Zalusky: Baseball was our bond

My dad missed most of the 1945 baseball season.

That was the year his favorite ballclub reached the World Series for the fifth time during his first 24 years on the planet.

He might well have expected the Cubs to be back again in the series fairly soon.

But they wouldn't win another pennant until five years after his death.

In August of 1945, he returned from his long Army service when his ship arrived in Boston. After a 30-day furlough, he was off to Arkansas to fulfill his final duties before returning to civilian life.

The year before that, he was among the troops storming Omaha Beach during the Invasion of Normandy.

I was born 15 years after the war ended. My dad was not generous with memories of his time in the service. He shared just enough to convey the brutality of life in combat.

The concrete evidence of his service was there. The uniform in the closet. The foreign coins in the drawer.

But the real experience of the conflict was locked in his skull, escaping at jarring intervals, such as when he would chide a supporter of the current Iraq War, "You have never been in combat."

He declined the opportunity to see "Saving Private Ryan."

What he did share was his love of baseball, particularly the years growing up watching the Cubs at Wrigley Field.

In his line of work, he was a particular type of salesman, what was known as a middleman. He dealt in textiles - towels, uniforms, hospital gowns.

I would sit in the passenger seat as he made his rounds, visiting suppliers like Nick from Indian Garment and customers like Curtiss Candy. I still recall the noxious candy factory smell.

And while driving, he would talk about the great Cubs teams of the 1930s. If he hadn't seen the Cubs win it all, at least he had seen something none of my friends could claim - Cubs teams that actually played in a World Series.

The names of those players conveyed poetry - Gabby Hartnett. Billy Herman. Bill Jurges. Stan Hack. Phil Cavarretta. My dad pronounced it Cav-retta. Shortly before my dad attended Roosevelt High School in Chicago, Cavarretta was starring for Lane Tech, not too far away.

If you asked him, my dad would probably point to the 1938 season as his favorite season, because he spent that pennant year as a vendor at Wrigley Field.

Every once in a while, he would show me the card that was his license to sell cold pop.

He probably made some decent change.

In a Chicago Tribune story from Oct. 5, 1938, Ray Kneip, who managed concessions at Wrigley Field, said his stockroom contained 3,000 cases of pop alone in readiness for the World Series crowds.

My dad told me he would actually sell his wares to the players in the dugout, bringing him into contact with stars like Dizzy Dean and Dean's former Gashouse Gang colleague Rip Collins.

He also remembered important but now obscure figures in Cubs lore, such as trainer Andy Lotshaw and coach Roy Johnson.

My dad told me he even wangled a major league tryout for one of his Albany Park friends.

He would talk about the great sports writers of the day, including Warren Brown and John P. Carmichael, and the radio voices, such as Pat Flanagan, who would bring the Cubs into his living room.

When I was a kid, one of the announcers who called the 1938 series, Bob Elson, was still calling baseball games.

My dad also worked at Comiskey Park, where he said he carried baseballs for White Sox pitcher John Rigney. I later shared that story with Rigney's daughter, Patricia Bellock, when, as a reporter, I covered her when she was a member of the DuPage County Board.

Over the years, whatever our differences, my dad and I would always be able to bond over baseball, whether sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley or in the upper deck at Comiskey.

Toward the end of his life, we attended a Kane County Cougars game. A fellow World War II vet, Bob Feller, was signing autographs. When it was our turn to get a signed picture of Rapid Robert, I had him sign it "To my good friend Max." It occupied a treasured place on a book shelf in the family room of his Wilmette home, along with a vintage picture of the Wrigley scoreboard.

We once went to see a documentary about Hank Greenberg, another Jewish war veteran.

And in the dimness of the Wilmette theater, we both had a chance to catch up on his largely lost season, as we watched newsreel clips of Greenberg and his Detroit Tigers playing the Cubs at Wrigley Field in the 1945 World Series.

szalusky@dailyherald.com