Swinging for the fences
At 88, Benny Wasserman is showing that life is a matter of time — and how you spend it
It was a Friday morning, and the sun was shining. To 88-year-old Benny Wasserman, that meant only one thing. Time to grab his baseball bat, button up his Detroit Tigers uniform, and head to the Home Run Park batting cages in Anaheim. There, Wasserman could give as an impersonator, and he got a himself a break and step into the booking manager named Brian cage with the 40-mph pitches, or Mulligan, who lives in Pennsylvania maybe the one with 60-mph heat. and resembles another famous But this is no rookie we’re talking American. about. Benny Baseball always goes “Brian is a Benjamin Franklin up against the top gun, which lookalike,” Fern said. launches 90-mph missiles. It’s Wasserman traveled the country like facing Clayton Kershaw in the and the world for more than two playoffs. decades, getting paid for resembling
“When I hit a home run,” says a genius. He did commercials, Wasserman, “it makes my day.” movies and television. “I was
This has been going on for 10 in ‘Leave It to Beaver’” (the 1997 years, every Friday unless it rains. movie), Wasserman told me. Prostate cancer has not stopped But the theory of relativity never Wasserman. Pulmonary fibrosis interested him as much as the has not stopped him. Nothing, it game of inches. When he greeted seems, can take the bat out of his me at his home in Cerritos, California, hands. Wasserman — who still could
“He loves it,” said Fern, Wasserman’s pass for Einstein — was wearing a wife of 65 years. Hank Greenberg jersey. The Hall of
Many years ago, as a lad in Famer, who played both the infield Michigan, Wasserman dreamed of and outfield, is one of his all-time becoming a major leaguer. Now he favorite Tigers. chases a different goal. A man of many interests,
“I’m calling it 90 at 90,” said Wasserman took me into his den Wasserman. When he hits the big and music studio, where he played 9-0, in April of next year, he wants the opening notes of “Malagueña” to prove that he can still crush a on his guitar. I asked who played screaming 90-mile-an-hour pitch. the electric keyboard, but I should
There’s one more thing worth have known the answer. Wasserman noting about Wasserman: He stepped up to the keys and worked in aerospace, as a technician played, of course, “Take Me Out to and engineer, but a merger put the Ball Game.” him out of work at 58. That’s when Speaking of, Wasserman takes a business associate of his middle in an occasional Angels game, but son asked him a question that led to the nearest ballpark is much closer an unexpected second career: “Did than that. anyone ever tell you that you look It’s in his backyard. like Einstein?” Wasserman has created a
Wasserman said no, but his curiosity mini-stadium, with a white picket was piqued. Sure enough, fence as the left field wall. The with glasses, a mustache and his infield lawn is manicured, the baselines hair tossed as if he’d plugged his are chalked and the bases are finger into a light socket, Wasserman the color of vanilla ice cream. was a dead ringer for Albert The backyard slugger fired up a Einstein. Wiffle ball pitching machine and
Two weeks later, he got a job chopped away at one pitch after another in his field of dreams, a white-haired optimist perfecting the art of eternal childhood.
This wore him out a bit, so Wasserman slumped into a lounge chair to catch his breath. He told me the prostate cancer he’s been fighting for four years has spread, but he isn’t sweating it. “When they say it’s metastasized to the bones, it’s just a matter of time,” he said. “But life is a matter of time.”
Benny and Fern have three sons. Two are lawyers and one is a retired geriatric doctor.
“Prostate cancer is really complex in older men,” and not necessarily fatal, said Michael Wasserman, the M.D. He believes in the mind-body theory that healthy living and a sense of purpose — his father’s 90-at-90 plan, for instance — can stretch longevity.
“We still don’t understand it,”
Dr. Wasserman said, “but there are so many ways a positive attitude affects our whole body and our immune system.”
That makes sense, but there was one unanswered question: Could Benny Wasserman really hit?
His youngest son, Marc, drove him to Home Run Park. The middle son, Craig, was waiting in the parking lot. The brothers often watch, and record, their father’s baseball exploits.
The batting cage staff told me no customer is anywhere near Wasserman’s age, and he goes there so often that they’ve stopped charging him.
Wasserman confessed he was a bit nervous about stepping up to the plate. He’d talked a good game about his hitting prowess, but would he wither under the pressure of high expectations and dishonor the memory of Hank Greenberg?
Not a chance.
Wasserman entered the cage and crouched in a comfortable right-handed stance. He wagged his aluminum bat and peered through his glasses, eyeing the arm of the pitching machine like a man gunning for a call-up to the majors.
Baseballs began whistling at him like meteors, but Wasserman never flinched. The machines don’t throw curveballs, but they’re erratic. One pitch up, another down, the next outside.
Wasserman tracked the offerings and grooved his swing, a compact flick of the wrists, whiffing only rarely. The real Einstein might have known something about the speed of light, gravity and the passage of time, but could he handle high heat and drive a baseball into the gap?
Wasserman began with a dribbler here and there until the timing clicked, and then he found solid contact. Thwack, thwack, thwack. A line drive, a double into right center, a rope up the middle.
And then a shot.
“Ohhhhh,” Wasserman shouted, thinking he’d belted a round-tripper, but the ball didn’t clear the beam that represents the top of the home run wall.
“Oh, yes!” Wasserman declared on another shot, but this one, as well, came up just short of glory. And then behold.
Wasserman got a pitch in his zone and muscled a bomb to right.
“Go, go, go!” Wasserman shouted as the ball soared on wings and a prayer.
Home run!
It was the first of three. The second one rifled over the center field wall. The third — a rocket to left-center — would have landed in Downey if not for the net.
“We all love him,” said Kris Wysong, the batting cage manager, who told me that quite a few younger prospects could learn a thing or two from Benny Baseball. “He hits better than most of the customers do.”
Wasserman is right.
Life is a matter of time.
How you spend it — that’s the thing.