Israel Matzav

Overnight music video - Baseball special

I hope you'll all forgive the interruption from Pesach (Passover). Baseball season starts on Sunday and I've been saving this for a while. The Red Sox open the season against the hated Yankees at Fenway Park on Sunday night. For those of you who haven't been reading for long enough, I'm a Sox fan (and a Boston sports fan generally).

A copy of the picture at the top left of this post hangs in the 'deli' of Dad's assisted living facility. Dad tells me that it was taken on the last day of the season in 1941. He probably meant the last home game, because the Red Sox finished 1941 against the Philadelphia Athletics. Ted Williams, the guy on the left, hit .406 in 1941, the last man to hit .400. Here's what he did the last two days of the 1941 season:

September 27, 1941: Ted Williams has a .401 average to begin the day and turns down the offer by Red Sox manager Joe Cronin to sit out the game. Against Philadelphia, he goes 1-for-4 to drop his average to .3995.

September 28, 1941: On the season's final day, Ted Williams finishes with a flourish. He collects four hits in five at bats in the 12-11 first-game Boston victory in Philadelphia to bring his average to .404. He goes 2-for-3 in the second game against rookie Fred Caligiuri. Williams ends the season with a .406 batting average.

The guy next to Williams is Joe DiMaggio. DiMaggio hit in 56 straight games that season. Williams won the MVP (Most Valuable Player) award. DiMaggio won the World Series.

Dad remembers that picture because he was at Fenway Park the day it was taken. At the age of not-quite-14 it was his first Major League baseball game. His Uncle Morris (whom I never met) took him. Dad has been a baseball fan ever since. He took me to my first game when I was 6 years old (some of my kids did better than that, others did not - it's 6,000 miles from here to Fenway).

With that introduction, let's go to the videotape, which is actually about DiMaggio and not about Williams. This song really hit home for reasons I'll tell you after the tape.

Let's go to the videotape.



I have to tell you that when my daughters heard this song (without the video) they thought that the name "Joe DiMaggio" was made up by the songwriters. They had no clue he was a real person until I told them. Yes, you can shelter your kids in Israel....

But of course, that's not why this song hits home....

The reason it hits home is that I had a friend growing up (with whom I probably have not been in contact for about 35 years), who used to go to (Sox, Bruins and Celtics) games with me all the time, who has become an important Rabbi since then. And his name - like the guy in the tape - is Shmuel (although he was not known as Sammy - and please don't try to guess who he is in the comments). My oldest grandchild will be 2 in June, God willing, so I guess there's still time for him to come home with a Gdolim card for me.

And no, I don't have DiMaggio's or Williams' cards. Most of the cards were cleaned out of my parents' house long before I went to try to find them in 1999.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:06 AM