July 18, 2014--Best of Behind: The House that Ruth Built

With the baseball all-star game behind us and regular season play about to resume, here is something I wrote in September 22, 2008 that appears to be a baseball story but in reality is about family--

It was early April and the family was gathered at Aunt Tanna's and Uncle Eli’s apartment. After my grandparents died it had fallen to Eli to conduct Passover services and to Tanna, with the help of her sisters, to prepare and serve the sumptuous dinner.

As is traditional, Eli as the host, early in the reading of the Haggadah, set aside a napkin-wrapped portion of matzos, which would serve as the Afikomon. Since Jews no longer participated in sacrificing and serving the Pascal Lamb during Passover, this matzos symbolized that lamb and was to be the last taste of the evening—a sort of desert that was shared by all after the host broke it into enough pieces to serve everyone. Happily, to those of us still too young to understand or enjoy the magic of such symbolism, Aunt Tanna, and especially Aunt Gussie managed to bake delectable treats in spite of the Passover prohibitions against using normal forms of flour or leavening. It was well worth enduring what seemed an endless service and meal to get to Gussie's coconut macaroons and matzos-flour angel cake.

Though I did not at the time appreciate the meaning of the Afikomon, I did love the custom that required the youngest children (boys really) to “steal” and hide it from Uncle Eli. Which we always managed to do with his obvious complicity—he made an art form of looking the other way so that we could snatch and run off with it and hide it behind a sofa cushion in the adjoining living room. When it came time to need it to conclude the ceremonies, Eli would make a broad theatrical effort to search for it, of course--with great sighing and frustration--always failing to find it. Even though the previous year and the year before that my cousin Chuck, his son, and I hid it in the very same place. Obviously stealing and hiding things were not among our limited number of talents.

So when Uncle Eli would give up in faux-frustration, with much squealing of delight we would retrieve the Afikomon from the sofa and hand it over to him so he could do his symbolic thing and we, the best part, would get our reward. The year, before we--actually Chuck--asked for two pairs of boxing glove which through the year he used almost every weekend to pummel me, his pathetic sparring partner, as he “trained” to become the last in a long line of Jewish boxing champions. And though I was quite a good punching bag for him, he was better at schoolwork than in our improvised ring and went on to become a successful personal-injury lawyer. What else was appropriate for an ex-boxer?

But this year we planned in advance to ask Eli to take us to Yankee Stadium, to the House that Ruth Built.

Back then, with the Dodgers ensconced and beloved in Brooklyn where we lived, with Chuck, and me under his influence, unlikely and passionate Yankee fans—you could get killed on any Flatbush street corner for showing even mild interest in the hated Yankees—a secret trip up to the Bronx to attend a game in person was a transgressive treat. Eli, who liked the idea that in their risky enthusiasm for the Yankees his son and nephew showed signs of intrepidness—he himself had as a boy escaped from Tsarist Russia and made his way on his own to America—was happy to accede to our request, receive the Afikomon, and bring the long Passover evening to conclusion—it was getting late, the family was showing sign of restlessness, and some had to make the long trek back to Long Island.

A week later, Uncle Eli told us that through a friend he had gotten box seats for the three of us for June 13th. Though my memory is beginning to fail me I will always remember that date vividly because, as good fortune would have it, June 13, 1948 turned out to be the day the Yankees retired Babe Ruth’s uniform number. Everyone knew that the Babe was suffering from throat and neck cancer and did not have long to live, and so they wanted to honor him before he was unable to be there in person to bask in the cheers and love of the more than 100,000 of his fans who packed that great iconic ballpark.

There is grainy newsreel film of the event that helps jog my recollection-- 

A stooped and fragile Babe, desiccated to half his bulky size, wearing his uniform with the familiar number 3 emblazoned on his back, no longer the physical manifestation of the Sultan of Swat he had been during his playing years, on that sultry afternoon, he shuffled haltingly to home plate where he stood, leaning heavily on his bat as if it were a crutch rather than the instrument of divine power it had been, to take in the adoration of his fans. 

And though Chuck, still harbored dreams of stepping into the boxing ring in this very Yankee Stadium, where not that many years before Joe Lewis avenged himself, and all of America, by defeating in slightly more than two minutes of the first round, the great Aryan hope, Max Schmeling, through my own tears I saw Chuck’s.

So many years later, with Chuck prematurely off with the Babe, now in an even-better, loftier box seat, last night my tears flowed again when the Bambino’s 92 year-old daughter Julia threw out the first ball at the last game that will ever be played in the house her father built, soon after that to be torn down and replaced by a new, antiseptic Yankee Stadium. 

More symbolism.

March 14, 2014--The Babe

It started innocently enough.

My friend Lee Frissell, knowing my interest in baseball, sent me a link to an article in the New York Times about Babe Ruth's 97-year-old daughter, Julia Ruth Stevens, who recently visited the other "house" that Ruth built, the Yankee's old spring training field in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Lee wrote--

Isn't this a great story? I always thought the Babe was just a hedonist with massive appetites of all sorts. I had no idea he was an anti-racist who was kept from managing a team because he would have brought in black players. And, even if his daughter is wrong about that, it's gratifying to know he was both anti-racisit and anti-fascist. I always figured he had no politics or social views. I know he drank a quart of vodka, a gallon of orange juice, a dozen eggs, and a pound of bacon for breakfast, and preferred his women six at a time . . . but this makes me like him even more.

I wrote back with a story of my own, a true story--

My Uncle Eli owned a meat processing plant where the UN is now located. Paramount Meats it was called. The Secretariat  is built on top of what used to be Manhattan's eastside slaughterhouses and meatpacking district. 

