Arnie Kanter

When You Get to a Fork in the Road, Take It!

Yogi Berra

On an August Sunday in 1953, when I was not yet eleven, I was invited to a White Sox-Yankees doubleheader at Comiskey Park by a friend and his father. 

After the Sox dropped game one, all four of us moved down to the box seats for game two, which you could do in those days, before Andy Frain was replaced as ushers by the SS.  In the fifth inning, Yankees’ catcher and famous philosopher, Yogi Berra hit a towering foul pop-up, and we all stood to try to grab it.  As the ball descended at speeds reaching roughly 1400 mph, I prayed that the damn thing would not come near me.

At 6’3”, my friend’s father towered above everyone in our area. As he stretched skyward, the ball careened off the little finger on his right hand and fell to the ground, where I retrieved it.  The ball broke his finger, though, which meant that we had to leave the game early to go to the hospital.  Naturally, that pissed me off, but as a well-bred young boy I tried (probably unsuccessfully) to hide my disappointment and feign concern over the broken finger. 

I didn’t care that the Sox lost both games that day, because, as an ardent Cubs fan, I had more important things on my mind.  The Cubs finished the 1953 season a scant forty games out of first place.

Once I got home, I proudly displayed the ball that I had “caught” to my parents.  Incredibly, they told me that I had to call my friend’s father and offer him the ball.  Fortunately, he refused.

The ball pictured above is dirty and a bit worse for wear, having been rubbed up frequently by me as I stared in to get my sign from the Cubs catcher in the years that followed.