Baseball and Babies: My Life as a Catcher

By Ted Manos M.D.

This book was written thirty years ago, recounting an unbelievable journey, I had at that time, that can only happen in a dream. I was an obstetrician/gynecologist that saw an ad in The Sporting News that invited the reader to be "a Dodger for a week". I grew up in Brooklyn, New York and was just at the right age to follow the exploits of the Brooklyn Dodgers before they left for Los Angeles after the 1957 baseball season. I signed up for a week at Dodgertown, Vero Beach, Fl participating at a camp for adults following the spring training program the Brooklyn and, eventually the Los Angeles Dodgers held since 1948.
I played baseball through college and was a catcher for my three varsity college years. I was good enough to dream of a career in baseball. I did well academically and eventually went to medical school and abandoned the dreams of baseball but continued "catching" babies as an obstetrician.
The book, follows me from my thoughts before the week, to the experience of meeting men I idolized all my life. I also experience baseball without the doubts of youth. My performance was the things that dreams were made of. The former Brooklyn Dodgers I met, achieved magical results for their team and the borough of Brooklyn. Roger Kahn, a sports journalist, wrote a book in the early 1970's describing his coverage of the Brooklyn team in its prime and revisited the men he grew to love and respect over fifteen years after those days. The book was entitled "The Boys of Summer" and they became known as the title described.
The book "Shoeless Joe" and the subsequent movie "Field of Dreams" captured the game of baseball and how it occurs to boys and men. The poignant lines are, "is this heaven, no it's Iowa" and "heaven is where dreams come true". My book allowed me to commune with the past and discover baseball, without the doubts that young minds create about their abilities. I even donned the catcher's gear for a few games. I couldn't have played better and the instructors were amazed. I found the freedom to experience the joy of the game and competition. It was also an opportunity for the "boys of summer" to relive their love of the game and the relationships they had lost touch of. Is this heaven? No, it's Dodgertown.
Much like the "Field of Dreams" movie, where the ghosts of baseball players past, appear from a cornfield and start playing baseball, now the men I met have mostly passed on. My memories of the camp, and the "boys of summer", are like the characters in the movie coming out of the cornfield. They are the spirits of men, spending eternity playing baseball in a heaven. My life after the camp was transformed, as adult baseball leagues were born out of these "fantasy camps", and I played actively for the next twenty years. If the movie was true, the "boys of summer" are somewhere in heaven playing everyday.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514403549

Ted Manos M.D.

Dr. Manos was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. and his father Manuel (Big Mike) Manos served in the European Theater of U.S. Army from 1942 through the end of combat operations in late 1945 as a non-commissioned officer in Army Intelligence. Mr. Manos was born in Stanford, Connecticut in 1920 and is a surviving veteran of WWII. Mr. Manos was offered a professional baseball contract by the Chattanooga Lookouts but, instead, joined The New York City Police Department and remained there for twenty years as a patrolman from 1947-1967. Dr. Manos' mother, Frieda was a housekeeper and a seamstress in the garment industry. Born on the Greek island of Crete, she emigrated to the U.S. at the age of four and followed her coal miner father living in West Virginia and Utah. Dr. Manos first married in 1966 and adopted three children. After a divorce in 2001, he married to his wife, Rebecca and is stepfather to two adult children and stepgrandfather to three little girls. Dr Manos played high school baseball and basketball at New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn and was a member of the National Honor Society and received a BA degree from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut in 1964. He played baseball at Wesleyan for all four years and two years of basketball. He entered The Albany Medical College in 1966 and graduated with an MD degree in 1970. Interned at Hartford Hospital in 1970-71 then was in the U.S. Navy for five years doing an Obstetrics and Gynecologic residency after one year as a General Medical Officer. He was a medical officer at Naval Hospital Boston, Naval Regional Medical Center Portsmouth Virginia and Naval Regional Medical Center, Orlando Florida. Left the Navy in 1976 and was Board Certified in OB-GYN 1977 and had a solo private practice in Winter Park, Florida until 1999 then worked for Florida Hospital Waterman, in Tavares, Fl and the Lake County of Florida Health Department supervising midwives and doing obstetrical hospital services. Dr. Manos retired in May 2014. In October 1983 he attended the first Los Angeles Dodgers Adult Baseball Camp in Vero, Beach, Florida. He attended again in 1984 and 1986. Honored with Most Valuable Player Award in 1986 and a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers Adult Fantasy Camp Hall of Fame.

