In Loving Memory

A Brief Tribute to My Grandfather, the Fan

If there’s an ethos in my baseball family, it came from my grandfather. “I root for two teams: the Cardinals and whoever is playing the Yankees,” he declared one night at the Bedford Winking Lizard when I was a kid. The line wasn’t unique—there are countless versions of it—but it stuck with me. Hating the Yankees ran in our blood, reinforced over the years by plenty of new reasons, and it started with Papa Al.

What never made sense to me as I grew older was how his Yankee hatred took root at all. After all, Al grew up in New York. His father—my great-grandfather—was a rabid Yankees fan in Albany. Al himself took the train to the city to see games at Yankee Stadium, Ebbets Field, and the Polo Grounds. When I asked him why he rooted for the Cardinals, he usually just said, “something about them spoke to me.” It wasn’t until my mom filled in the backstory that it started to make sense.

Al was the youngest of many children and, in his family, the rebel. Rooting for the Cardinals was his way of sticking it to his father. He once told me about listening to a Yankees game on the radio: New York was leading late, but in the ninth inning, their opponent hit a dramatic home run to win. Al clapped with delight while his father scowled—and got himself kicked out of the house for the night. Whether he was eventually let back in went unrecorded, but the memory stayed with him.

Still, why the Cardinals? Why not the Dodgers or Giants? The answer lies in timing. Al was born in December 1930, the year the Cardinals won the World Series. By the time he was ten, St. Louis had beaten the Yankees in the 1942 Series, punctuated by a Whitey Kurowski ninth-inning home run. I can’t prove this was the game from his story—he rarely spoke about his childhood—but I choose to believe it was the moment that cemented his Cardinals loyalty.

This week, Al passed away peacefully at 94 after a long battle with pneumonia and heart problems. To the very end he rooted for his beloved Cardinals. He lived a beautiful baseball life. From trains into the city to watch Mantle, Mays, and Duke Snider patrol center field, to seeing Bob Feller on the mound, to serving in Korea and watching Mays again—“marvelous player, but the foulest mouth I ever heard,” he once laughed—Al saw legends with his own eyes.

During his lifetime, the Cardinals won eight World Series. Ten Cardinals went into Cooperstown: Dizzy Dean, Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, Enos Slaughter, Lou Brock, Red Schoendienst, Ozzie Smith, Bruce Sutter, Scott Rolen, and Ted Simmons. He lived to see Albert Pujols, too, and adored him. Whenever baseball came up, he reminded us just how great “El Hombre” was, proudly linking Pujols to his boyhood hero, Stan Musial, “the Man.”

He saw Pujols in person at least twice. The first was in July 2009, his first trip to Busch Stadium. My mom got tickets and took us all, and though Albert had a quiet day, we got to see Yadier knock in a run and visit the Arch. The more memorable game, though, was earlier that year in Cleveland. The Indians were floundering, Tomo Ohka was on the mound, and Al and I made the drive from Aurora to Progressive Field.

In the first inning, Ohka improbably struck out Pujols. But Albert got his revenge—twice. He crushed two long home runs to nearly the same spot in left-center, singlehandedly dismantling the Indians. I can still see Al smirking, then chuckling quietly, while the crowd booed their own team.

As he grew older, Al got grouchier about the Cardinals’ ownership, convinced they were scheming to move the team. I never agreed, but I understood the fire—it echoed how I sometimes feel about the Dolans in Cleveland. He still loved going to games. Two years ago, we watched the Cardinals play the Guardians, and though he grumbled when José Ramírez walked them off, I could tell he secretly enjoyed it. His last game was this summer, and true to form he groused about the Cardinals’ play until they pulled out the win, grinning all the way home.

I will miss my grandfather. I didn’t always see it at the time, but so much of how I love baseball is because of how he loved it. Like him, I have a deep loyalty to my team. And like him, I always find myself rooting for whoever plays the Yankees. The apple, it seems, didn’t fall far from the tree.

-Benjamin, J