Some might say it was still the first inning and Karl Erskine didn’t have his best part. A camera crew is set up in the living room, and filmmaker Ted Green gently guides Erskine in a short speech. For an aging Brooklyn Dodger this is a lot of work and takes several takes.
Erskine apologizes. He’s not in his prime yet, he says. But when he gets it, he pulls it off, just as he was supposed to. There’s always something appealing about Erskine, a look that warms, draws in, and welcomes you to forget for decades.
“He’s 96, but his eyes are 12,” says Green.
Your eyes will instantly dance, and memories will come flooding back at once. The interview began, and the game proceeded like a no-hitter at Ebbets Field (he threw twice), ending with a harmonica performance of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Erskine keeps one on the out-pitch end table next to his ramp, which is always within reach.
“When we’re listening to music, he picks up the harmonica,” says Betty Erskine, 95, sitting in her husband’s blue easy chair across the table. “If the key is wrong, he will put it back. But if it is correct, he will work with you.”
Erskine performs “Stan Musical Blues,” an original song he wrote for hitters he’s faced more than anyone else, often without luck. Musial, who passed away in 2013, played his home-made harmonica at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony each July.Erskine is not a member, but will be spending the weekend in Cooperstown, New York.
Erskine will receive the Buck O’Neill Lifetime Achievement Award on Saturday, the day before Fred McGriff and Scott Lauren are inducted into the Hall of Fame. The award, named after the pioneering star of the black league, is given every three years for positive contributions to the social impact of baseball. society.
With childlike amazement, Erskine remembers the depths of the winter of the last Dodgers players in the book The Boys of Summer.
Erskine, the only living player in the 1955 World Series, in which Brooklyn won its only crown, said, “When I was a kid, my imagination took me to different places, so I always dreamed of places like this. I was there,” he said. “I never thought it would happen, but it happened, and I was really surprised. I’m like, ‘Was that me?’
As a minor leaguer, Erskine discussed curveball grips with Mordecai Brown, better known as Three-Finger Brown. On October 3, 1951, the young major leaguer played a curve while warming up in the bullpen at the Polo Grounds in upper Manhattan. The Dodgers then called up another pitcher, Ralph Branca, who let the Giants hit Bobby Thomson’s famous pennant-winning home run.
Erskine also achieved stardom. He had 20 wins in the season, 14 strikeouts in the World Series (Mickey Mantle was a fan four times), and a no-hitter. He made his first start for the Dodgers in 1958 in Los Angeles, throwing a strike on his first pitch.
Erskine’s arm finally broke the following June, but that time was too far away, with 49 states in the association and just 16 teams in the majors. He and Betty have seen a lot of history, and a lot more is yet to come. And he decided that in 1960, they would go through it all in their common home of Anderson, Indiana.
“They said, ‘Where’s Anderson?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, on the White River between Moonville and Strawtown,'” Erskine said with a soft laugh. “Anderson has always been a good and solid place to raise our children.”
The decision, like his baseball career, set Erskine on the road to honors this weekend. His original post-career plans were to move to New York and work as a sportswear representative for the apparel company Van Heusen. However, when Erskine’s fourth child, Jimmy, was born with Down syndrome in April 1960, the family stayed with Anderson. At that time, many families struggled with society’s attitudes towards children with intellectual disabilities.
“Originally, of course, we assumed that we would take him to a facility somewhere,” Erskine said. “And Betty says, ‘No, no, he’s going home with us.’ I was not.”
Erskine sold insurance, worked as a bank president, and was a baseball coach at Anderson College. Jimmy would go everywhere with his family: dinners, church, brothers’ sports day. He attended public schools in Anderson, where an elementary school was named after him in his family’s honor in 2004.
Jimmy, who now lives with a janitor, recently retired after working at Applebee’s Restaurant in Anderson for 20 years. He visits his parents’ house twice a week.
“He was 63 and was told he would live into his 30s,” Betty said. “We feel like we’ve been given an angel.”
The Erskines have become a reliable source of information for families with similar problems. Gary, the second child, said several friends of the family have found employment in the special education field. Karl has volunteered for Special His Olympics for over 40 years, founder Eunice Kennedy was scouted by Schreiber, and Muncy’s vocational training program is named in his honor. rice field.
In his speech, Erskine brought a World Series ring and a Special Olympics medal, pointing out the importance of the latter. Along the way, he began to notice similarities between Brooklyn teammate Jackie Robinson and Jimmy. Both thrived in environments that would have once been shunned. His short book about them, “The Parallel,” is being developed for use in public schools in Indiana.
When Erskine became involved in a youth organization, the Wildcat Baseball League (with the motto “Together we make the team”) in the 1960s, Robinson helped promote it, along with Ted Williams and Bob Feller. I went to Fort Wayne for
“I know that anything that has to do with Karl Erskine has to be pretty awesome,” Robinson told the crowd. “Carl told me about our relationship at the Brooklyn Baseball Club. It’s a friendship I cherish and will cherish for as long as I can remember.”
Filmmaker Greene used the clip in Erskine’s documentary “The Best We’ve Got,” which premiered at Anderson last summer and is set to premiere at the National Baseball Hall of Fame this month. The title comes from former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who used the title in 2010 to present Erskine with the state’s highest honor, the Sachem Medal for Merit and Moral Virtue.
“He’s the best in terms of traits we’re talking about, traits I’d like to think people look up to and look up to, not just here, but in places like Indiana,” Daniels said in an interview. “He lived like this decades before people invented these buzzwords.
In 1930, they were planted in graphic form when Erskine’s father Matt took Erskine to Marion, Indiana the morning after a mob stormed the prison and hanged two black inmates. Matt Erskine wanted his son to see the effects of hate.
The sight of bare tree branches and rope remnants has been seared into Carl Erskine’s consciousness ever since. In a state that was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan, where about 30 percent of the male population pays dues, Erskine grew up with his black best friend, Johnny Wilson, an achievement that gives him special admiration. he said it was nothing.
“I lived in a mixed neighborhood and knew many talented black families and hard working families, and Johnny was a friend,” Erskine said. “I ate at his house, he ate at mine, and we got along very, very well. We never cared about the color of our skin. I was never involved, so it’s hard to take credit for it because it was natural for me.”
On the top shelf of the Erskine’s living room cabinet is a figurine given by Wilson to an old friend. Two boys in baseball uniforms sit on a bench—one black, the other white. Wilson’s note is hidden behind it. “Like when we were kids”.
Wilson passed away in 2019. Roger Craig, the last Dodgers other than Erskine to appear in the 1955 World Series, died last month. Two of Erskine’s children, Gary and Susie, will represent him in Cooperstown and are part of a large family with five grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren, including a girl named Brooklyn.
Erskine’s name will be on permanent display in the Hall of Fame by the Buck O’Neill statue, down the hallway and around the corner from the Plaque Gallery. The room honors some of Brooklyn’s most sacred names, including Robinson, Campanella, Snyder, Reese and Hodges, and sends Erskine a subtle yet powerful message he’s spent his life promoting.
“There’s one important element in the plaques that surround the Hall of Fame rooms,” Erskine says. “They’re all bronze. They’re all the same color.”
