Fast Ball

By Anthony C. Tripari

Its the nineteen fifties, a time when families are woven tightly to each other, and with few secrets. A vibrant period as young men and women born in America of foreign ancestry try to assimilate and attempt to achieve the American dream and way of life. This tale is about such a family, children born to immigrant parents.

The Panarellis have three children, Cosmo the oldest son, followed by his brother Dante, and sister Gina. Cosmo chooses the path of crime, while his brother into an all-star professional baseball player. Gina aspires to have a career in the field of medicine. They each face unexpected challenges with life altering results.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 13, 2004
• ISBN: 9781465330581

Anthony C. Tripari

Born in East Boston, Massachusetts in 1932 the second child of immigrant Italian parents. He acquired first hand experience the difficulties his parents and other Italian émigrés had in assimilating into the American culture, customs, and in learning the English language. In 1939 just shy two months of his seventh birthday his father died on, leaving his mother as the matriarchal head of the family. By example she instilled in him as well as to her other three children to challenge themselves through out their lives. He and his wife Elizabeth have raised four children, with seven grandchildren

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CHAPTER 1

DANTE STARTS UP his speedboat and it begins to motor away from its Malibu mooring, leaving behind a saga in his life that he will always remember and yet want to forget and be stored on a dusty shelf in the deepest recesses of his mind. The craft slowly heads out to sea and in a short while he will arrive at a boat landing near his home in Encino. It is difficult for Dante not to recall all that has happened to him, his wife, his family, and of course with Nikki. The ocean is calm; calm enough for him to be put at momentary ease, but he is nevertheless restless as his thoughts relentlessly fall back to the beginning and the most recent past. Alone on the water, he is a victim of his thoughts and wonders, How did it all happen? The craft unhurriedly leaves the seashore and heads out to open water.

Dante Panarelli played major league ball for the Los Angeles Comets. Center field was his arena of combat. He is a sound and experienced competitor. Dante performed at the position as well as the first violinist playing the violin for the Los Angeles Symphony Orchestra. He played major league ball for ten years, an allstar for seven of those years and selected as a most valuable player twice. Indeed Dante felt he was a master at his chosen profession. Once he confided to a close friend that once a fly ball is hit to any part of center field, either to his left or right, he would chase it down and make the catch. His brain commanded his physical body gears to catch the ball at all cost. „If it‘s in the air, I‘ll catch it," he would tell his teammates.

His career lasted ten years, all with the Comets. Unlike some of the other ballplayers, he loved playing a little boy‘s game. His love for the game and the need to win was paramount in the way he played the game. His personal statistics and achievements were secondary to that of achieving a team victory. His goal was always to get to the World Series and win a World Series ring. In the league, there were ballplayers who went through the motions of playing a game without the required intensity—lacking heart and fortitude to win. Dante played each game never concerning himself with his personal statistics, playing hard with total abandon. His body gears would not allow him to play the game in a lesser mode. The blood coming from his heart fueled his muscles.

Dante‘s playing days unfortunately shortened because of a knee injury, one of a few he sustained over the years. It happened while trying to steal home plate for the fifth time in his career during a regular season‘s game. A combination of a Herculean catcher named Big Stan Kaminski and an unyielding cement plate injured Dante‘s knee, requiring surgical repair. Previous scars on his knee from earlier injuries could have been assigned highway routes to look like a highway map. At the end of his career he had statistics that made him a candidate for the Hall of Fame.

They included a lifetime average of .326, hammering out 360 home runs, and knocking in 1,136 base runners. He stole 225 bases and on four occasions stole home plate. The fifth attempt ended his career in the game he relished playing. At the age of thirty-three he had to seek a new career. In the ten years he played, he only struck out 416 times or about forty times a year.

