Groundbreaking was in the fall of 1927, just after The Babe swatted his sixtieth home run. The building was called the Yankee Arms and featured a leaded stained-glass window in the lobby with bats crossed over a heraldic shield the colors were home white and pinstripe blue and yellow-gold to evoke the blondness of ash. After my father received his orders-he was stationed in the Aleutian Islands for four long, bitter years-my mother moved back in with her parents at 751 Walton Avenue, one very long, very loud foul ball from Yankee Stadium. My parents’ honeymoon had been brief, one winter night by the Jersey shore-Christmas Day 1941, the only day they could find a rabbi in the pre-nuptial rush to commitment prior to his shipping out. I was a reporter for The Washington Post and a devoted second, who had taken up the gauntlet in the endless verbal duels of protracted childhood: “Who’s better? Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays? ” He was the newly appointed Director of Sports Promotions at the Claridge Hotel and newly banished from baseball because of his affiliation with its casino. It was the spring of 1983, the year Mantle’s hometown of Commerce, Oklahoma, was named one of the most toxic waste sites in America. I met Mickey Mantle in the Atlantic City hotel where my mother lost her virginity, three weeks after Pearl Harbor.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |