Bolstered by those responses, my second piece was more ambitious, even self-aggrandizing. It was about Jackie Robinson’s quest to break professional baseball’s color line. In it, I compared Robinson’s struggle with my own determination to become a better ball player. I got fewer reactions to this one. “Jackie Robinson is my hero too,” a classmate lamely told me one day at lunch. Then a couple of other kids came over to tell me that they liked the column.
It wasn’t exactly immortality, but I was savvy enough to see that this 300-word sports column had gotten me more attention than anything I’d ever done. Hopefully, in my classmates’ eyes, I’d no longer be just the short, chubby baseball nut who sat behind Myrna Stein in the fifth row.
Just before Christmas break, word got out that in April the sixth grade softball team would be competing in the newly formed Rockaway Peninsula League. The winner would get to play for the Queens championship. For the next three months, the only thing I could think about was making that team. I’d show Alice and Elaine what “stupid baseball” meant.
Ever since I’d watched Smitty Schumacher, the slick fielding shortstop for my dad’s team, I’d wanted to be a shortstop. Most shortstops though, were big and rangy like Smitty was. Except, that is, for Phil Rizzuto. The Yankee shortstop was only five foot six.
In an interview with The Sporting News, Rizzuto said that he’d compensate for his lack of size by cheating a few steps to the left or right depending on a hitters’ stance or swing. The interview also said that Rizzuto carefully scrutinized his catcher’s signs so he could anticipate what the pitcher would be throwing. It all made perfect sense to me.
When school started again in January, I convinced Peter and Mike to work out with me after class in the gym. Peter wasn’t the least bit interested in tryouts, but Mike was as driven as I was to land a spot on the team. On those gloomy winter afternoons, we took turns hitting dozens of ground balls to each other. For batting practice, I concocted a new drill. I thought we’d improve our batting eyes if we used stickball bats and tennis balls instead of baseball bats and softballs, both of which had a larger circumference.
In class that winter I was just going through the motions. When I tried to do my homework, I could only concentrate for a few minutes before I started thinking about tryouts. I skimmed the assigned readings and I daydreamed in class. I even began to lose interest in writing the column.
One day in mid February, Mrs. Carlin asked me to stay after school. Never one to hedge, she asked me point blank why I seemed so preoccupied. I wanted to tell her that I loved her class, to say how much I appreciated her picking me to write the column. But I didn’t want her to think I was a brown nose. So the only thing I could muster was a meek, “I’ll try and work harder from now on.”
Soon after that, I began to feel guilty. Mrs. Carlin was the first teacher who showed any confidence in me. Now, I was letting her down. I was also becoming aware that lately my love of books and writing was beginning to wane. My obsessive desire to make this team was starting to monopolize almost all of my sleeping and waking thoughts.
In late February, I found out through the grapevine that the team’s co-captains, Rob Brownstein and Ronnie Zeidner, had already selected the four guys in the clique—Mandel, Klein, Nathanson, and Pearlman. Plus, Stan Weingarten, Zeidner’s best friend, had volunteered to catch—a position nobody else wanted. That left only two open spots on the starting team.
I didn’t expect an invitation, but I was still upset by the news. Brooding about it though, wasn’t going to do me any good. So two weeks before tryouts began, I snuck into a dark corner of the gym and watched the team practice. I could see right away that Mandel was a far better shortstop than I’d ever be. Like Smitty, Louie was slender, fluid, and very agile. In contrast, I had only average reflexes and virtually no experience at the position. And despite what Phil Rizzuto had said, at five foot two I was too small to compete.
As I watched Louie glide into the hole to backhand the ball, I was burning with envy. Ever since early grade school he seemed to possess everything I yearned for. He played lead trumpet in the school band, he was a great dancer, and he was voted class president three times. The popular girls, of course, loved him. To make it even worse, he was now going steady with Elaine Hirsch.
The two starting positions still open were third base and right field. I didn’t want to be dispatched to right field again, so I’d have to settle for third base, the least glamorous infield slot. The big problem was that third base was also Mike Rubin’s position.
