|
Pignatano, sadly, is unreachable these days.
THE FIRST TEAM casualty to COVID-19 came in May. Nancy Pignatano was terrified of getting sick. She was living in Florida with her husband Joe, the Amazin' Mets bullpen coach. She was following the precautions.
They stayed indoors, had their groceries delivered and limited her outdoor trips to grabbing the paper and the mail. But she caught COVID anyway and died in May at the age of 86. For months, Joe didn't understand that she was gone. He has dementia. His family would tell him that she was out golfing with friends, and he'd smile and be OK.
Their younger son, Frank, still lives in Brooklyn. The last words he heard from his mom were over the phone. "Frankie, I love you," she told him. "I can't talk."
Frank is the one to pass along the memories now. He was 12 years old that season -- his nickname was "Little Piggy" -- but he speaks as if it was his best year too. The Mets kept a tomato garden in the bullpen during the '69 season. Joe found the wild plant, and instead of ripping it out, he watered and tended to it. "He was a Brooklyn Italian," Frank says. "You give them a patch of dirt and they plant tomatoes."
Joe's very best friend, Frank says, was Gil Hodges. They played together for the Brooklyn and L.A. Dodgers and the 1962 expansion Mets, then started coaching together in Washington in 1965. They'd be at the ballpark all day, then meet for cards later with their wives at night, the room a chain-smoking haze of crab claws, mixed nuts and banter.
"I tell my kids it was a simpler time," Frank says. "You could have a house and a car in the garage and have kids on one salary. You can't do that today."
Hodges was a Marine during World War II, but he always downplayed it. He used to tell his son Gil Jr. that he worked behind a desk. It wasn't until the boy was older that he found out that his father was a gunner in the 16th Antiaircraft Artillery Battalion, fought in Okinawa and was awarded a Bronze Star.
He played with Jackie Robinson in 1947, the year Robinson broke the major league color barrier. Hodges was a straightforward man with little ambiguity, but he was also a dreamer. Just before Game 1, 19-year-old Gil Jr. was sitting in his dad's office, marveling over the Orioles' stat sheet, when he asked him what the Mets were doing on the same field with Baltimore. Hodges got up, closed the door and sat next to him.
"Listen, son," he told him, "I have 25 guys out there who think we can win. That's all that matters."
The Mets had back-to-back 83-79 seasons after the World Series, and Pignatano kept tending to the tomato plant. They had high hopes heading into '72, a season that was delayed by a players' strike. During spring training -- Easter Sunday -- Hodges and his coaches spent a morning playing 27 holes at a golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida. Pignatano was putting his clubs in the trunk, Frank says, when Hodges suffered a heart attack, fell backward and smacked his head on the sidewalk. Pignatano held him as he was dying.
Hodges was 47 years old. For years, Pignatano blamed himself. He was right next to him. If he hadn't turned around, he thought, he could've caught him. But Pignatano couldn't have done anything. Hodges' son tried to explain that to him many times.
"When you love someone like that ... " Gil Jr. says, "you will always feel like you could've done something. But it was out of his hands."
Pignatano has a picture of Hodges in the house, and he'll point to it and always says the same thing.
"That's my best friend." |
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/31317684/friendship-memories-year-1969-new-york-mets
|
