Friday, November 8, 2013

THE MAN THAT MADE ME A YANKEE FAN: PART 2

78 Years is a long time. I can’t even imagine the things a person sees and hears over that time. The Internet is full of facts, but nothing beats hearing a first person account of an event. In April my Grandfather will turn 88 years old and throughout his life he has seen and heard a lot of things. I recently sat down with him to get personal perspective about things I’ve only ever read about.


My Grandfather immigrated to the U.S. about the time of the Great Depression. During that time College Football was the most popular sport in America. He grew up loving Army and Notre Dame football. One night in 1935, he found a depiction of a Yankees road game by accident. He was tuning his parents’ radio and stumbled across this game and instantly fell in love with the game. He can still remember listening to famed broadcaster Arch McDonald. As was popular back in the day, McDonald would recreate the games based on information received on a Teletype machine.


As an impressionable 10-year-old from Italy, little Gianni instantly fell in love with another young man of Italian decent. On May 3, 1936 Joe DiMaggio made his Yankee debut. “Watching Joe graze the outfield was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Fly balls would come out there and he had a way of gliding towards the ball. Back in those days they had those monuments in the field, nobody could maneuver through them like he did.” What about Mickey Mantle? “Mantle was my second favorite player, all-time. He was faster, but for some reason when Joe took those strides not too many balls got by him.”


The Yankees have called 4 ballparks home, Hilltop Park, the Polo Grounds, the original Yankee Stadium, and this new palace (5 if you want to count Shea Stadium). “I’ve been to the oldest one more times than anything. The biggest problem was the poles. You couldn’t see from a bunch of the seats. When they remodeled it, they did away with the poles but they cut the seating down. Before that they had the flagpole and the monuments in the field. I’ve seen a few balls hit out that way. There weren’t any ground rule doubles if the ball them. It was 461 feet away. In my time guys never hit the ball that far. Left field was 457 feet; it was Death Valley out there. That one was my favorite. This new one is nice…smaller. I just like the old one better.”

“Back in the 1940s we used to go down and buy $1.25 General Admission tickets. Nobody had a car so we’d hop on the Mohawk Bus to Bob’s Bus Terminal in the Bronx. One Friday night in 1947, the Yanks were playing the Red Sox. We bought General Admission seats and tipped the usher a few bucks. He sat us in the Football press box, which used to be along the third base line. The Yankees won 1-0. Joe Page struck out Ted Williams, Rudy York, and another guy to end the game.”

By the way, here is PART 1 of my series... THE MAN THAT MADE ME A YANKEE FAN. Hope you're enjoying it so far.



--Lem Allen, BYB Contributor
Email me at: bybcurmudgeon@gmail.com



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