Start of baseball stirs memories for area musician
Forget the calendar, the baseball season has started.
You don’t have to believe me, just check what’s going on down in Florida where “The Introduction To Spring Training” has begun even though the calendar insists that it’s still winter. No problem; anytime is always a good time to talk baseball; anytime.
So what if the real games haven’t started; we still have the Hot Stove League. That’s another way of saying when you want to talk about hitting the horsehide is a good time.
For me, when I have baseball on my mind all I have to do is look a hundred yards up Traver Hollow Road in Uptown Boiceville. That’s where my favorite Catskills saxophone player, Gus Mancini lives.
Those of you not in the music world may not know that Galloping Gus — alias the Sultan of Sonic Soul — was a very good ball player before he began blowing jazz.
Matter of fact, Mancini was so good, that he starred for Brooklyn’s Lafayette High School in Bensonhurst and later for top sandlot teams in Brooklyn.
Although, as Gus would put it, “That was a good 60 years ago,” the memories of growing up in The Home Of The Dodgers still resonate in his mind like a good tune on his sax.
“My Brooklyn baseball hero was Dodgers first baseman Gil Hodges,” Mancini vividly remembers, “and I actually got to meet him in a neat way.”
In those days at Ebbets Field, there was a pre-game TV show on the diamond called “Happy Felton’s Knot Hole Gang”.
The host, Felton, would invite three kids who were sandlot stars in the borough and have them work out with one of the famed Dodgers. For kid shortstops, Felton would have them play ball with Peewee Reese.
“At that time,” Mancini goes on, “I played first base and I appeared on the field with none other than Hodges. What a thrill; it was me and two other kids and Felton would pick a winner.
“We played ‘catch’ for a while, then he hit a few soft ground balls to see how we would field. When all of the ‘try-outs’ were done I wound up winning. I won a bat, a ball and nice glove to pick up those short hop grounders.”
Has his love for the saxophone not interfered with Mancini’s diamond aspirations, he might very well move up the baseball ladder into the minor pros.
Music notwithstanding, Gus also spent plenty of time during the Dodgers golden seasons when they were dubbed “The Boys of Summer.” Ebbets Field in the early 1950s was the place to be and Mancini was there.
“At every game,” he recalls, “there was a little and called ‘The Dodgers Sym-Phony’ that would get the crowd going and Gladys Goodding was the organist. She wrote a tune, ‘Follow The Dodgers’ that she’d play when the Brooks would run out of their dugout to start the game.”
At Ebbets Field, the bleachers had a different name, Pavilion, and you got in from a Bedford Avenue entrance for a half-abuck.
Mancini: “It wasn’t a ‘Stadium,’ but a ball park. Every seat was near the field, even the bleachers. That created an intimacy that’s lost nowadays.”
Dodgers fans were admired for being the most fair-minded in baseball. They treated opponents such as St.Louis Cardinals Hall of Famer Stan Musial with awe and respect.
As a matter of fact, Musial got his nickname at Ebbets Field because whenever he faced the Dodgers he murdered their pitchers. One day, as Stan came to the plate some fan started chanting, “Here comes The Man.”
Others picked up on it and he became Stan The Man.
“I know about that,” Mancini allows. “I saw Musial in a double-header with Brooklyn and he hit three home runs. I remember him being so silent and graceful in his batting stance.
“Then there was Jackie Robinson. Just watching him take a lead off third base — and daring the pitcher — was worth the price of admission.”
Those of us — Gus included — who were around when Hodges went into a World Series slump against the hated Yankees will never forget how kind The Faithful were to their hero.
“We didn’t boo Gil,” says Mancini, “we lit candles and prayed for him to come out of it. A fan reaction such as that today would be unimaginable.
“Then again, in many ways baseball died when the Dodgers left Brooklyn.”
Author-columnist-commentator Stan “The Maven” Fischler resides in Boiceville and New York City. His column appears each week in the Sunday Freeman.