WHO knew?
For the past dozen years Rich Ruffine has played in our regular golf group. And, until last year, this is about all I knew about him:
He’s a mediocre golfer (although he has his moments), he had an enormously successful Wall Street career, he has a bunch of grown kids, he’s a lovely guy with a sick sense of humor, and he’s built like an anvil, longshoreman hands and forearms.
I don’t recall us ever talking sports until one day last year when Ruffine handed me a book. It was a 2006 “Elysian Fields Quarterly,” which features the research and writings of baseball historians. Ruffine pointed to the cover story, written by Leo J. Callahan, “The Last Homer at Ebbets.”
“If you get a chance,” he said. So I gave it a quick peek, so as not to seem rude (uh-oh, another Brooklyn Dodger fan with memories of Campy and Pee Wee and that time when they were 11 and appeared on “Happy Felton’s Knothole Gang” on Ch. 9).
And then I saw a picture of a muscular kid in a Van Buren High School uniform. The caption identified him as “Red Ruffino,” which was what Ruffine used to go by. Sure enough, it’s Rich Ruffine. I started reading . . .
The last home run hit out of Ebbets Field was hit by Red Ruffino/Rich Ruffine. It happened in the Van Buren-Curtis PSAL championship game, June 23, 1958. That’s 50 years ago, tomorrow.
How come he never told me this before? “I’ve thrown it out as a trivia question,” he said, “but the answer – ‘I did’ – seems so ridiculous that I wish I’d never brought it up.”
But there it was, researched and documented. And there was the game story, in every New York City newspaper dated June 24, 1958.
Holy Cow.
Martin Van Buren High in Queens opened just three years before that final against Staten Island’s Curtis. Van Buren, like its namesake in his attempt to be reelected President in 1840, had no chance.
Curtis was stacked; it almost always was. Baseball players spawned at Curtis included Terry Crowley, who hit line drives for the Reds and Orioles and is now Baltimore’s hitting coach, Hank Majeski, 13 solid years in the bigs in the 1940s and 50s, and Frank Fernandez, who caught for the Yankees in the late 1960s. Oh, and a fellow named Bobby Thomson.
On this rainy day, Van Buren, which pitched and jabbed its way to a 16-5 record, faced Ray Ratkowski, a tall and nearly unhittable pitcher on a nearly undefeated (19-1) team. Fernandez caught for Curtis; Jack Tracy, who nearly made the bigs with the Mets, played second.
And it was the last game coached by Curtis’ Harry O’Brien, a baseball/basketball borough legend. O’Brien coached, among others, Thomson, Majeski and, in 1935, a set-shot artist, Sam Mushnick, my dad.
Boy, I would have been rooting for Curtis, that day. O’Brien’s successor, Bert Levinson, who coached Crowley, Fernandez and Tracy, is still a family friend. The Crowleys lived just up the street. My maternal grandfather, my father and mother and their three kids went to Curtis. Not that Curtis needed help or had much to worry about.
Ruffine, junior right fielder, for example, came to bat in Ebbets Field hitting what author Callahan described as “a wretched .167.”
“When the season began, I was the fourth outfielder. Ron Koenig, one of our best pitchers, also played right. When he pitched, I played. But when Koenig was suspended the rest of the season I played every game. He was suspended for smoking a cigarette.”
Shoot, Van Buren was thrilled just to be playing in Ebbets. Designated the home team, VB used the Dodgers’ old locker room, nine months absent of Dodgers following the unforgivable betrayal of Brooklyn. Players’ nameplates still were above the lockers. Steve Drandroff, who wore No. 14, naturally used the locker designated for Gil Hodges.
According to newspaper accounts there were just a few hundred people in Ebbets, that day. “Certainly no one seated beyond first or third,” Ruffine recalled.
There were two on in the first when 16-year-old Ruffine batted. Among VB’s three home runs, that season, Ruffine had hit none.
An all-or-nothing batter – you should see him swing a fairway wood – Ruffine swung hard and missed at the first two pitches. But he had his moments with a stick back then, too. The third pitch was letters-high and slightly inside. He nailed it. Over the 351-foot sign in left-center. The last documented home run hit out of Ebbets Field gave Van Buren a 3-0 lead.
“I can still feel my feet touching the bases.”
Curtis would tie it. But in the seventh, VB scored two more. VB had just three hits, that day, Ruffino/Ruffine’s shot in the first, and two singles in the seventh, but they all drove in runs in a 5-3 final. Three-year-old Van Buren High was City champs.
Yes, Ruffine has the ball. “My younger brother, Donnie, ran all the way over to get it. There was no one else out there.”
In 1959, some college ball was played in Ebbets, and Roosevelt beat Curtis, 6-5, there, to win the PSAL. But there’s no evidence that another home run was hit there after June 23, 1958. And by the spring of 1960, there was no more Ebbets Field.
Fifty years ago tomorrow; you can look it up. “My father took off to be at the game. He was a cab driver. He was very proud of me. And then,” said Ruffine, with a soft and sentimental grunt, “he went back to work.”