By now I was hoping to use this space to alert readers to the next TV airing of “Long Road Home,” that documentary about John Malangone, the pride and former shame of 114th Street.
After all, by now some people might have missed it, but had heard so much about it that, like Malangone, they needed a second chance.
But “Long Road Home,” now 18 months old, has taken a long road of its own, so much so that it has not yet appeared on TV. The sum of its viewers can be measured in small audiences who have seen it – and been grabbed by it – at independent film festivals and in niche showings, such as last Sunday’s at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, where 35 people watched.
And with the documentary available to TV – cheap, too – that’s crazy.
And so, for now, “Long Road Home” stands as the best documentary you’ve never seen about the incredible life of the best New York Yankee prospect you never heard of. Figures.
Bruce Spiegel is a CBS News editor and producer for “48 Hours.” It stands to reason that he knows a good story when he bumps into one. And when he bumped into John Malangone, six years ago, he knew what he had to do.
John Malangone, now 76, grew up in East Harlem. His extended family, including his uncle, Orlando, lived in the same apartment building. Orlando was only eight months older than John, thus uncle and nephew were playmates, best friends.
In 1937, when John was six, he saw a busted umbrella in a street-side garbage can. He stripped it and, just like that, he had made a spear. And when John threw that spear it struck a kid in the head, piercing his skull.
A crowd formed, and when John got closer, he knew it was Orlando. “I saw a striped sock and a solid sock. I had on a striped sock and a solid sock.” Orlando Panarese died, July 10, 1937.
While Malangone’s mother beseeched the family never to discuss the tragedy because John, a child, “will forget,” forgetting would be impossible.
The neighborhood kids called him “Killer.” John’s father once dangled him from a window, demanding to know if it would please his in-laws if he dropped John to his death, to even the score.
And every time John entered his grandmother’s apartment, there, on the wall, staring at him, was that portrait of Orlando.
John withdrew. He made one friend, Paulie Tine. They were bonded by misery – Paulie’s face was disfigured – and by baseball.
John couldn’t play for the high school team because he’d been “classified” as intellectually slow. Paul Kritchell, the scout who first identified Lou Gehrig and Whitey Ford as prospects, spotted John in a sandlot game. Soon, Malangone was a 17-year-old catcher in the Yankee minor league chain.
And everywhere Malangone landed in the minors, he hit for average and power. There’s footage of Malangone hitting a home run with such a fluid, powerful swing that suggestions that he would one day replace Yogi Berra seemed legit.
Except that Malangone, at every great opportunity, made sure to fail, made sure to remind others – but mostly himself – that he’s unworthy of success. He did what it took, often posed as a clown. In front of Yankee bosses in spring training he came to bat holding a rake.
There’s so much in this documentary that must be seen and heard. When Malangone was inducted into the Army, a drillmasters’ insistence that he “learn to kill” staggered him. When he won the Ft. Dix boxing championship, knocking out a Golden Gloves champ, he saw the dazed look on his victim’s face and never again boxed.
Can I ruin the ending of a work you may never see? It’s a happy, a soulful ending that includes a mission to the NYC Hall of Records to view Orlando’s death certificate – the cause of death reads, “accidental.” But there’s so much more. Powerful stuff followed by powerful stuff.
The 55-minute documentary would make fabulous winter viewing on YES, the Yankees’ network, but thus far, YES, loaded with repeats of profiles of Yankee greats, has shown no interest. But it belongs somewhere, anywhere, on TV. One of the local PBS stations, perhaps. It belongs on TV.