Yankees flavor for Martin funeral
Here’s a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1989
Dec. 30: More than 6,500 people, ranging from former President Nixon to a 9-year-old boy wearing a sweatshirt and a cap with New York Yankees insignia, turned out yesterday for Billy Martin’s funeral. More than 3,000 of them jammed St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the 70-minute service and approximately 3,500 stood outside in the chill, crowding Fifth Avenue sidewalks in front of the church. With such former and current Yankees stars as Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Ron Guidry, Willie Randolph and Don Mattingly seated in the front pew, Bishop Edwin Broderick began the mass by speaking of Martin, who was killed Monday in a traffic accident near his home in upstate New York. “This cathedral is the last place you would expect to find Billy,” Broderick said. “But it so happens this is the last place we find him. We ask the anguished question, why did it have to happen this way? We all die too young, whether we are 61, 51, 31 or 21.”
A Bay Area memorial service for Martin, a Berkeley native, will be held next week at St. Ambrose Church, 1145 Gilman St., Berkeley.
1965
Jan. 2: Everyone in the enthusiastic audience of 2,400 grinned and cheered wildly when Louis Armstrong belted out “Mack the Knife” yesterday. Even Warden Lawrence Wilson smiled. For “Satchmo” had chosen an appropriate song for the surroundings — San Quentin State Prison, where 29 stabbings occurred during 1964. The appearance of the gravel-throated jazz great was part of San Quentin’s annual New Year’s Day “Show of Stars.” And if you think the inmates went wild over Armstrong, you can guess what kind of welcome they gave Sarah Vaughan.
Wolf-whistles, and shouts drowned out the band when the sultry singer made her entrance. And then came a sudden silence as the audience — some of whom will spend the rest of their lives behind bars — strained to catch every syllable of Miss Vaughan’s rendition of “Misty.” There were 21 acts on the prison playbill yesterday, starting at 10 a.m. and running until 6 p.m. Living up to their reputations, however, the stars who stole the show were Armstrong and Miss Vaughan. As Satchmo departed, one inmate rushed up to him, shook his hand and said: “I saw you once in Europe.” Armstrong walked away shaking his head. “I wish I hadn’t had to meet him here,” he said.
1940
Jan. 2: Europe had a blackout and San Francisco had the most riotous, completely wacky New Year’s Eve in the memory of the oldest Scotch-and-soda hoister. It was a night and a morning more lacking in restraint than any I have ever witnessed. Students of social behavior looked upon it from their lofty perch of intellectualism and opined that it was the people’s answer to world hysteria, a mass expression of freedom and the joy of having it. Middle-class shallow thinkers reported they have never seen so many drunks. But anyone who missed the simple joy of jostling along Market Street missed the true kick of the evening. At Market and Powell, four kids scooped up layers of confetti in a huge sack and went about the task of throwing it back to the sidewalk whence it had been retrieved. Corps of street railway employees walked the car tracks, sweeping out the confetti and serpentine so the trolleys could get traction once more. Indulgent gripmen on the cable cars allowed their customers to ring their bells, satisfying for the few the secret ambition of almost everyone.
— Herb Caen
1914
Dec. 29: It was some celebration in North Beach — and the balance of the city for that matter — held to celebrate the completion of the Stockton Street tunnel last night. It was a typical San Francisco fiesta evening when City Engineer M.M. O’Shaughnessy presented the tunnel to the city through Andrew Gallagher, chairman of the Tunnel Committee of the Board of Supervisors; when Andrea Sbarboro, one of the oldest of North Beach residents, presented little Miss Eva Lastreto, one of the youngest, to the assembled crowd in the tunnel, and the girl broke the bottle of champagne that officially christened the bore that means so much to the city as it unites, by direct route, North Beach with the downtown district.
The ceremony inside the tunnel was a party one and well appreciated by the thousands that had gathered to see it. It was a good-natured holiday crowd, a crowd eager for the dance that was to follow all the formal ceremonies. And the crowd entered into the spirit of the thing as only a San Francisco crowd can, and made the echoes of the tunnel ring again when Miss Eva, pretty and half-frightened by all the attention, broke the bottle of wine and declared the bore ready for use by the people of the city. To the music of the Municipal band the dancing then commenced and was in full blast at an early hour this morning.