Book preview

HEAVEN AT DODGERTOWN

The voice on the conference line asked, so Doc, what are you going to do now that you’ve retired from delivering all those babies?

I plan to sleep without the phone waking me up for the last forty years. I won’t have to worry about getting someone to cover my practice when planning a weekend trip or vacation, I said.

Yes, I would be entering a life that was less complicated with a flexible schedule for a change. My wife and I can go places without taking two cars, I thought to myself.

One reason for retiring, was my inability to fall asleep, after an early morning call, that didn’t have me rushing to the hospital. An aching back from an old spine injury, while playing racquetball, also had caught up with me the last few years, as had knee issues from playing baseball in my youth, and finding the game as an adult with the development of fantasy camps and hardball leagues for men of all ages. I could still play golf since there was a cart to ease my back from standing and walking.

I could play more golf now, but my scores have been closer to 100 than 90, I said. My days of rounds below 80 are only a fading dream.

"What I’d really love to do, is have a manuscript I created, around thirty years ago, published in book form, describing my experiences at the spring training facilities of the Los Angeles Dodgers at the first adult baseball fantasy camp they conducted in 1983.

My wife found the manuscript, among papers I had stored away, and the thirty or so years have changed my perspective. The legends I met, the atmosphere of the game of baseball I experienced, was like a dream. Every time I see the movie Field of Dreams, I’m transported back to my Dodgertown moments, rubbing elbows with the boys of summer and others.

I was recently watching MLB Network and there was a commercial showing baseball player, Buster Posey of the San Francisco Giants, entering a hospital room, where a women appeared to need an obstetrician to deliver her baby. There was Mr Posey, dressed in his uniform and catcher’s gear, including mask and glove, ready to do his thing. The husband liked the idea, but the lady was terrified. What I saw for myself, was an obstetrician with memories of being a baseball catcher in my youth.

I looked back to over forty years of being the real baby catcher and I’m fascinated by life’s pathways. I was proud of my hands, catching pitches from the mound, when I played baseball. As a catcher in baseball, I had choices to make, such as type of pitch and where to put the target for the pitcher. I observed batters, and factored in their abilities, as I squatted down behind the plate. I was involved with every moment, we took to the field, on defense.

I think I chose Obstetrics, because the game lasts around nine months, and there is a tangible joy at the end of the game. I made choices, as a physician, that impacted the course of pregnancy, or the critical moments in labor and delivery. My patients looked to me for guidance, and they trusted me, as I was skillful with ultrasound imaging, and determining the size and position of the babies, by using my hands as diagnostic tools. I used my hands in guiding the natural birth process, or performing the cesarean section, to intervene and aid, mother and child.

I was motivated by the unbelievable things I experienced, meeting the old Brooklyn Dodgers, immortalized in the book, The Boys of Summer. Imagine spending a week hanging out with Duke Snider or Carl Erskine. Erskine was an Indiana native, whose name fit perfectly with Brooklynese, such as Carl Oiskine.

I thought about the events around my trip to Vero Beach, Florida, back at a time when I was leading my life as a medical doctor, specializing mostly with managing pregnancies. I put that life on hold, and had the opportunity to travel 100 miles to Dodgertown and play baseball. The trip was longer than, that as I transported myself back to my youth, and the life of a young man good enough to dream of playing professional baseball.

Buster Posey walks into the labor room in full uniform, and I walked into Dodgertown in my surgical scrubs. Put me in coach, I’m ready to play today, are the lyrics of a song and explains my journey. I never planned to don the catcher’s tools of ignorance, but events would lead to that possibility.

The fantasy camp was a milestone for my life, that started in Brooklyn, New York in 1943. My father, Manuel, returned from his service in the U.S. Army after the end of WWII in 1945, having witnessed, above all, the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. He had hopes of playing professional baseball but, with a young son and wife, he soon joined the New York City Police Department, and any aspirations of playing for one of the three major league teams in the city were over.

