Take Me Out to the Ball Game
He turned down the Yankees, survived a war, and spent the rest of his life loving the game.
My dad loved baseball. He could’ve been a contender.
During the Depression, my dad, a poor kid, left school after eighth grade. His mother sent him to live with an aunt in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, a small town famous for its groundhog and annual shadow search. He took up a sport he knew he could excel in and that would also help him escape his troubles.
The bat became his protector, and he used it well. Local scouts noticed and invited him to play for a Yankees-affiliated feeder team. I don’t know much about farm teams, but years later, when my brother and I heard “Yankees,” we practically yelled: “How could you turn down such an opportunity?”
But he had his reasons, ones that I only understood years later.
Much later, I learned the Yankees weren’t simply a distant New York dream in my father’s youth. Butler had its own Yankees. Young western Pennsylvania ballplayers passed through Pullman Park in pinstripes en route to New York. Hall of Famer Whitey Ford played there. My father could have been one of them.
Yet, as fate would have it, his destiny lay elsewhere.
Later, when World War II began, the Army claimed him. He drove fellow soldiers through dangerous territory in a Jeep and somehow kept them safe. Many of the men considered him a lucky charm and specifically asked to ride with him. Time and again, he seemed to miss the explosives planted along his routes.
After the war, he did what numerous young men of his generation did: found a civilian job, married, and settled down. His work was decidedly blue-collar. He started with a milk delivery company, moved on to a large glass-making operation, and later became a groundskeeper for a large cemetery. Eventually, he helped unionize the workplace.
Still, baseball never left his soul.
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Years later, as a loyal Pittsburgh Pirates fan, he witnessed one of the greatest moments in baseball history. On October 13, 1960, Bill Mazeroski stepped to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series and hit a home run over the wall at Forbes Field, defeating the mighty Yankees. It remains the only walk-off home run ever to end a Game 7 of the World Series. For Pirates fans of my father’s generation, it wasn’t just a victory. It was proof that the underdog could beat the biggest dynasty in baseball.
As time passed, baseball games came and went, but the game remained central to his life. He coached and played with his local Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) team during those later decades. He spent time with the guys, much of it drinking beer and sharing war stories, and almost every weekend he indulged his love of the sport.
I remember the gray canvas bag that usually sat in the trunk of our car. It was filled with bats and gloves. He carefully watched over these for his team. He sometimes brought his young daughter to the games. One clear afternoon, he invited her to play with the men.
I can tell you from experience: you do not play hardball with a bunch of VFW men. Those baseballs hurt when they hit your knuckles.
This activity carried on for years. Then, and just as he had predicted, his legs gave out. Poor circulation led to a wheelchair and eventually to partial amputations of both legs. His playing days were over, and everything changed.
Apparently, he went to the library. A lot.
He wheeled his chair down a ramp. Then, across the street. Over a few blocks to the library. Apparently, he made quite an impression on the ladies there. They knew him for his love of baseball.
When he passed away, I received a letter from that library that I certainly did not expect. They had purchased a book about the Pittsburgh Pirates and dedicated it to my father in his honor. It now lives in a small-town library in Butler, Pennsylvania, in memory of a man who spent his life devoted to the sport.
I have often wondered what made him so fond of the game. I know that when the games came on television, it often appeared as though he was sleeping. But if I dared to change the channel, he would bellow across the living room, “I am watching that!” and the channel would go right back to KDKA-TV.
Maybe that’s what baseball was for him. It was an escape when he was a poor kid during the Depression. It was the dream he turned away from when the Yankees came calling. It was a fellowship with fellow veterans. This was a connection to a city and a team he loved. It was a companion when his body could no longer do the things it once could.
I have no idea what methods the Yankees use to scout for their new players these days, but I sometimes think they overlooked something in father that statistics don’t measure. Baseball wasn’t what he played on weekends; it was who he was as an individual.
In the end, baseball always found a way to keep him close. The game followed him from a dusty Pennsylvania ballfield to a wartime Jeep, from a VFW diamond to a wheelchair, and finally to a library shelf. A worn book bearing his memory still waits for the next fan to open its pages.
For a man who loved baseball so fiercely, that feels like a perfect ending. For a true fan, a Pirates book bearing your name is its own quiet immortality.
