THE MAN THAT MADE ME A YANKEE FAN: THE FULL STORY

I decided to put the entire series of THE MAN THAT MADE ME A YANKEE FAN into one post because we were able to find some great pictures of my grandfather as a kid. Enjoy this and thanks for reading BYB!

How did a 9 year old seal the fate of 3 future generations?

Now that the terrible 2013 season is over I find myself with a lot more time on my hands; time not spent watching playoff games, time not spent worrying about match-ups, time not spent wondering what the teams in front and behind us are doing (although I am following the playoffs but not with the same vigor and intensity). And now that I have all of this time back I find myself doing a lot of thinking; pondering if you will.

If you’re reading this I can safely assume we have something in common. You’re here because you love the New York Yankees. So do I!! I’ve loved them for as long as I can remember. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself, why? Why do you come here every day and spend your time reading Bleeding Yankee Blue? Why do you go to the store or to the Stadium and spend your hard earned money on the Yankees? These are the things I think about.

Yankee fans come from all walks of life. We all come from different backgrounds and all have different lifestyles. Some of us became Yankee fans because we all like a winner (like my front-running friend, whom I wrote about here). But for some of us, like me, I didn’t have much of a choice. It was instilled in me on a cold January afternoon in 1979. What was it about that day in particular? It’s the day I was born. I was born a Yankee fan. My mom and dad are Yankee fans and so they decided to raise me as one too. But this story isn’t about me, and with all of my new found free time I decided to investigate further. My dad comes from a family of Mets fans but that’s a story for another time. My mom, on the other hand, comes from a family of Yankee fans so I went back another generation and this led me to my grandfather. I used some of my free time and sat down with him a few weeks ago to find out where it all began.

My grandfather was born in Italy in 1926. In 1929 his parents packed up my grandfather, his siblings and all their possessions, boarded a ship and headed to America to start a new life for themselves. Once here and my great-grandparents began assimilating into the American life, however they still held onto their Italian roots by living in an Italian community and listening to WVO-AM radio, (or that's what he told me... it's not easy to find info on that station), which served the ever-growing Italian immigrant population in New York. As a child my grandfather was a huge college football fan, knowing nothing about baseball. He followed Army football and, of course being the good Catholic boy, loved Notre Dame. That was all about to change.

One summer night in 1935, a 9-year-old boy sitting in front of the family radio, tired of the Italian station starts turning the dial, looking for something else. On this particular night he would stumble on something that affected 3 future generations. On this night he finds the descriptions of a game he’s never really heard or seen. It’s the New York Yankees! It was a road game and as was typical back in those days the facts of the game came back to New York via Teletype and the announcers would recreate the action. The particulars of this game 78 years ago are lost to history, but the love remains immense. He passed it to my mom, she passed it to me, and I’ve passed it on to my kids.

I wish I had a better story than this. My love of the Yankees began, that’s right, by accident. If this little boy doesn’t stumble on a radio broadcast in 1935 I might not be the insane fan I am today.

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.”

On September 16, 1951 my Grandfather married my Grandmother. After the wedding they headed into the City and spent the night at Hotel Sadler. It turns out they had forgot the suitcase with all their clothes in them at home. The next day they headed out to Times Square to buy new clothes and then decided to head up the Stadium for an afternoon game against the Indians. Turns out, this was my Grandmother’s first game. As usual they bought the cheap General Admission tickets and ended up sitting in the lower right field seats. The game was 1-1 in the Bottom of the 9^th, Joe DiMaggio leads off against Bob Lemon and singles to third, Gene Woodling singles to right, Bobby Brown is then intentionally walked to load the bases and Phil Rizzuto bunts DiMaggio in to win the game.

After the game they headed back to Times Square to see South Pacific on Broadway thus beginning 62 wonderful years married.

I’ve never known my Grandmother to be much of a sports fan and I guess a trip to the Polo Grounds sums up her fanaticism. My Grandfather said: “Parking at the Polo Grounds was awful. One night we took a bus trip down a Giants/Dodgers game. There were 55,000 people there and I look over and she is sleeping in the seat next to me. Late in the game one of the Giants players hits a home run, the whole place erupts and she’s still sleeping through the whole thing.” 

“Another time in the mid 60’s I was working for Western Publishing and they were giving tickets away to a Giants game at Yankee Stadium. The seats were on the 50-yard line right in front of Richard Nixon. I spoke with him briefly and he signed my program. I go home and left it out on the table. The next day I came back to get it and your Grandmother had thrown it out. 

At this point my grandmother yells in from the other room. My grandfather said he barked,  “I didn’t know what the scribbles were. I just thought it was garbage.”

Over the years, my grandfather has seen a lot of baseball, both good and bad. He says the best time was the late ‘40s all the way through the early ‘60s. “Guys would get hurt or retire and whoever they brought in to replace them wouldn’t miss. They kept right on going” I totally get what he’s saying. I was in my late teens, early 20’s during the most recent Yankee dynasty. It’s still very vivid in my memory. I’m sure for me that will be greatest moment in history as well.

Having said that and as noted before, I lived through the ‘80s which was a terrible time to be a Yankee fan. For my grandfather, it was easily the late ‘60s. “CBS owned the team then. They didn’t spend any money. For years, the Yankees had no pitching at all.” 

As the old adage says, ‘those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it’. I hope you enjoyed my journey through history as much as I did. I encourage you all to go talk to older family members and ask them about the old days, you’ll be surprised what you might learn.

--Lem Allen, BYB Contributor

Email me at: bybcurmudgeon@gmail.com

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