Maligned in the 20th Century ... yet whose star rose in the 21st, after-the-jump:
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Seventy years ago this coming October, Ralph Branca became either the most disliked or most pitied (or both) athlete in America … and stayed that way for years, as he surrendered the most famous home run (to Bobby Thomson) in baseball history. Yet beginning at the dawn of the 21st Century, his star rose considerably …. and not simply due to the passage-of-time.
There was (1) the revelation that Thomson had an unfair advantage during that at-bat … (2) that Ralph Branca’s mother was in fact, a Jewish woman (who lost several siblings in the Holocaust) yet hid her background from everyone, with Ralph undergoing a Bar Mitzvah at age eighty-four and, (3) it became widely-known that he did more than any of his teammates to welcome Jackie Robinson in 1947 and thus play a role in advancing race relations. I have touched on parts of this in past writings, yet five years after his death: his story deserves to be told in-full.
Born in January, 1926 as the 15th child (out of 17) to a trolley-car operator (who emigrated from Italy) and a mother who emigrated from present-day Slovakia, he grew-up just north of NYC in the (relatively) integrated city of Mt. Vernon (which played a later role). He grew-up as a Catholic (with a stint as an altar boy) and attended New York University for a year (playing both basketball and baseball) as he was ineligible for the military draft (due to asthma and a punctured eardrum).
Attending a try-out in 1943, he was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers and pitched the next year at age eighteen — not uncommon during the war years, when very young and old players were the norm. His break-out year was 1947, when he won twenty-one games and later went on to three All-Star appearances.
His 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers were in first place by quite a bit with a few weeks to go when the cross-town NY Giants made a historic comeback — winning 37 of their final 44 games — that led to a deciding playoff game at the Polo Grounds (the home field of the Giants). In that game, the Giants were trailing 4-1 entering the last frame, yet began yet another comeback, and Ralph Branca was brought-in to face Bobby Thomson — who had been born in Scotland — who then hit the pennant-winning three-run home run into the short left stands. The Sporting News later declared it to be baseball’s greatest moment.
Ralph’s bad luck continued the next year, sustaining a back injury that curtailed the rest of his career. In 1954 he was traded to Detroit, then released and signed to the NY Yankees … alas, in the one year (in a nine-year stretch) they did not reach the World Series. He missed the entire 1955 season due to an arm injury (the one year that the Brooklyn Dodgers did win the World Series) and retired the next year after allowed to pitch one final game as a Brooklyn Dodger.
Yet that was in the near future … right afterwards, he became a hated figure by Dodger fans and for years, Branca was haunted by that memory (feeling that he had let his teammates down). Immediately after, he asked his fiancée’s cousin (a Jesuit priest at Fordham University), “Why me”? “God chose you,”Father Pat Rawley said, “because he knew you were strong enough to bear this cross.”
My Giants fan father (Ed Sr.) always spoke highly of Ralph Branca as a result and each day Ralph had a prayer of his own to God, “Make me worthy of your love”.
And bear it he did, quite stoically: yet always hounded about it. In those days, the other major sports leagues (NFL, NBA and NHL) were fledgling — and so it was baseball (and boxing) that commanded most sports fans’ interest. Branca was most concerned that his daughters would hear him heckled at a future game, or that his wife would hear about it when someone recognized her name. He and Bobby Thomson made some joint appearances together, and Thomson always felt bad for him. In fact, his future batting average against Branca was poor, with Thomson admitting he took pity on him. Years later Branca said, “A guy can commit murder yet be pardoned twenty years later. I didn’t get pardoned”.
Then ………... the 21st Century dawned.
I was reading the Wall Street Journal at lunchtime at my office when a 2001 front-page story by Joshua Prager (the nephew of talk-show host Dennis Prager) told a long-hidden tale … now being revealed in the 50th anniversary year of that game.
Prager had long heard rumors of something and pursued every lead …. which resulted in him confronting (and thus obtaining admissions from) those Giants players involved in the scheme (when he told them he knew the name of the electrician who set-it-up, they felt it was time to confess).
Beginning on July 20th through that fateful game, the Giants set-up a Wollensak telescope in the centerfield clubhouse, and via a buzzer/towel relay system, were able to steal the catcher’s signs and alert the batter as to what the incoming pitch would be (Prager said they did not do so in the subsequent World Series: afraid that with so many reporters, it might be found). The WSJ article ended with Prager asking Thomson about taking the relayed signs during the game (“Yes”) yet when it came to the final at-bat … “I’d like to say more “no” than yes”. (I had trouble putting the paper down, reading that).
