Still Pitching (3 page)

But at home Hymie was restless and impatient. Sometimes he'd get up from dinner to call Sam or Ralph to check the latest racing information. Or he'd listen to the sports news on the radio to find out the results from the afternoon card at The Big A. Still, when my mother scolded him for not being around often enough, he neither argued nor defended himself. He'd acknowledge that she was right, and he'd apologize. Then a day or two later, he'd bring her flowers and take her out to dinner and the track—just as if she was his date.

When Hymie took me to the track, I loved watching how excited he and his cronies would become when a horse they'd spent days researching, studying, and inquiring about, won a race. It was as if they'd accomplished something significant. And given their otherwise mundane lives and jobs, who could begrudge them those brief moments of fulfillment? Isn't that what we all yearn for?

Then there were the aesthetics. I'd listen with rapt attention when my grandfather would describe to me how he loved watching a thoroughbred racing at full speed—muscles taut, tail whipping in the wind, outstretched legs seeming to float above the brown clay. Who but an aficionado would describe that scene in such passionate, reverent detail? It was as if he was talking about a work of art.

Another reason that Hymie was so driven to pursue his racing pleasures was, I believe, because of a midlife bout with tuberculosis. When he was in his early forties, the doctors removed a diseased lung and told him that if he wanted to live more than another five years, he would have to quit smoking and chasing the horses. To my grandfather, it was a worse punishment than the diagnosis. So he made the only compromises his temperament would allow: in place of the stogies he started smoking Tipperillos, and for six months he skipped the trotters and went only to the flats in the afternoon. But as soon as he could convince my grandmother he was healthy, Hymie was back at the pharmacy in the mornings and doing his usual double shift at the tracks.

Anyone looking for a cautionary tale here will be disappointed; my grandfather lived this way for the next thirty years. He died, appropriately enough, at Roosevelt Raceway. It was a sudden heart attack, and he went quickly. When the medics found him, he had four winning tickets in his shirt pocket.

If you grew up in New York City
between 1947 and 1957, you were witness to a period that sportswriters and baseball historians still refer to as the golden age of New York baseball. That reign began with the Dodgers signing of Jackie Robinson, the first Negro ball player in the major leagues, and it ended with another first—the Dodgers' and Giants' migrations to Los Angeles and San Francisco in 1957.

What's most remarkable about those years is that at least one, and most often two, of the three New York teams—the Yankees, Dodgers, and Giants—appeared in the World Series. This streak was interrupted only by the Cleveland Indians—Boston Braves Series in 1948. Even more extraordinary is that from 1947 until 1957 the three New York teams won a total of nine world championships. The Yankees won seven of the eight World Series they appeared in, the Giants won one of their two appearances, and the Dodgers won a single championship along with six National League pennants. All of the city's newspapers—and there were more than a half dozen dailies back then—routinely referred to the World Series as the Subway Series.

My parents, and it seemed
most of the men and women of their generation, rooted for the Giants. On hot summer nights they'd sit with our neighbors out on the front stoop, swatting mosquitoes, sipping coffee or beer, and listening to Russ Hodges and Ernie Harwell broadcast the games. Every so often, something one of the announcers said would trip off a memory. Then my dad and Mr. Creelman, the police detective from down the street, would start reminiscing about the great Giant teams of the twenties and thirties. Mostly, they'd boast about their Hall of Famers: Frankie Frisch, Bill Terry, John McGraw, Carl Hubbell, Mel Ott. I was envious that they'd actually seen these players in person.

If my father's friends were Giant rooters, most of the guys in the neighborhood clique and the rich kids from Neponsit were Yankee fans. When they weren't playing ball at recess, they'd smugly invoke their team's immortals—Babe Ruth, Lefty Gomez, Lou Gehrig, and Joe DiMaggio—as if they'd actually grown up with those players. They'd lord it over everyone in the schoolyard that their Bronx Bombers, their Yankees were “becoming a dynasty.”

