Remembering 1947, Baseball And What Heroes Were Like

This book is for people who love baseball, particularly people who loved baseball back in 1947, were 12 years old at the time, and had, well, a mitt.

I say this because I remember how boys behaved in that landmark year for the Series-winning New York Yankees, a team of returning WW II veterans and fresh-faced rookies.

My male classmates were obsessed with the sport: talking RBIs and double plays and box scores and related inscrutables. They worshipped Joe Dimaggio (of whom I had heard), and Phil Rizzuto (I had heard of him, too) and, probably, George (Snuffy) Stirnweiss (never heard of him, but more on Snuffy in a moment).

The boys at my innovative school on New York’s Upper East Side — where everyone, boys and girls alike, knew the United Nations song by heart and field trips to public housing were as regular as visits from Pete Seeger (whose brother, John, taught us geography) — fondled and punched, even in class, their lumpy baseball mitts throughout the thrilling baseball weeks of autumn.

Of course the girls could have pummeled baseball mitts, too, but somehow, pounding a couple of pounds of cow skin never caught on with us. We just picked sides. Rooting for the Dodgers was the way we caught the attention of boys who lived for the Yankees.

Now these mostly East Side boys were not alone. Across the river, at P.S. 69 in Jackson Heights, Queens, Frank Strauss (Frankie to Babe Ruth, more on that later, too) was another boy electrified by anything baseball. After class he would run home to 76th Street, drop his books on the kitchen table and tune in Mel Allen announcing a Yankees game on radio station WINS. In that three-baseball-team town of the late ’40s, Strauss could listen to Dodger games, too, on WHN (Red Barber), as he recalls, or Giants’ games on WMCA (Russ Hodges).

All these details are as fresh to Strauss as this morning’s walk around Woodbridge Lake in Goshen, where he weekends with his wife, Joan. So he wrote a book about that baseball year, 1947, and he called it "Dawn of a Dynasty," the start of a thrilling 18-year run during which the Yankees won 15 pennants, swelling the baseball joy in fellows like Frank Strauss well into manhood.

And far beyond.

"I wanted to tell young people today what baseball used to be like," Strauss says.

It was a lovely thing, that baseball: two leagues, no divisions, hardly any night games ("baseball was made to be played in sunlight," Strauss says), hardly any televised games, and the athletes played for love, not money.

"Every boy in New York City wanted to be a Major League baseball player," Strauss tells me.

And why was that?

"It looked like an excellent life, playing before all those people." Also, for a Jewish boy who escaped with his family to the United States in 1936 and spoke German at home (which kept Strauss from inviting friends over, at least until the war ended), loving baseball was a ticket to American boyhood — not to mention a great way to spend Sunday afternoons.

A 60-cent seat in the right bleachers for a Sunday double-header at "the stadium" was no farther away than a nickel subwayride. Strauss went alone, usually, and sometimes with his dad, who tried to like the game, "but he never got the hang of it," Strauss says.

Then there were the heroes.

Baseball was full of them. Like Babe Ruth. Distant heroes, usually.

But Strauss used to walk a dog for a neighbor who promised to introduce the boy to her uncle.

"Babe," the neighbor called into another room one day as Strauss returned her Scottie. "Someone would like to meet you."

Strauss figures he should have known. A big, black Lincoln parked in this Queens neighborhood had to signal a visitor of note.

The Babe was as advertised. "Huge. Gravelly voiced," Strauss remembers. " ‘Hiya kid,’ he said."

They talked about baseball, and loving the Yankees, and their chances for the season, and then the great man wrote in the boy’s autograph book "To Frankie Strauss, from Babe Ruth."

That summer, the Babe died.

Strauss framed the autograph and has it still.

Not all heroes were the super kind, though.

"I bonded with George ‘Snuffy’ Stirnweiss," Strauss remembers. "He was never a great hitter, but he was a good fielder, a gutsy, tough little player. I related to him. So I wanted to be a second baseman for the Yankees."

That never happened. Strauss went to Antioch, where he majored in political science, worked as a copy boy at the New York Post (yes, a reporter would type a page, yell "copy," and Strauss would run pick it up). Later he did radio play-by-play for high-school sports in Needles, CA, worked as a newspaper editor, a Democratic Party strategist, and, finally, communications director for the Council of Jewish Federations in the United States and Canada, managing his whole life to indulge his two great passions: politics and sports.

And though baseball has changed with games at night, and free-agent status splitting up team members propels beloved players from one city to another, and a pile of divisions has forced play into cold weather, "Dawn of a Dynasty" lets everyone know what the great game used to be like for baseball-crazy kids, back in 1947, like Strauss.

Strauss will be reading from "Dawn of a Dynasty" at Naugatuck Library, July 17 at 6:30 p.m., and the Oliver Wolcott Library in Litchfield, Sept. 18 at 7 p.m. The Web site for his book is www.1947yankees.com.