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ECHOING GREEN" |
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A nostalgic baseball event with four lifelong friends
of TheColumnists.com
"Those friends
thou hast, and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul
with hoops of steel." -- William
Shakespeare.
I spent two
nights in the last couple of weeks experiencing two of the most
remarkable friendships between former baseball players, all four
well into their 80s, all four legendary figures of the game.
Joe Garagiola and Yogi Berra, friends from across the street
in the Dago Hill section of St. Louis and Ralph Branca and Bobby
Thomson, linked by the Shot Heard Round the World, gathered on
separate nights to express this cherished bonding at Yogi Berra’s
Museum and Learning Center on the campus of Montclair State University
in Little Falls, New Jersey.
Garagiola was the first from that area to be signed to a professional
baseball contract--for $500--and became a 1946 St. Louis World
Series catcher. Berra, a World War II Navy vet from Normandy’s
D-Day, showed up at the Stadium in his sailor suit the previous
year. They were neighborhood pals.
“Whatever games we played, Yogi organized them,” said
Garagiola, who spoke of his boyhood pal known as "Lawdie"
because his Italian-speaking mother couldn’t pronounce her
son’s name as Larry. “He could do whatever he wanted
to do in any game.”
Garagiola spoke of the Yogi-isms even muttered as a kid by this
son of a shoe factory worker, of the warmth and loyalty to the
friendship he has shown for more than 70 years, of the modesty
one of the game’s greatest stars always exhibited.
Berra’s career remained in baseball as a Hall of Fame player,
a Yankees World Series hero, a coach, a manager and the owner
of one of the game’s most recognizable faces.
Garagiola’s career drifted off into broadcasting, after
a .257 career average, with play by play with the Yankees and
a long stay at television’s Today show.
Through it all they shared their lives, connected as adults,
bonded with the growth of families.
Berra married the former Carmen Short of St. Louis, a waitress
at the time at the famed Stan (Musial’s) and Biggie’s
restaurant.
“We used to go in every night and sit in the corner. We
couldn’t afford to eat,” said Garagiola. “One
day I asked Yogi why we kept going in there and he said it was
because he liked to look at Carmen. I told him to ask her out
for a date so I could get something to eat someplace else.”
When Yogi and Carmen married in 1949, some family and friends
criticized Yogi for not marrying an Italian girl.
“They had their chance,” said Yogi.
A new book entitled "The Echoing Green: The Untold Story
of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the Shot Heard Round the World"
by Joshua Prager (Pantheon, $26/95) was the centerpiece of the
discussion at Yogi’s by the former Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher
and the former New York Giants third baseman.
October 3, 1951. “The Giants win the pennant, the Giants
win the pennant, the Giants win the pennant,” howled Giants
broadcaster Russ Hodges after Thomson smacked Branca’s high
inside fastball into the lower stands of the Polo Grounds for
the pennant-winning homer.
It is the single most dramatic home run in baseball history.
Six years ago Prager, in an article in the Wall Street Journal,
spelled out the long-rumored tale that the Giants cheated their
way to victory that day--and for many weeks prior--by stealing
signs through a centerfield telescope and an electronic communications
system.
Backup infielder Hank Schenz had brought the telescope to the
Giants with him when he came over from the Pirates. Coach Herman
Franks and bullpen catcher Sal Yvars, who talked freely about
the spying for years, did most of the signaling to teammates.
The Giants, with the help at home from the sign stealing, went
37-7 to knock down a Brooklyn lead that had reached 13 ½
games on August 11.
Their pitching was terrific and the Dodgers played only a couple
of games over .500 as they blew a six game lead with little more
than a week to go.
Then came the playoff and the Thomson homer off Branca for the
pennant.
The accidental event linked Branca and Thomson in baseball history.
Four months later the two players stood on a stage in Manhattan’s
Waldorf Hotel at a Baseball Writers Dinner and sang Tony Bennett’s
popular “Because of You” with lyrics about the event
written by New York baseball writer Arthur Mann.
They repeated their number 50 years later as they each neared
the age of eighty at another Baseball Writers Dinner.
After retirement from the game, Branca sold insurance and Thomson
worked for a paper manufacturing company.
They were thrown together often at baseball banquets and historic
events of the game. They connected well as exceptional, decent,
honorable, moral human beings. In 1991 and again in 2001 they
toured the land spreading the gospel of that moment.
“We’re like a married couple,” Branca said at
Yogi’s Museum. “We’re tied together at the hip.”
It was clear there was deep affection by these two gentlemen
as they talked of the events of 55 years ago. Prager did an enormous
research job in putting his book together after five and a half
years. He makes clear the unique bonding of these two very different
men, the hard-throwing pitcher from Mount Vernon, New York, in
the big leagues at 18 and the insecure, shy Scottish immigrant,
carried to the shores of the USA, where baseball became his national
identification.
No player in baseball history ever reacted with more dignity,
poise and courage to adversity than Branca did after his 1951
mis-adventure.
No player ever dealt with the drama of his accomplishment with
more modesty than Thomson.
Still, the ugliness of the sign-stealing hovers over the event.
Thomson never could come to terms with the cheating.
Branca signed my copy of Prager’s book with “Best Wishes.
The Giants stole the pennant. Period. Ralph Branca.”
©2006 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen
caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The book cover illustration
is courtesy of Pantheon Books. This column first posted Oct.
2, 2006.
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