That kind of gamesmanship was de rigueur. Bragging rights were important currency in the schoolyard. One time, I heard Frank Pearlman ragging on poor Sherman Carlson for being a Brooklyn Dodger fan. Sherman was one of those guys who was always getting picked on. He was a math brain, a slight skinny kid with bad skin and horn-rimmed glasses. Every day, he wore rumpled brown corduroys with a slide rule attached to his belt. He was a walking target for mean-spirited jerks like Pearlman.

“Why do you root for such a loser team?” Frank taunted. “It makes you a loser too.”

“The Yankees are lucky,” Sherman shot back. “And, they have more money than the other teams.”

I was surprised by his comeback. And I was glad to see him fight back. Just when I thought the dispute was over, Sherman launched into a passionate monologue about Jackie Robinson breaking the color line, and Duke Snider being the best center fielder in the city—maybe even the whole universe. By the time he was done, Sherman was red in the face.

I'd always thought of this kid as somewhat of a loser. But I found myself admiring his passion and fierce defense of this much maligned baseball team. That's when I asked my father if he'd take me along with him to one of his Sunday softball games.

In real life, most of my father's
teammates lived pretty ordinary lives. They had families and respectable jobs. Some were salesmen like my father, while others worked for banks, insurance agencies, and firms in the city. But when they put their uniforms on, they were transformed into ball players, guys who razzed each other and shouted obscenities at the opposing team, who yelled stuff like “attaway to go” and patted each other on the back and said “great play” or “good hit.”

I was captivated by how intense and animated those grown-ups were—my father included. It was only pickup ball, but they played with such determination. They argued with the umps when calls went against them, and they bickered with each other about strategy decisions and “what ifs.” But as soon as the games were over, they'd head for Johnny's Bar and Grill on 129th where they'd replay the highlights and mistakes over a few beers.

I especially loved watching my father play. He seemed so alive, so vibrant when he was out on the field. It was the only time I'd ever seen that side of him. Sometimes he'd get so caught up in the game that he'd barely remember he'd brought me with him. I'd have to reach up and tug on his jersey just to remind him I was still there.

At first I felt privileged just to be on the fringe of this inner sanctum. It was like being at the track with my grandfather. Was there anything, I wondered, that could ever absorb me the way horse racing engaged my grandfather—and the way baseball excited my father?

Once I began to take an interest
in the game, baseball became the common ground between the two of us. Whenever I rode with him to his Manhattan office, my father would tell me stories about his old ball playing days. I remember how exuberant he'd get when he reminisced about playing shortstop for George Washington High. One of his teammates, he said, was Lou Gehrig, the Yankee Hall of Famer. My father's voice rose whenever he invoked Gehrig's name. He'd talk about how badly he too wanted to go to Columbia and play ball, just like Gehrig did.

But college wasn't an option. His family, first generation Polish immigrants, couldn't afford it. Nor was it part of the family ethic. Instead, he worked in his father's tailor shop and played semi-pro ball on weekends. That was before he became a traveling salesman, married my mother, and started a family.

My father's biggest regrets, he once told me, were that he never got to fight in World War Two, never went to college, and didn't get to pursue his dream of playing baseball.

To compensate for the loss of his baseball dreams, he began to educate me about the game. Sometimes on weekends, he'd take me up to the Polo Grounds to watch the Giants play. He taught me how to keep score, and he kept pointing out nuances and strategies: how infielders and outfielders positioned themselves differently for left-and right-handed hitters, when a bunt or steal or a hit-and-run were imminent, what kinds of pitches would exploit a given hitter's tendencies, and so on.

I caught on fast. The “inner game” appealed to me. And I was also impressed by my father's insider's knowledge of baseball. He was as much of an aficionado about this game as my grandfather was about the horses.

Once, he took me to see the Giants play their hated rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers—the same Dodgers that Sherman was so eloquently defending that day in the school yard. I was immediately drawn to them—especially to Jackie Robinson, their Negro second baseman. He was like a lightening rod. He played with such reckless abandon that it seemed to energize the entire ball club. The whole team, in fact, played with a kind of furious intensity—as if they had something urgent to prove.

