NOT EVERY HERO HITS HOME RUNS
Mine was right next door in Roxbury
What’s a hero? It depends on who you ask.
“I feel sorry for kids today,” Red Auerbach once noted. “When I was a kid we had heroes. Today kids have celebrities. There’s a big difference.”
That’s not to say kids can’t find people to admire in public life. Check out Fenway Park this weekend. If you ask a kid you’ll find the rosters of the Sox and Yanks are overflowing with the stuff of idols: Mookie Betts! Giancarlo Stanton! J.D. Martinez!
In the smallness of a kid’s world jocks can seem larger than life.
It’s not until later that through the passage of time we begin to see things differently.
Ronald Reagan liked to remind us that those who say we no longer live in a time of heroes “just don’t know where to look,” and he was right.
Sometimes you only have to look next door.
That thought came to mind here a few days ago upon hearing Tony Masters had died. That was a shortened version of Mastrobattista, the family name his father brought to America from the hills of Lenola, between Rome and Naples, by way of Ellis Island.
They personified the American dream.
Tony, who lived next door on Linwood Square in Roxbury, was 10 years older than this writer, which didn’t mean much as time went by, but meant everything to a 9-year-old kid who saw his 19-year-old neighbor as the coolest guy imaginable.
He rode motorcycles, played a saxophone and escorted an array of beauties who could have comprised a Miss America pageant.
Yet he always seemed to have time for the kid he called Joey.
“C’mon, Joey, let’s take a ride,” he’d say, and we’d ride all over Roxbury, from Sugar Hill to the Highlands, with the top of his Pontiac convertible down.
But it was more than the joy ride that thrilled the kid; it was being seen as Tony’s sidekick, which remains the warmest of memories today.
He took the time to notice the kid next door, to make him feel he mattered, which is how he became a personal hero here a long, long time ago.
If you ever heard balladeer Tom T. Hall singing “I Remember the Year Clayton Delaney Died,” you’d understand what Tony’s passing meant.
It might also be a reminder that all of us, even if we can’t hit a fastball out of Fenway, have opportunities to be someone’s hero.
All it takes is letting people know they matter, the way Tony did.
Goodbye, good friend, and God bless.