Born in the Jeffries Point section of East Boston and on Webster St., Dante grew up with many young friends. Jeffries Point was a community of three-decker row houses that are rented by enlarge with immigrant Italians, and American-born children. Baseball games were started on a whim; a complete team of young boys could be easily formed within one block of the neighborhood. A team would play another group of players from another block in the neighborhood. Teams would assemble and a game would then be played in schoolyards or at an open field near the airport. Wherever there was an open area, a field would be drawn up, often conforming to the available space. At any time the field could be cement or a macadam-paved lot. In a rivalry game against a team from another street in the neighborhood, Dante slid into second base to break up a double play. This game took place on a field known as the „Dump."

The Dump is a hard-packed baseball dirt field that the city of Boston seldom, if at all, maintained. No grass grows in the infield and every weed that God created lies in the ground in the outfield. The only loose soil that could be located is at home plate, second and third base. It has a chain-link backstop behind the home plate that has openings large enough for someone to walk through. At times a foul tip ball would go through one of the openings and head towards an adjacent open field, which was actually the real dump where one clandestinely could discard anything from an old used stove as well as worn-out mattresses. In the process of sliding, Dante took the legs out from under the second baseman. As both players were getting up from the dirt, the second baseman threw a right-hand punch landing on Dante‘s left ear, causing a ringing sensation and bleeding. Cosmo, Dante‘s older brother who was also on Dante‘s team, who saw what took place at second base, ran onto the field and flattened the second baseman. Two other players of the opposing team joined in the fight, and before any of Cosmo‘s or Dante‘s teammates could get into the fray, Cosmo had knocked them down and they, with the rest of their team, began to run away from Cosmo‘s vengeance. The ringing sensation continued and it was learned after an examination at the Boston City Hospital that Dante had suffered a punctured eardrum.

On Sunday mornings, it was a treat for anyone walking the sidewalks of East Boston to attend Sunday Mass at the Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, the „Italian Church," to encounter the different aromas of Italian cooking invisibly filling the air, permeating the walkways, and in doing so, captivating the nasal senses and activating one‘s appetite. The immigrant Italian women preparing these meals arrived in America from different geographical regions of Italy. In many instances, these towns and cities are unknown to some families arriving here from other European countries. Towns and cities such as Naples, Avellino, Calabria, Bari, Messina, and Palermo now became part of the American culture. Therefore all of the cooking aromas were indicative of the areas from which the ladies emigrated. The young boys would think to themselves, I wonder what my friend’s mother’s gravy tastes like. The aroma of the food cooking was always intoxicating and when eaten became an unknown form of addiction. There was also a hidden competition among these seemingly old Italian women as to who was the better cook as well as which region of Italy offered the finer cuisine. If perhaps after Sunday Mass or a baseball game a pal was invited to eat at a friend’s house after the meal, he would upon arriving home enthusiastically rave to his mother about what he ate and talk endlessly as to how great the food tasted at his friend’s home. Of course the reverse scenario would have applied if his friend came over his house for a meal. He then would repeat nearly verbatim to his family about his friend’s mother’s cuisine. Italian mothers had a saying for these kinds of events: Lo mangia de altro e sempre pui saporito, translated as the cooking of others is always tastier.

Early in his life Dante took care of his body. A physical fitness addict, he chose not to drink or smoke and never took a narcotic of any kind. It was difficult for him to take painkillers even after his knee was operated on after the last professional game he played for the Comets. Being an Italian-American and raised and nurtured by Italian immigrants, Dante’s only vice was that could be attributed to him was his drinking of homemade wine. This occurred at family dinners at night, and especially on Sundays when all of the family ate a big family meal. Zinfandel grapes were bought each year in early October. It was the fall event for most immigrant Italian men. It usually took about twenty to twenty-five boxes of fresh red grapes to make about fifty gallons of wine. It was not unusual for Dante’s father, Frank, and his brother, Bruno, Dante’s favorite uncle, to purchase a hundred or so cases of fresh Zinfandel grapes. The hundred cases would make about five barrels of wine. The grapes along with their stems are placed into the mouth of a manual grape grinder and ground up into a mash consistency. Most of the homemade wine makers used a manual grinder and it requires not only body strength but also endurance to continually turn the handle to grind the grapes. Dante and his brother, Cosmo, would also help with the wine-making process wherein one of them would be constantly lifting one of the wooden boxes filled with grapes, dumping the fruit of the vine into the grinder, and the other churning the handle of the grinder. The ground-up grapes and grape stems would ferment over a period of ten days or so in barrels that were in an upright position. Old barrels were replaced with new ones. Oak barrels were bought from whiskey dealers in the Boston area. The barrels that would ultimately store the wine over the next year would be placed on their bellies on small two-foot high racks. The cloudy red liquid from the wine press would be poured into equal amounts into each of these barrels.

