OUR PEOPLE A BASEBALL FAN
COTTLE, THOMAS J.
OUR PEOPLE A BASEBALL FAN THOMAS J. COTTLE I wasn't really surprised when Rose Leibovitz suggested one September afternoon that we go to the baseball game. To know her is to know of...
...What is i t ? " I ask...
...Boston snob friends...
...Still, we had a lot of happy years h e r e ." " W o u l d you go back, to visit...
...Never during the day...
...Such an uninteresting name...
...You walk around like you had a smear "Baseball's wonderful, America's wonderful...
...Aparicio's a Polack all r i g h t ." "Petrocelli isgoing todo itfor us, I'm predicting...
...Who's t h i s ? " she asked, "Somebody new...
...No crime...
...Y o u tell 'em, mother...
...Sylvio says ' n o . ' So you can guess what happened...
...But people live through it...
...Aparicio, and that makes for a good life...
...None of her friends in this country had ever heard the details of Rose and Shimon Leibovitz's escape from Pol a n d . They knew only that the Leibovitzes landed in Baltimore and made their way first to New York, then to Boston...
...Maybe I could go to Florida again when it gets cold, maybe I'll fix up my apartment...
...What are you thinking about, Rose...
...I says what good is a ticket going to do me...
...O n l y in A m e r i c a , " she says...
...It could be...
...Everybody knows...
...Visit Poland...
...What's she upset about...
...She knew that I thought her interest in baseball incongruous...
...Rose didn't look up from the program...
...It had good parts too...
...I ' l l never go back to Europe...
...She lives now in Cincinnati...
...I was born there, my parents died there, I met my husband there, but all of it is gone...
...That'll get you into trouble...
...I ' l l tell you something else...
...It gets you three pitches and all you can hit is a home run in the wrong direction...
...Johnny Bench isn't good enough for you then stay home with all your Boston snob friends...
...He is affiliated with The Children's Defense Fund of the Washington Research Project...
...Everybody could be on our side, but what they did makes you feel small...
...The lucky ones, they live through...
...Yastrzemski and Mr...
...It couldn't be something like, ah, like Sylvio F i s k ?" on your face and people don't want to tell you how you look...
...Out here, Yastrzemski, Petrocelli, your friend Carleton Fisk are heroes...
...I knew it...
...N o w , " she announces, as Rico Petrocelli steps into the batter's box almost 400 feet away, "Petrocelli is going to do it for us...
...Not shortstops...
...He was one of your big shots...
...It's when he runs that he doesn't do so good...
...I'm not moving to please you and besides if Mr...
...Not for me, but my poor Shimon...
...Fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, young, all of them...
...She looked quickly behind her but the men were concentrating on the game...
...P e t r o c e l l i. Maybe they should try glasses on him, give him something to drink...
...Nineteen years old standing in the doorway of an apartment house, what we'd call maybe a town house...
...You might even like it...
...It's at night when you can't sleep because it's so quiet, that's when you worry just a I ittle...
...They say he's got a lot of temperament...
...Thirty-five years ago, seventeenyearold boys like Sylvio, they were the heroes...
...There could be a knock on the door...
...At sixty-eight, Rose Leibovitz considers herself as loyal a Red Sox fan as anyone in this country, even though she spent the first half of her life in Poland...
...Big, protecting everybody, you know what I mean...
...A bakery business established by Shimon's cousin, Walter Wilensky (who had immig r a t e d six months before the Leibovitzes) had done rather well...
...So now comes Mr...
...Only when they lost, they d i d n ' t play anymore like these nogoodniks...
...Can you see him...
...I'm predicting...
...You might even like i t ." On the first pitch Petrocelli lines a shot down the left field line that clears the wall some fifty feet foul...
...Very lovely parts, very lovely occasions...
...Rose spins around and waves her finger at the men, beet red from sitting in the sun...
...F r om the middle of work I'll run out here...
...It's not the money...
...She sighed, "He always told people he had no complaints, that he was glad just to be alive with something to eat, but he wanted to have more...
...Who wants to remember these things...
...The Leibovitzes never had children, but they watched the Wilensky children grow up as if they were their own...
...Hit it, Rico," she says, making no effort to yell, "it wouldn't kill you...
...Such a word, pinch-hitting...
...Of course, I'd drop them all for the baseball g a m e . '' "You suggesting that I should invite you a g a i n ? " I teased...
...I think about the future, maybe I could travel a little in America...
...So I wrote her again...
...They play so much at night...
