As a kid growing up at 1036 Elm St., in Van Wert, Ohio, Arizona’s college football Hall of Fame coach Jim Young once hit a baseball through the bay window of the house of a neighbor, Mr. Forwalter.
Home run or run home? It was probably both.
That broken-window homer in a 1940s neighborhood pick-up game wasn’t the most thrilling memory of Young’s remarkable career in sports, but it’s one he’ll always remember.
A few days ago, Young read part of the Star’s ongoing series of articles detailing the favorite memories of its sports staff. It took him back to Oct. 3, 1947, at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York.
“It will always be my greatest thrill because I was there to see it,” Young told me.
I was almost at a loss for words. Yes, Game 4 of the 1947 World Series occupies an unforgettable place in baseball history; pitcher Bill Bevens of the mighty New York Yankees had a no-hitter against the Brooklyn Dodgers with two outs in the bottom of the ninth.
It all changed when Dodger pinch-hitter Cookie Lavagetto hit a double off the right-field wall, scoring the winning runs.
But what was Sylvester “Red” Young, manager of the Borden Dairy Cheese factory in Van Wert, doing 620 miles from home with his 12-year-old son on a school day?
And how could that day surpass Young’s 39 accomplished years as a college football coach, which included memory-forging Rose Bowls, Territorial Cups and Army-Navy games?
This is a man who was the defensive coordinator on the 1969 Michigan football team that beat No. 1 Ohio State — beat Young’s mentor Woody Hayes — in a game that at the time was referred to as the greatest upset in college football history.
And this is a man who broke ASU coach Frank Kush’s crushing nine-game winning streak against Arizona in a historic 1974 Territorial Cup game at Arizona Stadium.
How does Game 4 of the 1947 World Series occupy such a special place in Young’s sports career?
Young, Arizona’s head coach from 1973-76 and an assistant coach under Dick Tomey from 1992-94, was gracious enough to allow me to read his lifetime memoirs this week.
It was absorbing. Here’s what he wrote about the 1947 World Series and his love for the Dodgers:
“Becoming a Brooklyn Dodger fan as a young boy living in Van Wert would seem to be an impossibility. There was no television or ESPN to tell about the Dodger games. Also there was no way to get a radio broadcast from Brooklyn unless it was the World Series. The only way to follow the Dodgers was in the sports page of the Van Wert Times Bulletin the next day. This was hard as the only teams that the Bulletin really covered were the Reds and the Indians.
“I think two things made me a Dodger fan by the summer of 1947. One was the fact that almost every war movie of the period had someone from Brooklyn, who was always talking about the Dodgers.
“The second thing was the arrival of Jackie Robinson in the big leagues. He caught my attention early in 1947 and soon became my baseball hero. I am not sure how much his being the first black player in the major leagues had to do with it, probably something. I do know that he was the most exciting base runner ever in my mind.”
How did one acquire tickets to an event of such magnitude?
Young’s father periodically visited the Borden Cheese Company’s New York City headquarters. When his son asked if he could get tickets to the World Series, it seemed like an outrageous dream.
“A few days later my dad came home after work and said that we had tickets for the World Series.” Young wrote. “ I don’t think I was ever more excited than at that moment. That night at the Boy Scout meeting I bet every scout a dollar that Brooklyn would win the game.
“We took the train to New York and stayed in New York City. The day of the game my dad and I took the subway to Brooklyn. We got off the subway and walked up Flatbush Avenue with the crowd of fans going to the game. What a thrill to walk up to the entrance to Ebbets Field and see it for the first time. I know that as a 12-year-old I was in awe. To actually see the Dodgers in person and then see one of the top games ever played in a World Series is a thrill that I shall never forget.”
When Lavagetto’s walk-off double simultaneously broke up Bevins’ no-hitter and beat the fearsome Yankees, Young — sitting behind the third base dugout — let it all out.
“The crowd erupted and I have never heard such noise as that day,” he wrote. “My dad said to me, ‘Why are you yelling so loud?’ I told him that I had just won 15 dollars from my fellow scouts back in Van Wert. It was a good thing that I did not lose that bet because I did not have 15 dollars to pay all of them.”
For the next decade, as he became a high school football star, scoring 49 touchdowns for Van Wert High School and accepting a scholarship to Ohio State, Young developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the Dodgers and baseball.
Yet now, decades later, that game continues to resonate in Young’s mind. He has been inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. He rebuilt Army’s football team from a 2-9 loser to a 9-3 club that stunned Michigan State in the Citrus Bowl. He coached a Purdue team that beat No. 5 Notre Dame.
Yet the ‘47 Series would never be forgotten.
“The World Series was the biggest sports event of each year,” he wrote. “In the 40s, I would say that the World Series was bigger in the minds of the people at that time than the Super Bowl is in the minds of the people today. However, very few people ever got to see the World Series as it was being played. So the chance to see the World Series in person for a 12-year-old boy from Van Wert, Ohio were very, very, very slim.”
In the years to come, the Youngs traveled to watch the Dodgers in St. Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Chicago.
On his 16th birthday, Young’s most cherished present was a Jackie Robinson model baseball bat. It wasn’t just a phase a Dodger fan did while growing up. Long after his coaching career was over, Young was teaching a goal-setting class at Tucson’s Gospel Rescue Mission.
As an assignment, he asked the class “what can you learn from Jackie Robinson?”
A lot more than a football game.