All of a sudden, the stakes were much higher. If one of us was chosen over the other, I knew it could be the end of the friendship. Yet, I wanted to make this team so badly.
I agonized for days before I told Mike. He was predictably surprised and disappointed. I’m sure he took it as a betrayal of the friendship. For the next two weeks, he stopped talking to me. Poor Peter was caught in the middle, so he proposed a compromise. He and Mike would work out together every other afternoon. On the days in between, Peter would work out with me.
At tryouts on the school playground, neither Mike or I looked particularly impressive. Both of us were jittery and on edge. But Zeidner and Brownstein picked us both for the squad. I was surprised and elated that I’d gotten past the first hurdle. I was also relieved that Mike had made the team. Things were still strained between us, but the next day we were at least talking to each other again. There was still a month of practice before the first game. Rubin and I were an equal match. One of us was going to be the third baseman.
Right from day one, practices seemed poorly organized. If you weren’t up at bat, you stood around in the field waiting for your turn to hit. Even infield and outfield drills felt chaotic. I knew I’d be a better organizer than either Zeidner or Brownstein—neither of whom, I could see, really wanted to spend their time setting up practices. I’d watched enough Dodger games to know how to set up a fast-moving “around the horn” infield drill, while at the same time keeping the outfielders busy shagging fungos. I also had an idea for setting up a batting practice routine that would involve everyone on the team. But who was I to think I could take over? I was still auditioning for a starting position.
In time, I began to sense an opening. When it got warm enough to go outdoors, I took the liberty of arranging practices, reserving the field at Riis Park, and telephoning all the guys. That alone wouldn’t be enough to sway things in my favor. But it wasn’t going to hurt my chances.
During the first scrimmage, neither Zeidner or Brownstein wanted to take charge. Ronnie wanted to concentrate on pitching, and Rob simply was not an assertive type. I took a chance and volunteered to coach third and relay the signals. Both of them seemed relieved to be off the hook.
It soon became evident that I knew more about game strategies and tactics than anyone else on the team. So the co-captains agreed to let me run the next practice and coach the last game scrimmage.
It paid off. On the day before the first game, they picked me to start at third. Then they surprised us all by appointing me team manager. It would be my job to coach third and give the signs. I was grateful and flattered. But I knew I’d earned it.
Once I became part of the brain trust, I had some leverage. I suggested to Zeidner and Brownstein that Mike Rubin and I should alternate positions. For the first few weeks, I played third for a game and he’d play right field. Then the next game we’d switch positions. Mike quickly became one of our best outfielders and hitters. By the middle of the season he chose to stay in right field.
Now that I belonged, or so I thought, I looked forward to every practice and game. I was even able to concentrate better on my schoolwork. The team went undefeated, and on Memorial Day weekend we beat a team from Jamaica to win the Queens championship.
At parties and dances that spring I got a lot more attention than ever before. The big disappointment was that away from the ball field the guys in the clique continued to ignore me. Plus, they’d get all riled up whenever
any of the popular girls so much as even talked to me.
From the time I was appointed team manager, it was clear that the guys in the clique weren’t happy to be taking orders from an underling like me. This was their way of retaliating—by letting me know that on their turf, they were still the top dogs.
Even at eleven, I knew that team sports aren’t a popularity contest. If you can help the team win, it doesn’t matter if you’re well liked or the most obnoxious s.o.b. out there. Still, the clique’s off-the-field rejection was hard to take.
That season, I played well enough to make a contribution. I hit for a pretty good average, and my limited range and slow reflexes were offset by a strong and accurate arm and by my ability to position myself in the right spot. But my greatest value was as team manager. In the last year or so, I’d become a passionate and informed student of this game. Making tactical decisions on the field seemed to come easily to me.
The day after the championship game, our team picture appeared in the Rockaway Beach Wave. That afternoon, we all rode down Rockaway Beach Boulevard in open Lincoln Continentals and Cadillac convertibles, while our parents and friends lined the street cheering and tossing confetti. It was as if we’d won the World Series.