...There could be a dog barking that you're not so sure about why he's barking, there could be a sound...
...Carleton Fisk...
...Cause there's nothing to be snobby about in Cincinnati except Johnny Bench...
...So I looked on the map and told her, you want me to visit, you'll move either to Cleveland or Detroit, then I'll visit...
...What we went through, you know, it was frightening...
...M y cousin Sylvio was nineteen years old when the Germans killed him...
...H e ' s hitting for somebody...
...Maybe it was Radam...
...As the Red Sox went out in order she opened the program and examined the faces of the ball players...
...Cousin Walter was married, and both his children had gone to college...
...Rose Leibovitz shakes her head as the men around us swear at the Boston third b a s e m a n . " P o o r Mr...
...N u , so Aparicio's not a Pole...
...You know where that is, Czestochowa...
...I have relatives in Chicago who I write to...
...Not a Polack, a Pole...
...He wanted the feeling of having real money...
...But it w a s , " she struggled for the word, "you come out of it ashamed...
...This was in Wloclawek, I think...
...Would you like t h a t ?" Rose looked up from her program just in time to see Boog Powell of the Orioles come to the plate...
...Jews, millions of them living in there, none of them related to any of us...
...To know her is to know of her interest in the game, of her truly deep concern for the destiny of the Boston Red Sox...
...H e ' s pinch-hitting...
...The crowd was small and the distance from our seats to home plate seemed so great I wondered whether Rose could see the ball leave the pitcher's hand, or even follow it after it had been hit...
...As predicted, the rightfielder caught the ball and Rose squinted in the sun at the next batter who walked slowly to the plate a hundred miles away...
...And here's Mr...
...Luis Aparicio and all my other American friends and we'll sit on the bleachers and we'll scream and enjoy ourselves and thank God we can have a good time...
...How can people like me come here at night...
...Rose adjusted her position on the hard bleacher bench...
...Petrocelli, striking out...
...A big shot...
...Now I'm here, this is my count r y , " she said, gesturing toward the grandstands and playing field...
...If he doesn't have to run he'll catch it...
...Rose hadn't missed a pitch...
...T h a t ' s when I feel peaceful...
...Then she shook her head...
...H e ' l l catch i t , " Rose was saying...
...Maybe you cry a little, too, when nobody sees...
...d e r f u l . Baseball's wonderful, America's wonderful...
...She says, I'll get you a ticket...
...Who can tell from out here...
...Griffin who I always call Merv because he has a first name I can't remember if they told it to me fifty t i m e s ." "Doug Griffin," I help her...
...T h a t ' s why I don't come here alone...
...Shimon always was ashamed...
...But I don't think about that so much...
...And so we were sitting together in the right field bleachers of Fenway Park on a beautiful autumn afternoon...
...All the noise is wonderful...
...Could it be that I'm getting tired just from sitting in the sun...
...Face more the other way, then when he hits it, it's coming h e r e . " She pauses, reflecting on her own words...
...Maybe second base players have uninteresting names...
...All he does is hits home runs on the wrong side...
...T h a t ' s good...
...Doug Griffin...
...We could have used some of that money...
...You know, people are strong, they come through things...
...But out here, everybody's making noise and nobody gets hurt...
...I 'm thinking that lots of these boys here look too young to be making so much money...
...Hit it, R i c o , " she says, making no effort to yell, " i t wouldn't kill you...
...You know, as the game goes o n ," she remarked, " t h e players get smaller...
...He could be a P o l e . Everybody Polish walking around in Boston still has his real name...
...You know where Cincinnati i s ?" I laughed...
...Anyway, Sylvio with the temperament, he's going to be Mr...
...I s that his real name, you think...
...Big shot...
...So he stands there in the doorway and this young German officer asks to go inside but Sylvio tells him ' n o . ' Just like that...
...Believe me, it's wonderful...
...A a h , maybe he's just not strong enough...
...And you start all over again, almost brand new...
...When something flies out here over the wall, somebody big like you should be sitting right where you are ready to catch...
...When you get old, and you come from what I came from, people look at you and they feel sorry, or they think you're doing pretty good for an old lady, or t h e y ' re pleased that you got a little money and a clean apartment...
...I told her, how can I come to Cincinnati and see you...
...But she saw, she followed, she enjoyed...
...And I'll bring Mr...
...N o . " " N o matter...
...Whether at the bakery she runs on Clyer Street in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston or at her small apartment ten blocks away on Wellington Avenue — on an afternoon or evening the Red Sox are playing, she's listening to the game...
