Say It Ain’t So

On March 18, 1985, three men were arrested on drug and gun possession charges as they were driving through the Brownsville section of Brooklyn.

This would not have been big news except for the fact that one of them was Joe Pepitone, a former New York Yankee who had been a three-time All-Star.

I barely knew who the guy was, but I remember seeing him on TV as he was taken out of the police station in handcuffs.

“You let us down, Joe!” a man shouted off-camera. “You let us down.”

It was quite dramatic and looking back, I can’t help but think of the little boy who, legend has it, approached Shoeless Joe Jackson and pleaded with him to “say it ain’t so, Joe” after the beloved ball player was charged with helping to throw the 1919 World Series.

But I didn’t feel that way at the time. I recall being annoyed at what I considered this unseen guy’s pathetic hero worship.

You’re a grown man, for Christ’s sake, I thought. Why are you moping over an ex-jock who doesn’t give a damn if you live or die?

I always hated sports as a kid. Baseball, basketball, football, you name it, I had no use for it.

In school my classmates would be going on about last night’s game and I’d have no idea what they were talking about.

Not a Fan

And I considered most professional athletes to ignorant, overpaid bums who got far too much attention.

I used to dread football season because that meant my father would watch TV for hours on Sunday and roar at whatever the hell was happening on the screen.

I supported New York teams because I’m a New Yorker, but I still didn’t watch the games-- except for that magical year of 1969 when the Jets won the Superbowl, and the Mets won the World Series.

Even now when the conversation turns to sports, I tend to leave and when I hear sports talk on TV—especially on political commentary shows--I’m reaching for the remote.

Joe Pepitone , who was born in Brooklyn, died earlier this month at 82 years old and I was reminded of his arrest while reading his obituary.

Now, nearly 40 years later, I can see the tragedy of that moment and I can understand why the fellow outside the camera’s range felt so let down.

That’s how I tend to enjoy sports—as history. Talk about the Joe Jackson and the Black Sox scandal and you’ll have my undivided attention.

Start talking about March Madness, which apparently has something to do with basketball, and you’ll lose me.

Sometime back the Eighties I read about a local restaurant here in Bay Ridge that was being torn down. It had been operating for decades, but I had never gone there, and I wasn’t too concerned about its demise.

But then I heard that the Brooklyn Dodgers used to go there sometimes after their games, and I wanted to throw myself in front of the bulldozers. This is hallowed ground, damn it.

Pinstripes to Prison Stripes

Joe Pepitone had some rough times in his life. When he was 17, he was shot by a classmate while at school. That same week he became so angry at his father over his constant beatings that he told his mother he wished his old man would drop dead.

One day later, Pepitone’s father died at age 39 due to a stroke.

He wrote a memoir entitled “Joe, You Coulda Made Us Proud,” which a Rolling Stone writer said was “quietly simply the best baseball book you never read.”

The title alone speaks volumes and now I'm interested in reading about Pepitone’s glory days when he was hanging around with the likes of Frank Sinatra and Tom Jones and rubbing elbows with organized crime figures.

Joe Pepitone was sentenced to six months in jail after the Brownsville arrest.

In passing sentence, Associate Justice Richard Brown said, “I find it particularly sad when someone who graced New York in Yankee pinstripes will now have to serve his time with the New York Department of Correction in their prison stripes.”

Yes, it’s quite sad, and while I’m still not a sports fan, I can name plenty of people who have let me down, including Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, and Kevin Spacey.

It's hero worship, which is foolish and illogical, but it's also human nature.

And Pepitone's story makes me think about the times when I disappointed people and how I torture myself about not living up to my full potential.

Thirty years after that encounter with the little boy, Shoeless Joe Jackson said the exchange never happened and that a writer for the Chicago Daily News made the whole thing up.

That doesn’t matter to me, though. The story still serves as a warning of what can happen when we let each other down.