I’d struggled so hard to earn this moment of recognition. But the feeling lasted only for a few days. In less than three months, we’d all be moving on to junior high. As entering seventh graders, we’d be at the bottom of the pecking order. Which meant that even after so much hard work and suffering, I’d have to prove myself all over again.
4
In the summer between the end of sixth grade and the beginning of junior high, Ira, Billy, and I were still making our Saturday pilgrimages to Ebbets Field. Now that they were eighth graders, they had a terrific time scaring the hell out of me with lurid tales of the horrors I’d soon encounter on the bus ride to and from school.
“The Arverne greasers have switch blades and zip guns,” Billy said with a note of awe in his voice.
He was positively wild-eyed when he told me about the hazing that the Belle Harbor kids had to endure. “If they pick you out,” he said, “they’ll hang you upside down on the hand rails and turn your pockets inside out till your lunch money spills out.”
I was chewing on that image when Ira broke in.
“That’s not the worst,” he said. “Just pray they don’t cut off your belt and pull your pants down.”
“Yeah, I saw it happen to Sandy Dorfman,” Billy chimed in. “Right in front of all the girls.”
They had these big smirks on their faces. It was all a prerehearsed act. A little bit of one-upmanship—payback for all the times I’d accused them being such irreverent, uninformed Dodger fans.
If I wasn’t already spooked, Ira made certain to warn me about “Big Tom” Sullivan, the Phys Ed and Hygiene teacher.
“Sullivan’s got it in for Belle Harbor Jews,” he said. “In Hygiene, he called Eliot Reiss and Danny Klein ‘candy ass sugar babies.’”
“And you’d better watch your own ass when you do the rope climb in Gym,” Billy said.
“Right, if you’re too slow” Ira added, “Big Tom’ll whack you across the butt with his paddle.”
Ira forged on, describing in detail the notched wooden paddle that Sullivan kept in his office just for such occasions. Even if I could get out of Hygiene and Gym, there was no avoiding Sullivan. Not if I wanted to play baseball. He coached the VFW summer team.
The Sullivan stories weren’t the first time I’d encountered anti-Semitism. Over Easter break Mike Rubin and I tried to get into a pickup basketball game at the St. Francis De Sales playground. As soon as we were inside the gate, Larry Keeley and three other Irish Catholic kids descended on us. All four were scruffy looking urchins with holes in their shirts and sneakers. They reminded me of the orphans in Oliver Twist.
Larry was a short, scrawny kid with a legendary mean streak. We’d all heard the stories about his gang—how they liked to lay in wait for the school bus on 129th and Newport and then terrorize the Jewish kids who got off there.
“Can’t you boys read the sign?” Larry said, loud enough for everyone to hear.
He was the ringleader. When he spoke, everyone stopped playing.
“No Jews allowed,” he said. His three toadies laughed on cue.
We were too scared to respond.
“Everyone knows that Jews can’t read,” one of them said. More laughs. No one went back to playing ball. They were all waiting to see what was going to happen. If we didn’t get out of there fast, we were in for it.
Keeley motioned with his left hand, and the four of them began pelting us with small stones that they’d fished out of their jacket pockets. I started running, with Mike trailing right behind. We sprinted through the front gate and up the block while they chased after us, still throwing stones and yelling, “Chicken-shit Jew boys,” and “the Jews killed Christ, the Jews killed Christ.”
We were lucky to get out of there without a fight. But when I got home, I was angry at myself for not having the nerve to stand up to them. How could I ever tell my father? Every time Billy Creelman from down the block would beat me up, my father told me, “The only way you’ll get any respect from a bully is to stand up to him.”
It’s the same story almost every father tells his son. What he neglected to inform me of, however, was how to stand up to four of them at once.
All summer, I continued to follow the Dodgers’ fortunes. Few of even their most loyal fans believed that the team could live down the disgrace of the previous season’s disaster. But I didn’t share that view. I was confident they’d make a comeback.
