Home
Search transcripts:    Advanced Search
Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

Moe FonerMoe Foner
Photo Gallery
Transcript

Session:         Page of 592

Johnny Fredericks, who was a center fielder on the Dodgers. Then I think I once told you that we used to go to Ebbets occasionally to sneak in for morning practice, because they were always being called for morning practice because they were in seventh or last place. The manager was Wilbert Robinson, Uncle Robbie, he was known as. We used to buy the -- I remember there was a Brooklyn Times before the Eagle, that emphasized all this and had score cards and everything and also big basketball coverage. So we would go and sneak in and watch from the corners, and then I remember when he left, we would walk through the dugout and it was like being on hallowed ground. I may have told you, I remember the time I was at the dugout and found a telegram that had been torn into strips and I put it together and it was a telegram from a scout saying he was sending up --

[SIDE TWO]

Foner:

As I said, to walk in the dugout was like Gettysburg, you know. I remember once picking up the strands of a telegram and putting it together. It was to Robinson from a scout describing a pitcher who was coming up, 6'6″, very good fast ball, Van Lingle Mungo from Hartford. He died recently and there was a big obit in the Times.

Q:

How often could you afford to go?

Foner:

We most of the time we went with the school. We went with the school. I remember once going with my brothers. You went to the bleachers for fifty cents, although fifty cents was a lot of money, and you went on the streetcar to go there. But I remember it rained suddenly and there was a rush to the exit, and I got pinned against a wall someplace and I thought I was going to get killed, and I was screaming and they got me out some way, because I'm still here.

Football. Pro football. There was a professional football team the Dodgers had, the Brooklyn Dodgers, for a while. They were terrible, too. Benny Friedman played.

Q:

Who was Benny Friedman?

Foner:

Benny Friedman was Jewish, a football player. He was a great quarterback at Michigan, one of the great all time quarterbacks. Then he moved to the Brooklyn Dodgers. This was a period when to find a Jewish baseball player was very, very big. The Giants had Andy Cohen, and then there were occasionally big disputes whether that guy was Jewish, how can that guy with that name be Jewish. The idea that a Jew becoming a professional athlete was an incredible thing because





© 2006 Columbia University Libraries | Oral History Research Office | Rights and Permissions | Help