By David W. Manzo, Special to The Reporter
I was the New York Yankee’s best eight-year-old baseball fan.
A little boy in love with his team, my bedroom walls were covered with newspaper clippings of the previous year’s feverish race between Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris to become the all-time single season home run king. As I drifted off to sleep, listening to the transistor radio under my pillow, I could see photos of players whose colorful names I loved – Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and Moose Skowron. My baseball cards were scattered everywhere.
My dad owned a butcher shop and worked 7 days a week. He’d grown up very poor and worked hard to make life better for our family. My mom, due to a disability, was confined to our modest home. Neither of my parents had the opportunity to attend college.
Dad’s relaxation, after a long day’s work, was listening to the Yankees on the radio or, occasionally, watching them, in snowy black and white, on our small TV.
Early on the morning of Tues., Oct. 9, 1962, my parents woke me. It was a school day and I was in Ms. Permini’s 3rd grade classroom at Bunker Hill Grammar School in Waterbury, Connecticut. My dad called me into their bedroom and sat me on his bed. He reached into his dresser drawer and took out two tickets. “David,” he said, “Do you want to go to the World Series with me today?”
I had one reaction – tears. “Yes, yes, really?” I was the happiest boy in the world.
The author as a very happy little boy.
My mom packed lunches for us, and off we went, 80 miles to Yankee Stadium, my dad and me.
It rained as we drove. We parked the car at the edge of the Bronx in Woodlawn, about a 20-minute elevated train ride to Yankee Stadium. I remember the massive crowd and holding my dad’s hand tightly as we exited the train, entered through the turnstiles, and walked up the ramps to our seats. The old Yankee Stadium had a very steep upper deck and our tickets were in the top row in Section 27 in deepest right field.
The rain continued. The game was delayed. Then the public address announcer told the crowd that Ford Frick, the commissioner of Baseball, had postponed the game.
Before disappointment could overtake me, my dad immediately looked at me and said, “David, we are coming back tomorrow!” Thank God, there were no cell phones to call and ask mom’s permission. Missing another day of 3rd grade? How do you expect him to ever get into college?
The next day bright sunshine flooded The Bronx. My dad and I cheered along with 63,165 Yankee fans when, in the bottom of the 8th inning, with the score tied, Yankee rookie Tom Tresh hit a 3-run home run. Victory was ours.
Tresh’s father had been a baseball player, and in the newspaper the next day, there appeared a photo of Tom being hugged by his father, just like my father hugged me after the home run.
As the years went on, baseball became a nice bridge, a way for my father and me to connect. My hair grew longer in high school and college. It was below my shoulders. The unsettling years of the 1960s and 1970s were upon us with protests and the Vietnam War. But my dad and I had something we were passionate about to keep us going, our mutual love of baseball.
The years have passed. My dad has been dead for nearly 40 years. He was my best man when I married. My son Lou is named for him. At dad’s funeral, I gave his eulogy.
Encased in a special holder next to the TV where I still watch my New York Yankees, sits the Topps baseball card that was issued to commemorate Tom Tresh’s home run in Game 5 of the 1962 World Series.
I moved to Boston in 1972 to attend Boston College. Every year someone asks me, “After all these years, how can you still be a Yankee fan?” With my memory of the best day of my childhood, how could I ever root for another team?
David Manzo, an educator at Boston College, was a Red Sox season ticket holder for more than 40 years, and yes, he was in the bleachers for the Bucky Dent game.