When I was old enough to walk, I had a baseball bat in hand and, at the age of three, I was out front of our house, hitting balls my father threw for me to swing at. I was a good hitter as this little tyke, who he encouraged to root for the New York Yankees, and develop a love for the game.

I remember two items that made an impression on me in my childhood. The first, was a calendar produced in 1949, by a business in the area he patrolled as a policeman, that had a young boy with a bat, and the image of Babe Ruth in the clouds encouraging him on. The second, was a genuine flannel New York Yankees uniform with the number 10 for shortstop, Phil Rizzuto, that I wore proudly.

I played sandlot baseball well enough to dream of being a professional, but my father stressed my education. I played baseball and basketball in college, and achieved good grades enough to actually choose medicine. My life as a baseball player ended in August 1966, when I entered The Albany Medical College to start a career in medicine, and eventually board certified as an obstetrician and gynecologist. Not a bad trade off. I also married my high school girl friend, Kathy, and had two boys and a girl along the way.

As a baseball prospect, I was unsure of my skill with the bat in hand, and was once described as an enigma. I could knock the ball out of the park, or strikeout three times in a game. The adult camps gave me the opportunity to play freely with confidence, and prove that my great moments on the baseball diamond, in my youth, were more of who I was as a baseball prospect. I would not be carrying the weight of self doubt, that held down what was possible in my youth, but trust in my abilities developed in my training as a doctor. I would have a great story worth writing about, and the freedom from completing the past, that was the actual prize.

I retired now and the doctoring life I lived is complete. I look back on my days as a baseball player in my youth, and how I transformed that part of me at Dodgertown. I was busy handling the aspects of a medical practice, and playing some golf before Dodgertown. After the camp, I was setting up adult hardball leagues in central Florida, and playing hardball games on weekends, I said.

I can’t get away from my past, as someone in media can bring up the Brooklyn Dodgers or the role of Jackie Robinson, and I think back to spending many an afternoon at Ebbets Field watching him do his thing. I can turn on MeTV, and watch classic programs such as Welcome Back Kotter, and the school in the opening credits is my alma mater, New Utrecht High School. There is a segment showing kids getting on a city bus, and I easily recognize the 18th Avenue bus line that I used getting to school.

There is a song written, and sung, by Terry Cashman, around 1985, that totally captured the essence of growing up in the 1950’s entitled, Talkin’ Baseball: Willie, Mickey and the Duke. The melody and lyrics transport me, every time I find it online, to that young man experiencing the magic of growing up in the Big Apple particularly Brooklyn, I said. It starts by recalling the 1950 pennant the lowly Philadelphia Phillies won that the media tagged as the whiz kids .… the whiz kids had won it, Bobby Thomson had done it and Yogi read the comics all the while…"

The first sports related moments I remembered, was that 1950 World Series between the New York Yankees and the Phillies. I’m about 7 1/2 yrs old in the fall of 1950, and television hadn’t reached the masses until that time. I think my paternal grandmother, Lily, was the first person on our block to get a twelve inch screen TV in black and white. The games were broadcast, and we had just brought a new TV home with an eighteen inch screen, and I proceeded to begin a lifetime seeing the world through the eye of a lens.

Bobby Thomson, of course, hit the shot heard round the world in early October 1951, when his New York Giants beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a playoff series of three games. There were no playoff games in those days, but the two teams had identical records after 154 games in the regular season. The Dodgers appeared to have the game and the pennant in hand, going into the bottom of the ninth inning of game three, leading by two runs. Thomson whacked a three run home run, that ended Brooklyn hopes for another World Series battle against the New York Yankees. The Yankees dispatched the Giants four games to one, and was making the championship a yearly rite.

The song goes on with a reference to Yogi Berra of the Yankees, and his penchant for reading comic books. He also read pitchers quite well, and ended up in baseball’s Hall of Fame for his skills. He was not only a great hitter, but his defensive prowess was well known. The Yankees won the World Series five straight years from 1949 thru 1953 with Yogi behind the plate.

