Читать книгу Summer of Shadows - Jonathan Knight - Страница 22

In this moment, he was better than Yogi Berra or Mickey Mantle or Ted Williams. He was what every kid playing in the sandlots of Cleveland aspired to be and who every player clinging to the last thread of his career in the minor leagues looked to for a glimmer of hope. He was Albert Leonard Rosen, who the previous year became the first man to ever receive the Most Valuable Player award by a unanimous vote. In the process, he’d become Cleveland’s first Jewish star athlete.

It hadn’t always been this way for the handsome thirty-year-old slugger. Many of the fans who now showered him with praise had taunted him in years past—never because of lack of productivity, simply because of his religious affiliation. Even opponents would ridicule Rosen early in his career. Pitchers would fire fastballs at his ribs, and when they connected, Rosen refused to rub away the pain or even wince, for fear it would only encourage them. In fact, he took the beanings as a compliment—they meant he was becoming a threat at the plate.

Born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Rosen had endured a troubled childhood. He was plagued by bouts of asthma as an infant, and his family subsequently moved to a neighborhood outside of Miami, where they were the only Jewish family in the area. Shortly after, his father abandoned the family, and young Al quickly learned to take care of himself. He was provoked into countless fights as a youngster because of his religion, but he never shied away from his heritage. He idolized the only Jewish athlete he knew, Tigers star Hank Greenberg, and would later tell people he wished his last name was “more Jewish” so people wouldn’t confuse his religious affiliation.

As his asthma slowly faded away, Rosen developed into a strapping athlete. His childhood street-fighting skills made him a good boxer, but he gained more notoriety as a baseball player. Sandwiching baseball between part-time jobs, he played American Legion ball at the age of eleven and was in a semi-pro league at fourteen. After toiling at menial jobs like a slat-painter in a venetian blind factory, Rosen was signed by the Red Sox and shipped to a farm team in Virginia. Soon after, he was released. Desperate to continue a career that seemed to have ended before it began, Rosen signed a $90-per-month contract with a Class D team in North Carolina. Eventually, the Indians took a flyer and signed him to a minor-league contract. But Rosen’s long journey to the majors was only beginning.

His powerful hitting kept him in the game, but his defense was atrocious. Managers winced whenever the ball was hit to him. Even after he made the modest jump to Class C ball, his manager pulled him aside one day and said, “Listen, kid, you’d better go home and get yourself a lunch pail. Forget about baseball. You either have it or you don’t. You don’t.” By all rights, Rosen should have quit long before. But he didn’t. He kept at it, slowly trudging up the minor-league ranks. Things started to come together in 1947 when he hit .349 at Oklahoma City, earning Texas League MVP honors and his first big-league call-up for a seven-game stint in September. In Kansas City a year later, Rosen ripped twenty-five home runs while batting .327, earning the nickname of “Hebrew Hammer.” His offensive prowess earned him a spot on the Indians’ roster for the ’48 World Series, and he pinch-hit for Satchel Paige in Game Five and, facing Warren Spahn, popped out to second.

Going into 1949, Rosen felt he had earned a spot on the roster and was stunned when he was shipped back to the minors as Cleveland stuck with aging Ken Keltner at third base. Though Keltner, then thirty-two, was coming off his finest season, his numbers dropped dramatically in 1949, and Rosen later admitted he felt that decision cost the Indians a chance to win a second straight pennant. In one of his first moves as Cleveland general manager, Hank Greenberg released Keltner on the day of the 1950 season opener. As Rosen’s name echoed over the Municipal Stadium loudspeakers when he was introduced as the starting third baseman, the gigantic crowd booed. Not only had Keltner been their guy for more than a decade, now their Jewish GM had just kicked him out the door to replace him with some other Jew they’d never heard of. It stirred the darker side of Cleveland’s unspoken ethnic territorialism. And when Rosen came to bat representing the tying run with the Tribe down two to the Tigers in the eighth inning, the booing began again. It amplified dramatically when Rosen quickly fell behind in the count, and a chant of “We Want Keltner” began to filter through the park. But Rosen clobbered the next pitch over the left-field wall to tie the game—the first home run of his major-league career. The boos instantly turned to cheers for the suddenly heroic rookie. Indians fans never again longed for Ken Keltner. Rosen led the American League with thirty-seven home runs and 116 RBI that year as Cleveland nearly stole the pennant from the Yankees.

Rosen would hit a total of fifty-two home runs over the next two seasons and became an All-Star. Despite his success, he maintained his yeoman work ethic and dedication. Even when he was hitting well, he would generally take early batting practice more than five hours before the start of a game. Though he collected more than twenty home runs and 100 RBI in 1951, he was bothered that these numbers and his batting average had dropped in his second full season. That winter he took a long, soul-searching vacation to South America to clear his head and try to refocus—this after a season that would have satisfied most young hitters.

After he was hit in the face by a line drive during a game in 1951, both eyes swelled shut, and he was taken to the hospital. Though doctors recommended he rest for a few days, Rosen insisted on rejoining the team, which had left for Philadelphia. After icing his puffed face all night, he was able to open his eyes the following day and, against the advice of the team doctor, he played. Another time, he confronted a teammate who complained his leg muscles were too tight for him to play in a crucial game against the Yankees. Suiting up with a broken nose himself, one of eleven in his career, Rosen was very persuasive, and the teammate played.

His commitment to the game also spilled into his personal life. After he’d broken into the big leagues, he informed his longtime fiancé, Terry Blumberg, that they couldn’t get married until he hit .300. She didn’t take him seriously at first but soon discovered he wasn’t kidding. Leading the league in home runs as a rookie wasn’t enough (he hit .287), nor was a second straight season of 100-plus RBI (he hit .265). Fed up, she called it off. Now stunned at the mistake he’d made, Rosen turned his laser-like focus on getting Terry back. As the 1952 season unfolded, he called her from every city and would ask her to marry him. And every time, she said no. Despondent, he finally stopped asking.

One night in St. Louis, Rosen’s roommate, Ray Boone, got tired of watching Rosen mope around and convinced him to call Terry one more time. Rosen did, and they chatted awkwardly for a few minutes. Finally, Terry asked, “Aren’t you going to ask me?”

Rosen’s face crinkled. “Ask you what?”

“What you always ask me,” she replied.

He sighed and once again asked the question. This time, Terry said yes. And Rosen finished the season with a .302 average.

Then came 1953.

Though he could have simply accepted his reputation as an all-hit, no-field player and reveled in his offensive success, Rosen was determined to become a better all-around player. “I’ve got to work and keep thinking,” he once said. “When I don’t, I’m bush league, or worse.” Rosen arrived at spring training earlier than usual in 1953 to improve his fielding, which was still a liability. Gradually, over the course of the spring, he improved, as Cleveland coach Tony Cuccinello hit him grounder after grounder. Comfortable off the field and on it, Rosen embarked on one of the finest individual seasons in Indians history. He not only raised his fielding statistics across the board, but he upped his batting average more than thirty points to .336. But where he garnered the most attention was in his power swing. He blasted a league-best forty-three home runs and drove in 145 RBI with a robust slugging percentage of .613. Not only was he the consensus MVP of the American League, he finished one thousandth of a point away from winning the triple crown. In fact, had he been called safe on a close play at first in his final at-bat of the season, he would have taken the title. But the umpire ruled Rosen missed the bag as he ran by while trying to beat out a slow grounder to third. Though Rosen could have created a controversy and perhaps etched his name in history as a star hitter wronged (particularly in an era before instant replay and constant television highlights of every game), he publicly agreed with the call, admitting he’d missed the bag.