Part One
You don’t know Arnold Hano. How could you? You live in a world of bullet points and exclamation points, a place where sports writers aspire either to the pomposity of ESPN’s Sports Reporters or to the cacophony of Around the Horn. Where once a journalist would worry about supporting an argument with keen observations or weighty statistics, all that seems necessary now is a good set of lungs to shout down dissenting opinions.
Arnold Hano is more than this. If you do know him, you’ve probably read A Day In The Bleachers
, Hano’s account of the first game of the 1954 World Series, or you might’ve read some of the pieces he wrote for Sport Magazine or Sports Illustrated over the ensuing thirty years. If you’re a television watcher, you might have come across some of his profiles in TV Guide, and if you’re a fan of pulp fiction, you’ve undoubtedly read one of his dime store novels.
I knew all this about Mr. Hano before I met him this past February. In some ways, he was exactly what you would expect from an eighty-six year-old man. He was direct, and to the point, and didn’t bother with unnecessary chitchat. We spoke on the phone twice, and when I asked if he’d consent to an interview, he started out by interviewing me. He asked about my interest and questioned my intentions. He wasn’t suspicious, he was just wondering why I wanted to talk to him and if I would be worth his time. Even when we finally agreed on a date, he offered to give me thirty minutes or so, with an option for more “depending upon my ability.” We ended up talking for close to two hours, the greatest compliment he could’ve given me.
Mr. Hano and his wife live in the tiny town of Laguna Beach, a city best known for its art scene and a television series on MTV. I walked up the steps to the house on a crisp Sunday morning and was greeted by Mrs. Hano, who led me into a small study, one wall of which was packed with books from floor to ceiling. In the corner sat a small, thirteen-inch television set. Mr. Hano pointed towards it, saying, “You can see that we read a lot more than we watch television.” And with that, we were off.
BronxBanter: I want to start at the beginning. Tell me about where you grew up. New York City, right?
Arnold Hano: New York City. Mainly I tell people I grew up in the Bronx, and sometimes I tell people I grew up in the Polo Grounds, which is across the river in Manhattan, but I was born in Washington Heights, which is at the top of Manhattan. And then when I was about four years old we moved across the Harlem River and into the Bronx. I grew up in the Bronx and went to DeWitt Clinton High School, which is the high school at the north end of the Bronx, and we were there until I was maybe fourteen or fifteen when we moved into Manhattan. The formative years were those years between maybe four and fifteen.
BB: You talk about those formative years. How important were sports, either playing sports or following sports, in your daily life?
AH: Both, both, both, both. I played everything, and I read everything, and I followed everything. My father brought home two newspapers everyday. He brought home the Herald Tribune and the New York Sun. I said, “How come you read the Tribune and not the Times?” And he said the Tribune was better written. So I was reading sports pages in the Tribune and I started reading Bill Heinz in the Sun when Heinz was just breaking in. Do you know Heinz at all? Great writer. I played all the ancillary games. I played punch ball, I played stick ball, I played stoop ball… There was a game in the playground called box ball, that was a very good game that we played. And then I started playing baseball in sandlot games and Police Athletic League teams and stuff like that. I was a walk-on in my senior year of college as a pitcher. I know looking at me you don’t believe all this, but I was once actually tall. I’ve lost five inches of height to issues with my spine.
BB: And what school was that?
AH: That was Long Island University out in Brooklyn. I’ll tell you about the walk-on later. But I played basketball, I played football, all the sports. I ran, I did everything. I was very involved in sports. I remember when I was a kid we had a stickball league behind our house. There was a length of houses, lots of room. I hit fifty-three homeruns in one season, I remember that! [Laughing.]
BB: That’s so funny, because I remember when I was a kid we had a field, a grass field – it wasn’t stick ball in the alley – but I remember keeping track of things like that, how many home runs we had hit in this make believe season that we played whenever we wanted.
AH: That’s right… So I was very involved.
BB: So did young boys in the 20s and 30s, did they dream of growing up to be sports heroes as much as they do today?
AH: I did. I can’t tell you their dreams, but I dreamed of standing on the mound at Yankee Stadium and striking out Lou Gehrig. That was a dream of mine, to throw my screwball past Lou Gehrig. Carl Hubbell had been one of my heroes, so I learned how to throw a screwball. I could control a screwball better than I could control a fastball. When my brother and I – my brother was three and a half years older, he was my mentor, he was the greatest big brother anybody ever had. He and I would go to ballgames, and in those days at the end of the ballgame you could run out on the field. We would slide into the bases before the bases were uprooted, and we would stand in centerfield and see whether we could see home plate, because of the mound, and we were little kids. He could and I couldn’t, and that sort of stuff. It was just a wonderful growing up experience to have, especially to have the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium across the river from each other within spitting distance. My grandfather was a cop in the New York City Police Department, and he had year passes to the Polo Grounds and Yankee Stadium, and he left them to me, so I got in to see as many games as I could see every summer. I was a Giant fan more than a Yankee fan, but I was a Babe Ruth fan, so I would do both.
BB: What was that like, growing up like that? You can’t really relate to that now. Even the Mets and Yankees are far apart, and the Dodgers and Angels here aren’t even in the same city. What was it like with those teams so close together?
AH: I’ll tell you even how closer it was. We lived in an apartment building in Washington Heights – this was from the time I was born until I was four – where Bob Meusel and Irish Meusel lived. Bob Meusel played left field for the Yankees, Irish Meusel played left field for the Giants. One would be using the apartment while the other was on the road, so they shared that apartment. They lived one story above us. You can’t get any closer to baseball than to have as your neighbor Bob Meusel and Irish Meusel. I used to ask my father, “Who’s better, Bob Meusel or Irish Meusel?” And my father was very, very diligent about questions like that. He’d say, “Bob Meusel has a better arm, he’s a better fielding left fielder. Emil…” He never called him Irish. “Emil Meusel has more power.” I’d say, “Well who’s better?” And he’d say, “You have to decide that.” So having the two teams there, my brother was a Giant fan and I was a Yankee fan up to 1926 when Tony Lazzeri struck out against Glover Cleveland Alexander and the Yankees lost that ballgame by one run and the Series. My brother said, “See, I told you how lousy they were.” So I shifted in 1926 to the Giants, and 1927 began the Yankee dynasty that may have been one of the greatest teams ever. But I didn’t really care because I still remained a Babe Ruth fan. I loved watching him hit homeruns.
BB: Now tell me about Babe Ruth, please. I know…
AH: You know the fat guy.
(more…)
