My reading of The New York Times in print probably marks me as someone whose turn signal is always blinking, and that is mostly true. But I make no apologies for my Sunday morning routine of fixing a cup of coffee and digging through a stack of newspapers to catch up on stories I might have missed online.
I thrill at the chance of serendipity: the possibility of being surprised, delighted or even affected by some nugget of the human condition I hadn’t been searching for. Just by turning a page.
Deep in a recent Sunday edition, on page A26, I happened upon an obituary for Tommy Brown, the youngest position player to appear in a modern major-league baseball game. He was a boy of 16 in 1944 when he trotted out one afternoon to play shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
A photograph accompanying the article showed Brown, on a break from a long-ago spring-training camp, with four other Dodgers: Steve Lembo, a backup catcher; the great pitcher Don Newcombe; Roy Campanella, the Hall of Fame catcher and heart and soul of Dem Bums; and a dark-haired young man with a boyish grin.
Seeing him sent me time-traveling. Suddenly I was a boy of 13, wearing a uniform too large for my gawky frame and listening to my coach, my baseball god, impart secrets of the game to which I had surrendered my young life. The man in the photo was my old C.Y.O. baseball coach, Jim Romano, whom I hadn’t seen or thought of in 50 years.
Serendipity.
Romano was a six-foot-four prospect who had served in the Navy and paid his dues in several minor-league ports of call. Then, toward the end of the 1950 season, he was summoned to Brooklyn, where he was handed uniform number 33. Dream became reality.
On Sept. 21, Romano was the starting pitcher against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Ebbets Field, a few blocks from where he grew up. It did not go well. He gave up two walks and three singles, and was yanked before the end of the first inning.
He did much better days later against the Boston Braves, with four strikeouts in less than two innings at the end of the game. Then, on Sept. 29, he pitched four strong innings in relief in a win for the Dodgers, who would fall short of making it to the World Series.
The Dodgers season ended, and so did the major-league career of Jim Romano. He played two more years in the minor leagues, threw out his arm and was done by the age of 26. Playing baseball is like working at a newspaper; you can love the job, but don’t expect the job to love you back.
Twenty years later, Romano was a New York City police officer, helping to raise a family in the Long Island town of Deer Park and taking on the thankless task of coaching the eighth-grade baseball team of his Catholic parish, Sts. Cyril and Methodius. Instead of seeing Jackie Robinson at second, or Pee Wee Reese at short, or Duke Snider in center, he saw gangling goofs like me at first base. I was no Gil Hodges.
Now, seeing Romano in The Times, I felt a rush of memories stirred from dormancy. Breaking in my new glove by slathering it with neatsfoot oil. Taking pride in the grass-and-clay stains on my baggy uniform. Smelling hope in the fresh-cut infield grass. All those little things I would do to hold at bay the pains and responsibilities sure to come.
I felt, too, a flash of reassurance, like a quick pat on the back. Romano never yelled, or threw a bat, or made his players feel smaller than they already felt. It was always a back pat and a “We’ll get ‘em next time.” It was you, your teammates and your coach, who never mentioned his Dodger pedigree. But we knew.
Jim Romano died of prostate cancer in 1990 at the age of 63. His son Stephen described him to me as a “consistent reassuring presence” who was proud of but not defined by his brief baseball career.
The younger Romano left me with a memory of his own childhood, of the old Brooklyn Dodger, just home after a long day at a Coney Island police precinct, playing catch with the neighborhood kids. He’d throw the ball high, high, so high that it would disappear — but always return.
All this from just turning a page.
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