As the Christmas season arrived, a ceremonial ritual would occur where all the men would go down to a cold clammy cellar where the wine barrels in racks lie on their bellies and be awakened from their nearly three-month slumber on low wooden racks. A wooden tap would be hammered into the bottom of one of the barrels and apprehensions of all of the men would be at their peak, for as the fermented grape juice was taste-tested, all prayed that the ruby red fluid would be a great glass of wine instead of vinegar that would be cursed in Italian and used for eternity. Frank and Bruno, each with filled glasses, would first glance at the clarity of the grape juice because it wasn’t wine until they tasted and swallowed it. There wasn’t any need for an explanation, as each would be screaming on key as though they were singing in a choir. The wine was a bit young but ready to be consumed. They would once again be proud of their winemaking capabilities, and during the following weeks they would compare their wine with those made by their Italian paisanos, (fellow Italians) who came from the same city or region of Italy. Rest assured, they do not publicly promote their wine if it was of high quality. In the neighborhood there were always those fellow Italians who did not make wine and were ever ready to buy wine from those who had produced a vintage wine. The supply would dwindle quickly and months would pass before the adventure began again. Frank and Bruno with giving hearts would often give gallons of wine to family and close friends without hesitation.

Dante did not care for his Uncle Carlo as much as he did for his Uncle Bruno, in a sense, Bruno was a second father to him and he loved the man. Bruno and his wife, Rita, had two daughters and Dante, although a nephew, was his surrogate son, having the same blood, and especially since they both had the same last name. Bruno taught Dante how the game of baseball is to be played, constantly stressing team play and taking every challenge as an opportunity. Bruno would often repeat the five areas of the game that one must excel in, namely hitting, fielding, throwing, running the bases, and team play. He instilled into Dante how to be principled at all cost and that life is more than just successes, and how one handles failures in a sense becomes the true test of a person’s character. Bruno often spoke about mortality and how the Creator predestines the talents we are given or are blessed with.

Dante’s love for his father was unconditional. Frank was a devoted husband and father. He was the rock in the family, always there to set the tone of principles and morality in the family. Frank grew up in Bari, Italy, and came to America in 1927 with his two brothers. He was twenty years old. Carlo, his older brother and his younger brother, Bruno, also arrived in Italy in the same year; each of them seeking a new beginning in a new land. They each realized that they were among the thousands of foreigners who came to America, seeking a better life and competing for jobs that were in short supply. Foreigners who could speak English had a greater chance of working than those who could not make themselves understood. Both Frank and Bruno, through a friend who was in the country since 1920, were able to get jobs at a shoe factory in Lynn, Massachusetts. Frank worked the day shift and Bruno the midnight shift. Carlo became acquainted with a local numbers wise guy and quickly found his way into a bit of bootlegging and extortion, along with the taking of numbers on the street. Bruno also fought as a semi-pro fighter as a middleweight. He earned little money in the fight game. At times he was offered money to throw a fight and, being a person with high ethical standards, he refused to do so; therefore, money earned from fighting was limited.

Frank met Lucia at the Italian Social Club formed by Italians who had arrived in America prior to World War I. Lucia had also emigrated from Italy. She was born in Naples and was a couple of years older than Frank. Loneliness sparked a love affair and within a year they became man and wife. Before Frank got married, he would send money each month to his family who remained in Italy. Those in Italy expected it from him as they were poor and their thinking back in Italy was that Frank had come to a country where the streets were paved with gold and he earned lots of money. Upon marrying Lucia, Frank found the funds to Italy dwindling and when their children were born, it ceased. Although at Christmas, Easter and his mother’s birthday, Frank would somehow find enough cash to send as gifts to his mother. Three children were born to Frank and Lucia Panarelli: a son, their first, Cosmo was born in 1929; followed by Dante in 1931; and the last, Gina was born in 1933.

