Baseball Memories

It’s that wonderful time of the year again.

I don’t know about you, but my love for baseball seems to get stronger as I get older. I think a part of it is the way baseball honors its own history.

With that notion in mind, here are some brief personal vignettes related to that great game from the last six decades. Hope you enjoy them!

The 1950’s

It must have been about 1953. I was nine years old.

My Dad was taking me to my first real baseball game at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. The Dodgers were playing the St. Louis Cardinals and I will never forget my father pointing out the players on the field throwing the ball around the infield just prior to the first pitch.

“There’s Gil Hodges,” he’d say, “and Pee Wee and Jackie.”

It was magical.

Like most first-timers, I’d been blown away by the greenness of the outfield grass and the aura of the stadium, the sound of the crowd. Before this, everything had been black-and-white images on a second-rate Admiral television set with a small, flickering screen.

I remember only chunks of the game – fleeting impressions – after the passage of 70 years: Stan “The Man” Musial coming to bat and my father’s obvious respect for him as a player; Red Schoendienst ?- good player, impossible name; the great Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges. I would play first base in Little League with visions of Hodges in my 10-year-old mind.

There would be other days – and nights – at the old ballpark on Bedford Avenue, but the first time was the one with the magic.

The 1960’s

I remember standing out on Madison Avenue on October 16, 1969, in the aftermath of the Mets taking the World Series from the Baltimore Orioles in a shower of confetti and shredded media schedules raining down from the windows of 347 Madison Avenue. I was employed at the time by Dancer, Fitzgerald, Sample, one of those old “Mad Men” advertising agencies of the 1960s.

A full sheet (probably featuring a spot tv schedule for Hartford) landed at my feet and – on a whim – I fashioned it into a paper airplane and threw it into the street. It flew right in the open window of a passing taxi. The taxi had to stop for the light at 45th Street and I can remember the female passenger waving the paper plane out the window at us with a big smile on her face.

I had gotten out of the Army that summer and only a few weeks later had watched Tom Seaver come close to a no-hitter against the Cubs. A utility player named Jimmy Qualls broke it up in the eighth inning with a single. That was all the Cubs got and we all began to come down with that lovely disease, pennant fever.

Twenty-five years later, I’d meet Tom Seaver when we were both members of the Greenwich Country Club. Great guy with a wonderful sense of humor. He and Nancy had a lovely home just off one of the fairways.

The 1970’s

I was running the New York Region for Burger King and had to get to a Region Managers’ meeting in Stowe, Vermont. It was October 2, 1978. It turned out that the Yankees and the Red Sox were playing a one-game elimination round for the pennant at Fenway and the game would be broadcast on the radio.

I didn’t have to arrive in Stowe until that evening, so I decided that I would enjoy a long autumn drive all the way up Route 7 from Connecticut to Vermont that day and listen to the game on my way. I can still feel that day in my bones. It was one of those glorious northeastern fall days when the air is crisp and cool but the sun warm, and the leaves are changing, and the whole atmosphere seems charged with electricity. I drove with the windows down. The Route 7 roadway rolled through town after town, sometimes right through the village square.

Of course, the best part was Bucky Dent. (To Red Sox fans, that’s “Bucky Fucking Dent,” thank you). His home run in a late inning put the Yankees ahead 3-2, and they’d go on to win the game and move on later to the World Series.

The 1980’s

I remember meeting Billy Martin in the Manager’s Office at the 1981 All-Star Game in Montreal.

I was with a Burger King associate, the late Herb Kolber (a terrific guy) and Herb’s legendary friend, Cappy Harada, who represented Billy Martin. Cappy had – in a very colorful life – been commissioned by General Douglas MacArthur to function as a prime mover after WW II in getting professional baseball re-launched in Japan. He’d played semi-pro ball himself, but injuries sustained in the war ended his baseball career on the field. Notably, Cappy accompanied Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe on their famous trip to Japan in 1954.

While we sat in the Manager’s Office listening to Billy do an interview with a reporter, Yogi Berra, Reggie Jackson, and Tony Kubek each popped into the room to say something to Billy and greet us as well. The whole session went on for about an hour and then we went out on the field for a while before the game began. Quite a night for a baseball fan!

Yogi, by the way, was the most unlikely athlete you’d ever see. Great as he undeniably was, the man had a physique more like a cost accountant’s than an All-Star’s.

The 1990’s

I remember playing first base at Mantle-Ford Fantasy Camp in 1990 (photo above) with Whitey Ford pitching and Mickey Mantle himself in the coaching box at first. We had a runner on, and he took an aggressive lead. I slipped over behind him to the base and Mickey, seeing what was happening, called to Whitey with a sort of amplified stage whisper: “Hey, Slick!”

Whitey pivoted and threw over, and we picked the runner off.

Mantle always called Ford “Slick” based on old Yankee manager Casey Stengel once accusing the fun-loving and rascally duo of being “whiskey slick.”

Speaking of Whitey, I called my mom from the camp and told her I’d gotten three hits off Ford that day.

She wasn’t impressed: “Whitey Ford? What is he, 60 years old?”

The 2000’s

I’ll leave you with a video link.

This play by Derek Jeter may be the single best play I ever saw…if only for his anticipation. (Playoffs against Oakland on October 13, 2001).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuA0joCPdM4