When Joshua Prager contacted Branca, he revealed that he was told of it in 1954 when he was traded to Detroit (from new teammate Ted Gray) yet he decided never to publicly acknowledge it — his stoicism winning-out over his anguish. He did now feel a sense of relief, with his family feeling blessed. Still, as he told Prager, “People don’t want history to be changed”. Prager a few years later wrote this book on the subject.
Ten years later in 2011, Prager found another revelation about Branca, after someone (who read Prager’s 2008 book) asked him about Ralph’s mother Kati. After a detailed search, it turns out that she had emigrated in 1901 from (present-day) Slovakia from a Jewish family, had siblings who perished in the Holocaust, wrote to her family to ask permission to marry outside the faith (which was granted) and went to her grave in 1969 never acknowledging her roots.
Prager and Branca had lunch over it, with Prager learning that there had been some questioning in the family about their mother’s background, yet she would never discuss/admit it (and thus, they did not press her on it). Prager also learned that — as converts to any religion/cause often do — she became more Catholic than her husband, raising Ralph and his siblings that way. Ralph said she always taught her kids to be open to other races, no doubt as a result of her own experiences.
Ralph Branca underwent a Bar Mitzvah at age eighty-four and embraced his new-found heritage in his final years. This resulted in a renewed interest in his life, with one rabbi (a Dodger fan as a boy, who wept that day) saying Ralph was a “tinnok she’nishba– a child ‘taken captive’ in infancy who has no knowledge of his true background and who is therefore not judged by laws of Jewish observance but rather by moral character and behavior” — which he felt Ralph had in abundance. Another wrote that “as the son of a Jewish mother, he is a Jew. While we may never agree on which religion offers the true path to salvation, I have deep respect and admiration for the faith Mr. Branca has shown throughout his life”.
One dissenter to the notion that Branca was (albeit unknowingly) Jewish …. is your-friend-and-mine, Alan Dershowitz. Writing in the Washington Post, author Susan Jacoby took him to task for his remarks that Branca “willingly accepted another religion” and unlike Sandy Koufax (who would not play on Yom Kippur), Ralph Branca did not pitch …. “Jewishly”. She added, “Does he actually believe this dreck?” Writing in Commentary magazine, one writer concluded, “There is no question that no matter which group can lay claim to him ... he was always a mensch”.
Finally, it was only this past decade that his 1947 pivotal role in welcoming Jackie Robinson to baseball — and thus in race relations — became widely known. As a kid, I (and, I assume, others) had read mostly about the role that the Dodger shortstop Harold “Pee Wee” Reese played. And important it was: as he was looked up to by other players (later becoming team captain in 1950). It has been long reported (though never proven) that during a game in Cincinnati, when the crowd was heckling Robinson: Reese (having grown-up a little over 100 miles away in Kentucky) walked over to Robinson and talked to him with his arm on his shoulder … lessening the heckling. Whether or not that story is true, it is undeniable that Reese’s acceptance of Robinson was sincere.
Add to that the far longer career that Reese had with the Dodgers (plus one World Series title as a player, another as a coach) until 1959, induction into the Hall of Fame and his time in the spotlight with a national TV broadcasting career in the 1960’s … and it is understandable that he is most associated with Robinson.
Yet as Jackie’s widow Rachel Robinson (who is still alive at age ninety-eight) has long said, “It was not just Pee Wee”. It was not until the 2013 biopic “42” (Jackie’s number) that the role of Ralph Branca began to receive more attention — no doubt due to his 1951 notoriety, shorter career and time out of the limelight (running an organization helping former players in need for seventeen years).
When it became known that Jackie was to join the team in the 1947 season, a petition was circulated among Dodger players to not have Robinson accepted onto the team, which was signed by several players who were from the Jim Crow region. Branca was among those who refused to sign, and during a pre-season game, Robinson thanked him for this, beginning a friendship until Jackie’s death.
During the petition drive, the twenty-one year old Branca made the case to his teammates that they didn’t have to socialize with Robinson … just accept him, asking couldn’t they all see how his talent could lead them to the World Series? Branca later said that this was easier for him to say, having grown-up in the aforementioned integrated neighborhood and having two immigrant parents (plus the influence of his mother). Branca also felt that some of his teammates from the Jim Crow region were less opposed to playing with Robinson personally … than worried about what their families/friends would think, and so he tried to win them over via persuasion, not scorn.