CHAPTER 2

AS A YOUNG boy and growing up in the late forties, in school Dante began to study the Renaissance period in history. It allowed him to discover and admire the artist and sculptor Michelangelo. Dante went out and bought a large photo of Michelangelo’s David and hung it on a wall in his bedroom. He thought to himself how great it would be if he could chisel his body as well as Michelangelo chiseled David out of Carrara marble. Indeed providence had given Dante the raw material—a sinewy body to achieve this personal goal. Uncle Bruno encouraged and gave his support to Dante. Early in Dante’s workouts at the gymnasium, before leaving for work at the shoe factory, Bruno would go to the gym and into the weight room to see the progress Dante was making.

Early in his life, Bruno became a boxer in the ring and as an ex-fighter; he knew the rigors of exercising and training. Bruno was also a better-than-average baseball player; he became a fighter as a way of making money at an early age rather than going into the baseball minor leagues where income was limited and he would be away from East Boston for extended period of times. He knew all of the intricacies in the game of baseball as well as the fight game. On few occasions, Dante would be able to go to a coffee shop with Bruno and discuss among other subjects Dante’s future. Bruno utilized his baseball skills and coached Dante in baseball at all levels and knew in his heart and mind that Dante had a better-than-even chance in becoming a major league ballplayer. Bruno instilled motivation and ambition into Dante. Bruno’s burning deep desire was to have a Panarelli play in the major leagues. He was positive that Dante would be the one.

After many years of weightlifting in conjunction with a stretching regimen, Dante’s hirsute arms appeared as though the artist Michelangelo had awaken from his slumber to create one more masterpiece. Dante’s upper body was a work of art. Each muscle competed for territory with other muscles in their allotted space and entity. The legs of this Adonis were strong and confident and on a moment’s notice they would explode into a running gate unequaled by other athletes. Michelangelo would have been proud of Dante’s individual physical creation.

Dante’s mother, Lucia, was a gregariously outspoken woman. She had a personality that was, to all who really knew and understood her, an open book. She spoke candidly as to what was on her mind and how she felt about any subject and especially family issues. Her heart held no secrets and one would know where they stood with her. No one could love their mother as much as Dante loved his mother. He adored her, and she him. He was never a problem child for her to raise and nurture into a fine young man. Frank and a devoted Uncle Bruno made the task easy for her. Besides, Bruno had all of the street smarts that one needed during these times.

Sunday dinners began around noon and lasted the entire day. It was not unusual for their friends and relatives to knock on the kitchen door, entering the apartment and coercing to sit at the table and stay for the meal. During one of these events, Dante would recall his father raising a full glass of wine and attempting to simulate a priest’s blessing of the wine at mass. Wine isa the saima asa fooda and wea shoulda treat ita thatta way. As a young man, Frank had a hidden ambition in life and that was going into a seminary and becoming a priest; however, his male Italian hormones got in the way and that precluded this notion. So as a young boy would emulate his favorite ballplayer hitting a ball, Frank would emulate a priest he respected at his hometown in Bari, Italy. In the middle of a the Sunday meal, Frank would stand and in one motion, raise his glass of wine, and simulate a priest at mass raising the chalice of wine. Luckily for him he would stop at that point less he hear Lucia screaming at him for being sacrilegious. Bruno had a different take he claimed and in better English it was nectar from the gods drinking the complete glass of wine, flushing down his sister-in-law Lucia’s lasagna, as Italian Neapolitan love songs were being sung by tenor Carlo Butti emanating from hi-fi phonograph records that echoed throughout the apartment and tenement building.

The children were now mature young adults and each was heading in a different direction in