Gone

Ex-Brooklyn Dodgers’ starter Ralph Branca died yesterday at the age of 90.  He was the last living member of the 1947 team Jackie Robinson integrated and the victim of Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” that ended a three-game playoff for the NL pennant in 1951 with a win by the then-New York Giants.  Branca was all of 25 at the time, the same age as Clare.

I can’t imagine my daughter—or anyone else, for that matter—having to carry around that kind of burden for the next 65 years.  I’m sure Branca would’ve been a millionaire several times over if he had a dollar for every time some clown made a “smart” remark to him, at a restaurant or on the street or at an airport or heaven knows where else.  As far as I’m concerned, there but for the grace of God go I.

Ask me my earliest memories of great baseball players, and my answer would be all Yankees—Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Moose Skowron, all of them now dead.  As for the White Sox, it would probably be Nellie Fox, gone, too.  (But not Charlie “Paw Paw” Maxwell, now 89 and counting, and whom I remember from 1962, Bob Elson telling his audience about the newest South Sider, acquired from Detroit.  There was something about “never on Sunday,” but I can’t remember what exactly.)  Neither baseball fans nor their heroes—and goats—live forever.  But they, we, pray to be remembered, our deeds recalled, any grace exhibited in the face of defeat recounted for all who come after.