Two southern-born players were among those who signed the petition and asked to be traded. One was Fred “Dixie” Walker, one of the most productive and popular hitters for the team in the 1940’s (nicknamed in Brooklynese “The People’s Cherce”) who started the petition and (unpersuaded) his trade request was fulfilled after the 1947 season.
The other was back-up catcher Bobby Bragan, who withdrew his request after one week after he saw what Robinson contributed and had to endure — later becoming a friend of Robinson and in his (far more successful) coaching and managing career tried to make amends, thanking Branca for “turning on the light for him and his teammates”.
Even though Branca had only attended New York University for one year, it gave him an additional common interest with Robinson, who had attended UCLA (an uncommon trait for baseball players in the 1940’s).
Branca both dined with Robinson and would shower with him when others hesitated and on Opening Day of April 15, 1947 (a game that Jimmy Carter’s parents attended, with “Miss Lillian” saying it made her a Dodger fan for life) Branca stood next to Jackie during the on-field player introductions. When Branca’s brother John asked him why he did that (lest a gunman take aim at Robinson and miss), Ralph replied ... “Then I would have died a hero”.
And so it is unsurprising that Jackie Robinson stood with Ralph Branca at his time of need. In the photo below, Branca (at right) saw that while his other teammates trudged off the field after the fateful 1951 home run, Robinson stayed to ensure that Bobby Thomson touched all of the bases. And in the clubhouse, he was the only one who gave Branca more than a pat-on-the-back, comforting him by saying, “We wouldn’t have made it to this game without you”.
Their friendship was more than on-the-field: Branca and his wife visited the Robinsons at their home in Stamford, Connecticut and Branca was among those who were pallbearers at Jackie Robinson’s 1972 funeral. Rachel Robinson began the Jackie Robinson Foundation in 1973, and unsurprisingly Branca was a major supporter of its work. Among the many kind words Rachel Robinson had to say about him in life (and after his death), the best surely must be: “Ralph Branca was good to my husband … when it wasn’t fashionable to be good to him”.
When the Buffalo Bills placekicker Scott Norwood missed a game-ending 48-yard field goal that might have won the 1991 Super Bowl … Branca wrote him a letter, offering him all of the support and suggestions he could offer. Branca released his autobiography in 2011, adding the most recent news of learning about his secret ancestry just before it was to be published.
When he died five years ago in November, 2016 at the age of ninety, he had been the last surviving member of the 1947 Brooklyn Dodgers team (when Jackie Robinson debuted). And for all of the anguish he had to go through during the fifty years from 1951-2001 …. I hope that the last fifteen years were his salvation.
Now, on to Top Comments:
From Paul A:
In today’s Pundit Round-up (compiled by our intrepid T/C colleague Chitown Kev) — I nominate this comment by The Geogre, analyzing the lack of danger going forward in eliminating the current filibuster.
From PvtJarHead:
In my own diary (about one of the Trump rioters vowing to do it again) — I nominate this comment made by Megalion.
From Otteray Scribe:
In the diary by Officer Ronnie Peterson on the seventy-six year-old San Francisco woman fighting against an unprovoked attack— this comment by Kansas Born (referencing her motivation and a ... board of education).
Highlighted by TrueBlueMajority:
In the diary by ian douglas rushlaw about insecure white men committing hate crimes— this comment made by RedDan.
And from Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the front-page story about the GOP (on a federal and state level) wanting to use the proceeds of the pandemic relief package for tax cuts— NorthBronxDem cited one governor’s grandiose wish list…. that will probably fall into the best-laid-plans file, due to careful legislative writing.
TOP PHOTOSMarch 17th, 2021 Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful *PictureQuilt™* below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo. (NOTE: Any missing images in the Quilt were removed because (a) they were from an unapproved source that somehow snuck through in the comments, or (b) it was an image from the DailyKos Image Library which didn't have permissions set to allow others to use it.) |
And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
3) Oops by McGovern78 +1214) Seems an appropriate time to repost… by Crashing Vor +11920) “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”? … by marksb +8122) [image] by LamontCranston +7824) Thanks Greg. The only GQP priority i … by learn +75