n the Baseball Hall of Fame there are two seats from Old Ebbets
Field. My mother's mom, Tibie, went to see Casey Stengle's Dodgers play
baseball there. With her older brother, Frankie, and her younger
brother, Sonny, these first generation fans would save their money,
travel the subway, buy game tickets for a dollar fifty, and sit in the
slated seats.
Closing my eyes, settling into the seats from a demolished ball field
in a building in Cooperstown, New York, I was echoing what my
grandmother had done. The hard, uncomfortable blue wood was welcoming
and I sat a little while longer, thinking about all the possible games
that my grandmother saw from seats just like this one. The probability
that she had ever sat in these two seats are slim. They are numbered
'1' and '2'. Finding intimate links with someone who passed away before
memory had time to record love is difficult. Interacting with members
of the previous generation is hard enough for some, but finding a
connection with grandparents who had not lived long enough for me to
meet, seemed impossible. Sitting in seats from Ebbets Field, I felt
their presence.
Baseball, the actual game, networks me to millions of Americans who
follow, or who have followed the beautiful sport. Fenway Park has
become a National Landmark. Fans from all over the world travel just to
see the Green Wall in left field, or the Single Red Seat located at an
incredible distance back in the bleachers, or the crazy corners in
left. But the stands, fabricated to last beyond wins and losses, births
and deaths, name changes and outfielders, are what connect me to my
family. I am not alone is feeling this family legacy because of the
tight fitting seats. In the bleacher seats at Fenway, there is a single
red seat where The Kid, Ted Williams, hit his longest home run. The man
who was sitting in section 42, row 37, seat 21 for the game on June 9,
1946, left with a bump on his head, a broken straw hat, and a family
Genesis in the baseball bible. I was at Fenway when his son, grandson,
and great- grandson were called to the field and presented with a
Fenway Park seat. Painted red.
My grandfather installed the love of baseball into my father. Perhaps
he was heeding the Talmud, which teaches that if a father does not teach
his son a trade, it is as though he taught him to be a robber. In
April of 1920, when the Red Sox were beginning another season with
hopes to play in October, the Polish Army had invaded Russia, who
responded in kind and drove the Polish army back into Central Poland. In
September, when the Red Sox were heading to finish nine games under
five hundred, the Polish Army returned to the offensive and by the time
of the Peace of Riza was signed in March of 1921, my Grandfather, Noham
Yzak Zagosky had come to America. In an effort to grab all that is
American, Noham, now Norman Goldstein, became a baseball fan. After
fighting in World War Two, he married and settled in Massachusetts.
Having had a taste of sorrow, hope and despair, he became a Red Sox fan.
Baseball is more than America's greatest pastime. In a country
populated by immigrants, some who have lost all family history, baseball
serves as a bridge. My love for the game is not an anomaly in my
family; my father's father taught him, my grandmother's brothers taught
her, my mother's father taught her, and now my father recounts baseball
verse to me.
The tight, hard, minimal leg room seats at Fenway Park were occupied
by my grandfather, my father and me. Connecting me to as far back as my
paternal side will stretch, the Park continues to act as a not only a
playing field for a game, but also as a a family patriarch. Now, as I
sit in the blue wooden seats of Ebbets Field with my mother, I have also
sat in the same seats that my grandmother sat in. I found, in two
wooden seats, in a building in upstate New York, the maternal roots
that grow into the outfield grass. Being at Fenway is one of the most
special things in the world for me. But, feeling Ebbets Field, and
being able to add a Matriarch to my baseball family, is so intimate that
I feel I have found a lasting connection with my Grandmother.
The chains that hold my family together are full of home runs,
sacrifice flies, change up pitches and squeeze plays. It is a family
legacy I can rejoice in.