Babe Ruth parked his car in a garage across the street and, Eli told me, when he smelled my uncle smoking pigs' knuckles, a Ruthian favorite, he would stop by to pick up a few which he proceeded to eat on the spot. Even without a quart of vodka to wash them down. 

One Saturday, Uncle Eli took me to work with him and, with the air on 45th Street saturated with the smell of smoking meat, the Babe was lured in. 

I was about ten years old and he was visibly near death. But to me he was not just a legend by a looming presence. Mammoth in size and, though it was not cold, wrapped in a full-length, belted cashmere coat. In addition, he was wearing his signature Babe Ruth tweed cap. 

He tousled my hair (I had a full head of curls then!) and you can imagine what a thrill it was for me, a lonely Yankee fan from far away Brooklyn. 

The next week, Uncle Eli brought me a baseball autographed by Ruth on which he had written, "To my pal." 

Of course I should have saved it. But back then street kids didn't have much sporting equipment and a new baseball was a rarity. All the others were battered and wrapped with friction tape. 

So we used mine until someone belted it a mile into some bushes where we couldn't find it. 

Ah, well. I don't have the ball stashed away in a safety deposit box but the memory is sweet.

Within 15 minutes, breathlessly, Lee wrote back--

This email of yours is going to take some time to reply to! But let me begin with--smoking pigs' knuckles???!!!

What did Lee mean? That he needed "some time to reply"? I knew he was at work. I assumed he was busy and wouldn't be able to get back to me until after his meetings. Or whatever. But then what about the "pigs' knuckles???!!!" business. Very strange.

But it didn't take him long to get back to me. What should I make of this???!!!--

Well, I'm not going to get any work done today until I respond to your original email. 

To meet Babe Ruth was probably the most deeply held dream of every American boy born between 1925 and 1975, and to have your hair tousled by Babe Ruth, and then to have been given a ball autographed by him, "To my pal." 

And you fucking played ball with it and lost it! 

How poor could you have been? You had Uncle Eli's knuckle smokery; your Uncle Schlomo's chittlin' factory, and your Uncle Ralph's Cuban sandwich shop. There must have been enough family money to buy a friggen baseball. Or to have used one of those pigs' knuckles. 

I advise you not to tell that story to your wife, Rona. Despite a subsequent considerable body of evidence to the contrary, that is such an act of monumental stupidity that it's hard to believe you could ever make anything of your life. Maybe if playing with that precious ball had laid the foundation for your getting into the Major Leagues and breaking the Babe's records or approaching your 7th Cy Young Award, it would be excusable. Otherwise, there really is no exculpation for you.

Wow!

I know Lee has quite a sense of humor, but he was sounding serious. No exculpation? I'm not even sure what that means, but it sounds serious. Even biblical. Hey, to me, though I know if I had saved the autographed ball and kept it it would be worth a fortune, at the time, to me, it was just a baseball. And life on the streets was mean. Even though there was enough family money, if I took up a collection, to buy a new ball. No likelihood of that.

And, by the way, Lee made up Uncles Schlomo and Ralph. They don't exist. I did have an Uncle Harry who never had a job and an Uncle Bob who owned a gas station on Myrtle Avenue. And also there was Uncle Jack who was in the clock and watch business, decidedly not in the non-kosher, treif food business. And if he didn't live all the way out on Long Island, if he had known we were using rocks as baseballs, he might have come through with some real sporting equipment. He was that kind of generous guy.

But not knowing what to say back to Lee and worried that somehow thinking about Babe Ruth and my, I guess, stupidity, had made him crazy, I thought to try to calm things down by dashing off a bland note staying--

I suppose you're right. I guess you had to be there at the time, blah, blah, blah . . .

But this didn't work. There was more fired back from Lee--

Of course I had to tell this story to our orthodox friend Ed G, who agrees that meeting the Bambino was the fondest dream of an American boy. But he's not perturbed by your Uncle Eli's treifish occupation. "You can't eat it," he said. "But no one said you can't touch it. Nu. It's business." 

I know you're no fan of the hassidim [true], but a pig smokehouse is a little too reformed even for a quintessential goy like me.

Concerned about Lee's blood pressure, again I tried the calm approach--

Does this mean Ed G has exculpated me? That's it's OK that I had an uncle who was in the pork business? 

And while we're talking baseball, did I ever tell you my Jackie Robinson story?

I should have known better. Lee wrote--

I shudder to think what the Jackie Robinson story must be.

Caring a little less about upsetting Lee, though still not understanding what had gotten into him when I mentioned "knowing" Babe Ruth, I couldn't contain myself from writing--

When I was again about ten, that would be 1948 or so, a year after Jackie Robinson began to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, he and his wife and baby son moved into an apartment four blocks from where I lived. At the corner of East 52nd Street and Snyder Avenue. 

It was a mainly Jewish neighborhood with a few Italian families sprinkled in. When the Dodgers played at home, at Ebbets Field, at the time they were all day games, each evening Jackie would come out and play baseball with us in the street. Can you believe it, teaching us about fielding and batting. His wife Rachel would sit on the stoop with their young son, Jackie Junior, and we would play until it got dark. 

Then one day, as usual when the Dodgers were at home, we raced over to the Robinson's and . . .

That's as much as I wrote. I haven't yet heard back from Lee, which is fine since the story doesn't end well.

That's an exaggeration--I did hear once more from Lee--

As soon as we're back in New York, he wants to go together to Hawthorne, New Jersey, to visit the Babe's grave. And quintessential goy that he really is, he still knows a lot about treif and Jewish cemetery customs--that when visiting a grave we leave a stone on it to note we were there. In Babe's case, he suggests we leave a baseball.