Interestingly, Yogi and a former third baseman for the Yankees, Bobby Brown, are the only living members of the 1947 World Champion Yankees and they were room mates. Yogi read comic books and Bobby read medical text books as he was studying medicine and became a respected cardiologist after his baseball days. I touch on Dr. Brown, because he was a favorite Yankees player of mine, and I had no idea I would enter the field of medicine.

Next, was reference to the social changes in the 1950’s with the lyrics ... "Rock n’ Roll was being born, marijuana we would scorn and down on the corner the national pastime went on trial, talkin’ baseball, Willie, Mickey and the Duke ... We used to get high on our lives, our dreams and not drugs.

Baseball was our main focus, as the other sports were not at the level that baseball had achieved. College football and basketball were pretty big, but the pro leagues were fragmented. We were more excited with hockey and the New York Rangers.

The neighborhood was a melting pot of European immigrants, mostly Italian and Jewish. There was a sprinkling of Greeks, including my family. My maternal grandfather came from the Greek island of Crete and moved around the United States as a coal miner. There were few, if any, blacks or Latinos in the community, but that would change as did Asian immigration.

If you walked down Eighteenth Avenue, you could detect the aroma of pizza on just about every block, of this primarily commercial avenue, that must have gone on for miles. Imagine all the merchants within walking distance, supplying foods of every variety, clothing of all sizes, gas stations, grocery stores and some kosher deli’s. There were also Chinese restaurants, but the staff and owners were the only Asians we would see in the neighborhood.

We had our own language as a hoagie was a hero, shopping carts were wagons and going on the avenue was a night out. We spent hours on evenings, sitting on our stoops in front of our houses and apartments. We played countless games in the streets, or on sidewalks. Our parents called us from the window to come home for supper. We lived on Mr. Softee, egg creams, and pretzel sticks, from the candy store.

Between 63rd and 64th streets, was the entrance to the subway line, that could get you to Coney Island in less than 30 minutes or, going in the other direction, into Manhattan which we referred to as the city, in less than an hour.

I could walk to school as it was across the street, and the Junior High School was about 3/4 of a mile away. High school meant taking the Eighteenth Avenue bus, the two miles to its location.

It’s been thirty years since those moments at Dodgertown, and now they have more of an impact on me. Most of the Brooklyn Dodgers players I met have passed on. When I think back to the camp, and the videos and a manuscript I put together, I realize what magical moments I experienced. If the movie,Field of Dreams, is playing on the tv, I get tearful remembering my experience with Dodger legends, and the magic around a baseball field.

The campers, as we were listed as, had the legends of baseball spending almost a week with us on the fields of the complex. Imagine working in the batting cages with Duke Snider and Tommy Davis, or discussing the fine art of pitching with Carl Erskine or Ralph Branca. Picture a breakfast buffet, where I sat with Tommy Lasorda or Don Drysdale, and talked baseball. Each evening, we had a wonderful dinner in the cafeteria in the clubhouse. We had these former players all to ourselves, with their wives welcomed to be present all week.

After breakfast, the schedule of drills and instruction filled the morning. Every half hour, we would rotate from one area to another, either as a team we were assigned to, or individually by defensive position or batting cage sessions. We were put through stretching and warm up exercises, monitored by the head trainer.

I played baseball in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s in the sandlot fields of Brooklyn, New York. I played the game at a high level as a starting infielder through three years at New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn, and four years of baseball at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut as the starting catcher for three years on the varsity team.

There was always thoughts of what might have been, but the time and effort to reach a level of proficiency in medicine, and particularly Obstetrics, kept the past in the past. That worked fine and by the 1980’s I was delivering babies in central Florida, married with three children. Dreams of playing baseball at a professional level, had been dwarfed by the responsibilities of a physician.

In the late summer of 1983, I saw an ad in The Sporting News announcing a fantasy camp at the Los Angeles Dodgers spring training facility in Vero Beach, Florida. The Dodgers held spring training at their facility, Dodgertown, since the years right after WWII, and continued even after leaving Brooklyn for the west coast. The ad promised the opportunity to spend a week participating, much like the professional baseball players did, getting ready for another season.

The cost for attending was reasonable, and the idea that I could show the abilities I had in the past,