They did it, as usual, the hard way. Despite an off year by their best hitters, fewer victories from Carl Erskine and Preacher Roe, a key injury to Ralph Branca, and the loss of their ace, Don Newcombe, to military service—the Dodgers managed to fight off another Giant stretch run and win the pennant by four and half games. They lost the World Series to the Yankees again, but it took the Yanks seven games to beat them. When the season ended, the New York press once again wrote the Dodgers off as inveterate underachievers, if not out-and-out losers. But to my mind, they’d made a remarkable recovery by just winning the pennant.
The team’s resurgence was in part due to the performance of a rookie pitcher, Joe Black, a previously unknown twenty-eight-year-old pitcher. Pitching mostly in relief, Black won fifteen games and saved fifteen more. Except for the Yankees’ Joe Paige, the Giants’ Hoyt Wilhelm, and a few select others, relief pitchers in the early ‘50s were undervalued role players. For most of the game, they’d huddle together in the bullpen, apart from the rest of their teammates, watching and waiting for a chance to contribute. Often with the game on the line, they’d be called in to pitch. If they succeeded, they’d earn what, in baseball lingo, is called a save.
I could identify with these relief specialists a lot more easily than I could relate to most of the other players. Their borderline status, coupled with the pressure of having to come though in clutch situations, made them perfect role models for a kid who had an aching need for the spotlight.
By midsummer I was starting to obsess over the prospect of having to defend myself in school this fall. So I took out three library books: The Amboy Dukes, A Stone for Danny Fisher; and Knock on Any Door—all of which were about teenage street gangs. Two of the three main characters, Frank Goldfarb and Danny Fisher, were Jewish. Nick Romano, the third one, was Italian Catholic. They were all roughly my age.
The book that captivated me most was The Amboy Dukes. The gang leaders and henchmen had hoodlike names like Black Benny, Moishe, Larry Tunafish, Bull Bronstein, and Crazy Sachs. They sported Vaseline-slicked duck tailed (DA) haircuts and wore pegged pants—and they belonged to exotic sounding clubs like the Sutter Kings, the Killers, the D-Rape Artists, and the Enigmas.
All of them grew up in post-Depression New York—in rough neighborhoods like Brownsville and East New York. They regularly cut school and hung aro
und pool halls and seedy clubhouses—smoking reefers and planning petty crimes. To maintain respect or stature they had to prove they weren’t afraid to fight, steal, lie, cheat, and deal drugs. They picked up young girls and bragged about having sex with them. They robbed neighborhood candy stores and shops, often at gunpoint. Some gang members even put their lives at risk.
The character I felt the most sympathy for was Frank Goldfarb. He was more intelligent and compassionate than the rest of the gang. His dream, in fact, was to marry his girlfriend and go to college. But he was too caught up in that world to ever escape. In the end, his misplaced loyalty to the group cost him his life.
I couldn’t be more unlike these characters—even Frank. Yet there was something compelling about them and the world they inhabited. I yearned for the kind of camaraderie they shared. Sometimes, I even wished I had the chutzpah to live as close to the edge as they did.
P.S. 44 was less than a five mile bus ride from my house. The turn-of-the-century red brick building and its fenced-in schoolyard sat squarely in the heart of the Arverne-Hammels-Holland section of Rockaway Beach—one of the roughest, most rundown areas in south Queens. But it might as well have been on another planet. Nothing we’d experienced, either at home or in six years of grade school, could have prepared us for this junior high.
The forty-five minute bus ride to school took us through neighborhoods our parents had warned us about since we were kids. Once you got past McGuire’s Bar and Grill on Beach 108th, all you’d see were seedy looking bars, gated liquor stores, rundown markets, weed choked vacant lots, shuttered stores, ramshackle houses, and shops with iron bars on the windows. I’d been idealizing neighborhoods like these all summer. But when I saw them in person, I was unnerved by the ugliness and squalor. I couldn’t imagine growing up in these conditions.
Still Pitching Page 5