I was beginning to understand why these scrappy, spirited Dodgers made the more businesslike Yankee fans and lordly Giant fans feel so uneasy. This was a team I wanted to learn more about.

My love affair with the Dodgers
began in earnest in the spring of 1950, just before I turned ten. As soon as school let out, I started spending my days in the public library reading books about the Dodgers, biographies of Dodger greats, popular coffee table books like
Big Time Baseball
, and standard reference books like
The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball
.

As far back as the ‘20s, the Dodgers—whose nickname was “Dem Bums,” and whose slogan was “Wait till next year”—were characterized, even by their own fans, as perpetual also-rans. The most famous chapter in the team's mythology would of course become the pennant race of 1951, when they blew a thirteen-and-a-half-game mid-August lead and lost the final playoff game to the Giants on Bobby Thomson's “shot heard ‘round the world.”

But even before that collapse, the Dodger legacy featured antiheroes like Mickey Owen, whose ninth inning, two-out passed ball against the Yankees was the turning point in the team's loss of the 1941 World Series. Then there was George “Babe” Herman, who had the ignominious distinction of winding up on third base with two other teammates. The same Babe Herman got hit in the head trying to catch a routine fly ball. These were guys I could identify with.

The team's fortunes changed drastically in the late 1940s, when they signed Jackie Robinson, the first Negro to break the major league's color barrier. Had it not been for the great Yankee teams of the ‘50s, the Dodgers would have been the best team in baseball. The truth is that the Dodgers were a team of highly skilled players that happened to flourish at the same time as the great Yankee teams and fine Giant teams of that era. They were so resilient. No matter how many times they lost the pennant or World Series, they'd be right back in the race the next season.

The Dodgers' luckless history and its star player Jackie Robinson's determination and tenacity were irresistible attractions for a kid who already saw himself as a congenital underdog and outsider—always persevering, always having to prove himself to others.

It wasn't long before
I became an aficionado. By mid July, I was reading the sports pages religiously each day—a first for me. And for the entire 1950 season, I followed Robinson's and the Dodgers' exploits via radio broadcasts of their games.

Part of the mystery and allure of baseball was learning the language of the game. Understanding the lingo—that hip vernacular—made me feel like I was an insider. At night, I'd listen late through the red plastic Philco's crackling static to Red Barber and Connie Desmond broadcasting Dodger road games from Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis—the exotic western cities that lie beyond the Hudson. From “the catbird seat” high above the diamond, the Alabama redhead would sigh “ohhh doctor” and inform us in his smooth drawl that when Duke Snider camps under a lazy fly ball “it's an easy can of corn.” When we were beating Cincinnati by five runs in the ninth, Red would say that we've got the Redlegs “sewed up in a crocus sack.” After the eighth place Cubbies beat us, Red's recap informed us that we lost it in a “squeaker.” And when Cardinal lefty Howie Pollett threw a bean ball at Jackie Robinson's head, Red described the bench clearing brawl as “an old-fashioned rhubarb.” My favorite Barbarism was his description of those games when the Dodgers were beating up on their opponents. That's when he'd announce that “the Brooklyns are tearin' up the old pea patch.”

That same summer, I invented board and street games that revolved around the Dodgers. I also began to learn more about the other major league teams. I read the sports pages in the New York papers as well as old yearbooks and programs. I collected Topps and Bowman bubble gum cards and stashed them in cigar boxes under my bed. I subscribed to
The Sporting News
, the Bible of the sports world. By mid season, I knew the uniform numbers, bios, and batting averages of everyone on all three New York teams. And, of course, I'd memorized every piece of trivia I could uncover about the Dodgers.

By the end of the summer, I'd become an expert, a walking encyclopedia of information about the Dodgers and their legacy, and about baseball lore in general. A whole new world, it seemed, was beginning to open up. In less than two months, I'd gone from being a curious observer to a baseball fanatic.

As soon as fifth grade was out, I begged my father to take me to Ebbets Field. But he was already scheduled to be on the road for the entire month of June. So in early July, just after I turned ten, he gave me permission to accompany Heshy, Kenny, Billy, and Ira—neighborhood boys, all of whom were a year older than I was.