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Going By the Book |
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That book about Lou Gehrig
lit a fire inside young Maury
of TheColumnists.com
IT WAS ALMOST 60 years
ago when this kid from Brooklyn--me--got a gift of a book for
my ninth birthday signed with love from Mom and Dad.
Through marriage, children, grandchildren and half a century
of journalism no present mattered that much. It didn’t change
my life. It made my life.
The book was called “Lou Gehrig: Pride of the Yankees”
by Paul Gallico and it was published in 1942 by Grosset and Dunlap
in conjunction with the film of the same name starring Gary Cooper
about the great Yankee first baseman who died a year earlier.
I write about sports books for TheColumnists.Com and on the celebration
of the second anniversary of the site, I can only think back
with thanks to that book, that revelation, that epiphany generated
by a gift of a book.
The gifts before were toys and clothes that I hated and an occasional
bat and ball ruined quickly in pickup games in the old lots near
our home.
We were Brooklyn Dodger fans, of course, in my house with an
occasional visit to Ebbets Field for a 55 cent bleacher seat
with my father, who could barely sneak in any off time from a
six and a half day work week as a salesman in the Depression,
or with my older brother.
I was a street kid, which wasn’t considered bad in those
days. That meant I played ball in the lots, swung a broomstick
in a stickball game, shot baskets in the school yard until dark
and starred in hide and seek because I could run fast.
I read the sports pages and cut out the pictures of my favorite
players, Pee Wee Reese, Pete Reiser, Dixie Walker, Whitlow Wyatt
and Hugh Casey. I filled dozens of notebooks with their photos
and clippings from the papers.
Teachers tried to get me to read some books in those days but
after a page or two my mind would wander to the next street game
or the next big league game I could listen to on the floor radio.
Then Lou Gehrig came into my life. I opened it that night in
my room and read the introduction by Bill Dickey. I cried. I
made it through half the words in the book that first time out,
missing a word here and there, and finished up the next night.
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to many young kids and one of them was our Maury Allen. |
Miss Kuhlenberg--no first names of grade school teachers are ever known--asked us a few days later if we had read any assigned books. I had not. “How about unassigned books?” I asked. The other kids in my 4B class laughed.
“Could you write a report for the class?” she asked.
That night I began my first journey into journalism. I started at the top of the lined page and printed out, “Lou Gehrig was the Pride of the Yankees,” just the way the title of the book and film spelled it out.
The rest seemed easy. I talked about Gehrig’s youth in New York City, his days at Columbia University, the signing with the Yankees, the glories of the game as he led the Yankees alongside Babe Ruth and The Streak. Who could know there would be a Cal Ripken, Jr.?
The Streak made Gehrig heroic, a man among men, a figure all the kids could admire with dreamlike worship. Even Brooklyn Dodger fans. Gehrig rose above all that partisanship and when Gallico writes, “On June 2, 1941, Lou Gehrig died in the arms of his wife in their home in Larchmont,” I dissolved into gasping tears.
My report was handed in the next day. I stood next to Miss Kuhlenberg. I remember the smell of her perfume to this day. It was four pages long of blocked letters. She pushed her hair off her face a bit, grew a little sad as she lifted the last page and wrote a large A plus on the top. “This is a wonderful piece of work,” she hand wrote. “You can be a writer.”
My goals were clear now. I would be a writer. Sure, I played ball and made a couple of high school teams with ideas that professional sports would be for me. My heart wanted it. My head knew better. I wasn’t a player. I was a writer about players.
The books came furiously after that, about other players and non-players, about World War II heroes and scientists, about explorers and adventurers and philosophers and artists.
I never touched a book I didn’t like. Every one offered something, a phrase, a line, a paragraph I liked, a scene. Some warmed me on cold nights and thrilled me on hot ones. I covered sports on the road for 35 years and packed underwear after the two books I dragged along.
I was 22 years old when the first book I wrote, Ten Great Moments in Sports, was published and my 33rd book, All Roads Lead to October (St. Martin’s Press, $24.95, plug, plug) came out last year.
Reading and writing remain my work and my joys, my hobbies and my profession almost six decades after the first book I read from beginning to end entered my life.
One of the surprise joys added to my life in recent months are the columns of colleagues and friends from TheColumnists.com. Ron Miller, editor supreme, gave me the chance to add my column on books to the site.
How could he possibly know I got a 60 year flashback from the first one? Yes, Miss Kuhlenberg, wherever you are, I still small your perfume. I still read books. I still write.
© 2001 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen caricature is © 2001 by Jim Hummel. The photo of Lou Gehrig is from the Baseball Hall of Fame website.
You can comment on this column or contact Maury Allen with an email to: talkback@thecolumnists.com
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