My Father’s Hero

My Father’s Hero

May 21, 2007

I lost my only brother at 25 but I have been blessed with a father for 50 Father’s Days. I have watched and admired how someone who had so much ripped away can still be delighted by his grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. He listens and plays with them as if he were their brother, as if he were their age.

My father’s hero was Hank Greenberg. In my father’s childhood, “Hammerin’ Hank” became the most prolific hitter on the Detroit Tigers. The first Jewish superstar, Greenberg refused to play on Yom Kippur when the Tigers were fighting for a pennant. In 1938, he hit 58 home runs, the most home runs since Babe Ruth’s 60, and in 1942, he volunteered to join the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II.

As my father and I walked the corridors of Comerica Park and viewed Greenberg’s photo and his 1945 Detroit team, I listened to my father’s memories of “the magical season” when my dad was 13, the hometown hero returned to his city, and the war ended.

This was the first time that my father and I went to a Major League baseball game in decades and his first trip to the “ballpark” that replaced Tiger Stadium. As the Tigers and Orioles reached the sixth inning, the wind started to gust and the rain fell hard on our heads. We then decided to escape the driving rain and went to watch the game on a 19” TV screen above the concession stand.

As we watched Gary Sheffield come to the plate, my father told me about the return of Greenberg. My dad and his friend had paid 50 cents to get bleacher tickets for a doubleheader on July 1^st, 1945, Hank’s first game since joining the army. The Tigers were up in the early innings of the game but Hank’s turn at the plate was many batters away. My dad decided to join his friend who said they had plenty of time to get a hot dog before Greenberg. But the lines were very long, my dad said, and then a thunderous ovation erupted while they were in the bathroom. Hank had hit his first home run since World War II and didn’t homer again that night and didn’t play in the doubleheader’s second game. After the story about his deep disappointment, we heard a loud noise and watched Gary Sheffield on instant replay hit his first home run since joining the Tigers.  

I couldn’t remember when my dad and I had last seen a Tigers game. Even though we had worked together for two decades in the company he managed, I couldn’t recall going to a game with him during or after hours. Instead, I remember my days in Little League and the time I slugged my first good hit over the left fielder’s head with the bases loaded and trotted the bases from first to second, heading to third. I will never forget the third base coach, my dad, screaming at me to keep running. But I was too tired and stopped at third as he yelled, “You could have had a grand slam!”

That’s what I remember now though my memory is selective, often focused on what’s most hilarious or horrible.

My father’s most towering memory is his worst, the night he went with my brother, Kenny, to a Detroit-Chicago baseball game in the summer of ’82 when Kenny was 13. On their way home, at the last traffic light before he entered his subdivision, another car raced through a blinking red light into my father’s car, slamming into the passenger side. A few hours later, my dad lay badly injured in a hospital bed but his son, my brother, did not survive.

My father has lived with so many what-ifs in the last quarter-century. What if he had swerved left? What if he had slowed down or sped up just five seconds? What if he had never gone to the Tigers game with his youngest son?

The last night he shared with Kenny can never be erased. The night has markers every year, always within six weeks after Father’s Day. This year is the 25^th anniversary of the death of my brother, Kenneth Samuel, who was born on December 23, 1968 and died on July 21, 1982.

I now think of the grief of parents when I read of dead American soldiers in Iraq and know their aches may soften but the haunted wishes for their sons or daughters’ returns will never disappear.

I know survivors fortunate to have fathers are incredibly lucky, as I am, after my father survived the crash and stayed in my life for another 25 years.

My father was a tough boss and sometimes a demanding father, expecting a lot from me. Or so it seemed before my three children, before watching my oldest son, named after Kenny, ready to enter his fourth year of college.

I lost my only brother at 25 but I have been blessed with a father for 50 Father’s Days. I have watched and admired how someone who had so much ripped away can still be delighted by his grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. He listens and plays with them as if he were their brother, as if he were their age.

My mother, sister, wife, and I know that a 75-year-old man with lymphoma and veins prepped for kidney dialysis won’t live forever. So we must be thankful for the days we have left, the nights we will never get again.

I am thankful for memories and imagination. After the seventh inning, when we left Comerica Park, I began to envision Kenny’s last night alive when he and his dad entered Tiger Stadium.

I smiled when I imagined my dad showing Kenny a photo of the one and only Hammerin’ Hank. I could picture the enthralled eyes of my brother, listening to his dad reliving his childhood in 1945. I could envision Kenny’s delight as he heard his dad tell him about his hero, Hank, coming home after fighting in a horrific world war and then leading his Detroit Tigers to a World Series Championship.