I grew up on East 23rd Street, near the corner of Gravesend Neck Road, in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, New York. Half of my block was occupied by Public School 206, a six-story elementary school for 1,200 students, and its school yard, which was the size of a baseball diamond. The chain link fence bordering the school on 23rd street also served as the left field and left center field wall during baseball games.
One summer day in 1949, when I was 5, my dad and I were coming back from Avenue U, and when we passed the entrance to the school yard we noticed that there was a baseball game going on. Within seconds we heard guys shouting, ” It’s Freddy Seldman, Freddy come here right away we need you.” So as my dad and I walked down the left field line towards home plate, his buddies rushed up to him and explained the situation. The guys in my neighborhood were playing the guys from another neighborhood. It wasn’t just for bragging rights, they also bet $50 a man on the game, and that was significant money to them at that time. It was the bottom of the 9th inning, and while our team had two men on base, we were also losing by two runs, and they asked my dad to pinch hit. At first the other team protested, saying that my dad was not there at the beginning of the game and therefore couldn’t play. Then their third baseman, looking at my dad’s size (300 pounds) and dress (he was wearing street clothes and shoes, no sneakers) said in a loud voice, “Let him hit, he won’t even be able to run to first base.” This did two things: it allowed my dad to enter the game, and it made him mad.
So the first thing my dad did was to tell me to go up the steps to the entrance to PS 206, about 20 feet behind home plate. Then he grabbed a bat and got up to hit. The first pitch was a high fast ball and Freddy launched a long high drive to left field that cleared the fence and landed in 23rd street. A 3-run home run! We won the game! So two years before Bobby Thompson (September 3, 1951) hit a three-run home run in the Polo Grounds, in the bottom of the 9th inning to beat the Dodgers and win the National League pennant for the NY Giants, my dad did the same thing in PS 206.
Everyone was screaming so loud that people started coming out of their houses. It took my dad so long to get around the bases that by the time he reached home plate there was a huge noisy crowd waiting for him. When my dad stepped on home plate with the winning run, the first thing he said was “Get me Marty.” I was too little to get through so they passed me along the top of the crowd and put me on my dad’s shoulders. So I sat there, holding my dad’s face, looking out at my neighborhood, loving, hugging him. His face looked like he was laughing and crying, and my dad and I experienced total complete joy.
The winter of 1949 was brutal in New York. In December, it snowed almost every day for two weeks. Schools were closed and most people from Brooklyn couldn’t get to Manhattan to work. So Freddy and Zelda were cooped up with me and my brother Neil (4 years old) with our usual noisy games and fighting. Fortunately, at the same time, our neighbor Marvin (Moishe) Jacker was just promoted to managing the Colonial Inn Hotel in Miami Beach and he invited us to stay with them for a week.
So we packed up and took a train (24 hours) from Grand Central Station to Miami. For a while it wasn’t any break for my parents, as Neil and I alternated between running up and down the aisle pretending to be cowboys, or asking them when we were going to be able to go swimming.
Finally we got to Miami, checked into the hotel. Freddy told us we could get into our swim suits but he and Zelda were going to talk to Moishe and his wife, before he would take us swimming. So we met Moishe and Margie at the pool. Zelda and Freddy were having a nice reunion with them and Freddy lit up a cigar. I was on the side of the pool near my parents, and Neil went to the other end. Neil was so happy to be in Miami that he started singing his favorite song, the #1 hit by Frankie Lane, “I Want to Go Where the Wild Goose Goes.” He started pretending that he had a ukulele and was dancing while he was singing. When he finished the song he was so excited that he just jumped into the pool. There were 3 problems with that. He didn’t know how to swim, he didn’t have any flotation devices on, and he jumped into the deep end. Neil went right to the bottom of the pool. There was a life guard at the pool but he was talking to a girl in a bikini. I saw what happened but before I could even say anything, Freddy sprang into action. He must have seen what happened while he was talking, because he threw away his cigar and started running down the side of the pool. When he was right in front of me he launched into a dive, and for a while he looked like a large Superman, in street clothes and shoes, flying flat out through the air. He hit the water and went straight to the bottom to get Neil. He came up with Neil, who was sputtering, scared but safe. So my dad saved Neil’s life.
I got the best brother I could hope for, for another 70 plus years and counting, and the world got someone who fights for the environment and economic justice every day.
As I reflect back on my dad’s actions 70 years ago, at PS 206, and in Miami, I also see he was demonstrating an important parenting lesson. No matter what was going on, my dad kept his eye on me and Neil.
Marty Seldman 