...I go where they go...
...I said...
...Boog Powell had lifted a long high fly which had taken Boston's right fielder to the warning track...
...The officer wants to go inside...
...OUR PEOPLE A BASEBALL FAN THOMAS J. COTTLE I wasn't really surprised when Rose Leibovitz suggested one September afternoon that we go to the baseball game...
...One time it's too far this way, one time too far that way, maybe he should stand different...
...I imagined her remembering the faces of her relatives and friends who perished in Eastern Europe when she was a young woman...
...There could be a knock on the door...
...Carleton Fisk, that's a real name...
...Nobody's in danger out here, except if Mr...
...I have my job, I have my home, I have friends like you, I have my Red Sox, my special boyfriends like Petrocelli and Carleton Fisk, and Mr...
...It's at night when it's quiet and you're lying in bed and you can't sleep because it's so quiet, that's when I worry just a little...
...Leibovitz watches the Red Sox, Leibovitz doesn't catch the ball...
...You can't be that way and play this g a m e ." A peculiar look comes over Rose's face, breaking her concentration and causing her right eye to close slightly...
...How do you like that...
...I got a friend, maybe she's a cousin, from Czestochowa...
...ing, sorting through memories she might wish to tell me...
...You like that name, h u h ?" "Sure, it's Polish, isn't i t ? " Rose begins laughing, as do the men behind us who had overheard us speaking...
...Between the pitches, and especially between innings when one is supposed to enjoy one of baseball's periodic lulls, I could see Rose Leibovitz thinkTom Cottle, who writes about real people, is the author of BLACK CHILDREN, WHITE DREAMS (Houghton Mifflin) and A FAMILY ALBUM: PORTRAITS OF INTIMACY AND KINSHIP (Harper and Row...
...They knew they didn't have a chance against the Nazis but they fought, they made trouble...
...She writes back and she says, if that's the way you feel, don't come...
...People yelling, having a good time, even getting a little drunk, but nobody hurting nobody...
...I still have plans, lots of things to do...
...Luis Aparicio," she says with obvious relish...
...Big brown door, twice his size, I remember...
...The Red Sox don't go to Cincinnati...
...They watched their mothers and fathers and sisters get killed, taken to the camps, so they hid as long as they could and did what they could...
...This is a ball player...
...Sylvio, he says ' n o . ' So the officer asks again...
...What does she mean Boston's so snobby...
...The Leibovitzes were quick to say they were never rich, but they were also far from poor...
...This is peace out here for me, people yelling, shouting, kill the umpire, kill this one, kill that one, people hoping, screaming, it's won...
...T h e y shot h i m ?" " O n l y five t i m e s , " Rose answers, lips pursed, but no emotion in her voice...
...S o you know what she says...
...A dollar and a half for one of these seats, that's a fair enough price for anyone to pay...
...Your friend Griffin could be Gratovsky, huh...
...All the resistance in those days, you know, was young people...
...P o w e l l . " " A big man...
...S o you see where temperament gets you...
...Who remembers now...
...Petrocelli and Mr...
...D o n ' t worry, he'll catch it...
...Just a P o l e . " Rose looks at me and grins...
...A short woman with smooth white skin, her forehead dotted with specks of brown melanin, her nose straight, turning up just slightly at the end, and her grey-blue eyes always so misty, teary even when she fetched memories for me, she loves to look out on the beautiful green outfield and breathe the fresh peanut-and-beery air of the ball park...
...The whole world could think that we were right and the Germans were wrong...
...Brooks Robinson...
...I like it better here with my Carleton F i s k . " Rose shrugged, and for an instant a serious look crossed her face...
...Sometimes at night you think over your life, maybe you dream a little, maybe you dream a little t o o much e v e n . " Rose smiled...
...T h i s is what you stay alive for...
...Can you hear him...
...Yastrzemski socks it out and you're not ready for h i m . " Rose smiles at me and rubs her forearm as if she were chilled...
...N o . " Her tone was stern...
...The years in America had been good ones...
...A P o l e !" " R o s e , your cousin Sylvio, did he have an option?'' " O p t i o n ? " " C o u l d he have done something e l s e ?" "Sure, he could have turned away, let the officer go into the building and get himself shot in the back with five bullets instead of in the front...
...That part of my life is over...
...I don't even know if there were any Jews at all there, in Wloclawek...
...But for these prices they can't expect me to catch the ball, too...
...That doesn't h e l p , " she groans...
Vol. 1 • June 1975 • No. 2
