pals and took his grandfather to the do-or-die game.

"It took me a whole lifetime to get to my first World Series game last year," Milillo said. "I wanted to take my grandfather to his first one because you never know when this will happen again."

Kiehl has loved the Phillies through thick and thin because "they never give up and we never give up on them. We're fans forever."

He made an exception for struggling Phillies pitcher Cole Hamels.

"We fans never say we can't wait to get out of here," Kiehl said with a twinkle in his eye. "Cole Hamels said he can't wait for the season to end. Well, I'm Harry Kiehl - a nobody. And this nobody wants to know what he meant by that remark."

"I've never heard my grandfather talk like this," Milillo said. "He's usually pretty quiet."

"My first World Series game," Kiehl said, smiling, taking it all in. "This is a once in a lifetime night for me. Life is good."

FIRST GAME EVER: Warren Knights, 65, of East Oak Lane, wearing a Cliff Lee Phillies jersey, sat with his friend of 10 years, Jarrad Teller, 36, of Wayne, and said that thanks to Teller inviting him, he was watching his first baseball game ever at a ballpark.

"Growing up around 19th and Columbia back in the day, there weren't any African-American players like Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins on the Phillies," said Knights, who is African-American. "So I was never interested in the Phillies. I was always an Eagles fan."

By the fourth inning last night, Knights said his 65-year outlook had dramatically changed.

"This is my house!" he exclaimed as the crowd went crazy over the Phillies 5-1 start. "This is my home! These are my people! I have a whole new lease on life!"