How do you thank somebody who has handed?
Oscar Zamora was a aid pitcher for the Chicago Cubs within the mid-Seventies. He wasn’t excellent, to place it kindly. During his Wrigley Field tenure, Cubs followers would serenade him as he exited the sport, usually in mid-inning after having surrendered a blizzard of runs. Here is a pattern verse, sung to the tune of the long-ago Dean Martin hit “That’s Amore.”
When the pitch is so fats
That the ball hits the bat,
That’s Zamora!
From the press field the place I generally sat, he appeared to simply accept the razzing with equanimity, as if he agreed it was deserved. I used to be a younger reporter on the time, and after video games, I’d move him within the clubhouse as he was dressing quietly at his locker, whereas I sought out one or one other of his extra outstanding teammates. Zamora pitched for the Cubs for elements of three seasons, and I can’t bear in mind ever interviewing him for a narrative and even stopping to talk. He was one in that class — an interchangeable half, a minor actor who wouldn’t final lengthy within the sport.
Zamora was 31, in his second big-league season, on the day in May 1975 once we got here closest to sharing an actual dialog. My goal that afternoon, as I strode previous his locker, was considered one of his teammates — a star infielder I knew barely who would win the league batting title that 12 months. I had a favor to ask.
Like Zamora and his Cubs teammates, I performed the sport, although not credibly sufficient to have made my highschool workforce. Still, baseball was my ardour. I performed shortstop for a bar-league softball workforce, and my bucket-list dream was a brand new glove. Not simply any glove — a serious league-quality one, made from a grade of leather-based and stitching so tremendous, it was manufactured solely for skilled ballplayers.
No drawback, the infielder stated. He named a worth, and I handed him the cash. Every week later, I returned to the clubhouse, and the infielder waved me over. He reached into his locker and tossed me a brand new glove.
I assumed he was joking at first. It was a Wilson A2000 — a preferred mannequin available in any first rate sporting items store. Not a pro-quality glove. Not in any respect what I’d requested for, or desired. I stood there silent, head dipped, feeling taken, observing this undesirable object.
Word unfold around the clubhouse about what had transpired. One of the infielder’s teammates, middle fielder Rick Monday, eyed the Wilson A2000 and shook his head. “If you wanted a glove, why didn’t you ask me?” he stated, capturing a have a look at the infielder earlier than returning to his locker.
I used to be nonetheless staring on the retail retailer glove when Zamora, the pitcher to whom I’d by no means spoken, approached. “Here,” he stated. “Take this.” In his hand was a Rawlings Heart of the Hide professional-model glove. “It’s my backup,” he stated, that means the one he used throughout pregame drills.
I used to be too shocked at first to talk. I took his reward and turned it gingerly in my fingers, as if I have been analyzing a chunk of tremendous jewellery. “I don’t know how to thank you,” I lastly managed and saved repeating. The glove was the stuff of my desires.
You’d suppose after such unprompted kindness that I might have sought him out frequently within the clubhouse, sat with him at his locker and gotten to know him as a treasured acquaintance, if not as a pal. I definitely had the time and alternative. But I used to be 25, self-absorbed, oblivious. To my disgrace, I by no means did. By the time I spotted my error, my loss, he had left the sport. I by no means noticed him once more.
Zamora’s glove, although — that was a special story. I might take the sphere carrying his reward for the subsequent 45 years, till I turned 70, until abruptly floor balls I had as soon as readily dealt with appeared to come back at me like sniper hearth. It was time to retire.
Time for the glove to retire too. Over the years, it had taken a battering, its leather-based worn uncooked and skinny, like a light home stripped of its paint.
I’m 73 now and haven’t performed catch since hanging up my cleats. But now and again, I slip on Zamora’s glove and flex it until the pocket brushes my palm, until it feels because it did on the ball area, like a second pores and skin. And I feel, too, of the person who’d as soon as worn it and of his selfless generosity.
Last December, I sought to contact Zamora, to inform him in regards to the glove and what it nonetheless means to me. But largely, I hoped to get to know him. A Major League Baseball Players Association consultant, wanting to assist, mailed a letter to his final identified deal with however acquired no response. Later, I discovered he had opened a Miami shoe retailer after retiring, and I positioned Cosme de la Torriente, the lawyer who had dealt with his enterprise affairs.
I used to be too late, de la Torriente informed me over the telephone. Zamora died 4 years in the past. He was 75.
The lawyer and I spoke for nearly an hour. Zamora had been not solely a consumer but additionally his pal. He informed me Zamora had emigrated from Cuba to Miami as a toddler and had returned to Miami after retiring from the sport. The two had performed native ball collectively and generally had gone nightclubbing.
“Oscar knew everybody, and everybody knew him. He loved people,” de la Torriente stated. “What he did for you, that was his character. You would have liked him.”
I want I’d made the trouble.
Ron Berler is the writer of “Raising the Curve: A Year Inside One of America’s 45,000 Failing Public Schools.”
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Source: www.bostonherald.com