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First off, after all these years, what\u2019s with the \u201cbloom-berg\u201d pronunciation? If it\u2019s \u201cBLOOOM-berg,\u201d how come his first name isn\u2019t pronounced \u201cRoon?\u201d\nJust wanted to get that out of the way.<\/p>\n
by Marty Appel<\/p>\n
First off, after all these years, what\u2019s with the \u201cbloom-berg\u201d pronunciation? If it\u2019s \u201cBLOOOM-berg,\u201d how come his first name isn\u2019t pronounced \u201cRoon?\u201d
\nJust wanted to get that out of the way.<\/p>\n
My friend Ron Blomberg has always been just a little off-center, enough to confuse and confound. And to make you smile.<\/p>\n
Our Yankee careers paralleled each other\u2019s (although I\u2019d have traded every day of mine in the front office to have played one game, and to have my name in the Baseball Encyclopedia). He was the nation\u2019s first selection in the June, 1967 free agent draft, and his selection by the struggling Yankees was a huge national story. He was to be the \u201cGreat Jewish Hope,\u201d the big box-office attraction, the wondrous slugger of long Yankee Stadium home runs. He had the body, the appetite, and the innocence of the cartoon character L\u2019il Abner, although I\u2019m not sure younger readers will know who that is. (For the uninformed, go to www.lil-abner.com)<\/p>\n
Quietly, that same summer, I was interviewing in the team\u2019s front office for a summer job in the PR department, answering Mickey Mantle\u2019s fan mail.<\/p>\n
By 1970 I was the assistant PR Director and Ronnie was with us in spring training in Ft. Lauderdale, charming the New York media with the great smile, the southern charm, the innocent observations, and the remarkable power to take a fastball from a right-handed pitcher and propel it great distances.<\/p>\n
The \u201cBlomberg Watch\u201d began around that time, everyone hoping that he would bring that great bat to New York ASAP and help a depressed franchise. No one wanted it more than the CBS executives running the club, struggling to draw a million fans a year.<\/p>\n
He joined the team in the summer of \u201971, on the same day the Yanks acquired another Ron \u2013 Swoboda \u2013 and put two instant media delights in uniform at once. One Ron was on the way up, the other on the way down, but for a time, the news cameras would head for Yankee Stadium for some good stories.<\/p>\n
In that first week, Dick Schaap, doing local sports for WNBC-TV, asked me to bring Ron to the set for a live interview. He knew a good story.<\/p>\n
\u201cC\u2019mon, Bloomie,\u201d I said. \u201cWe\u2019re going to go on Channel 4 with Dick Schaap!\u201d<\/p>\n
He had trouble with the name. He kept repeating it as we drove downtown. \u201cJack Snapp, Jack Snapp, Jack Snapp.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo no no,\u201d I said, \u201cit\u2019s Dick Schaap! He\u2019s pretty famous, you know!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cGot it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJack Snapp, Jack Snapp, Jack Snapp.\u201d<\/p>\n
I sighed.<\/p>\n
He was on the set, Live at Five.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026and now we\u2019re got the Yankees\u2019 new first baseman, Ron Blomberg, with us,\u201d said Schaap, \u201cand Boomer, thanks for joining us.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNice to be with you\u2026\u2026\u2026Dick.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not only did he nail it, but on live TV he turned towards me off in the wings and winked. He was impossibly funny.<\/p>\n
We became neighbors in Riverdale, a nice section of the Bronx about 12 minutes from Yankee Stadium, and we socialized a lot. Furious games of table ice hockey \u2013 the game where you control the players by pulling levers in and out \u2013 turned into a league with standings. His neighbor, Dr. Stanley Gedzelman, a noted meteorologist on the staff of City College, was dragged into the competition. Bloomie usually won.<\/p>\n
He ate prodigiously, but needed the comfort of the familiar. He hated to try new places or new foods. Once he settled into a place, he liked returning over and over, and always asked for a full pitcher of water on the table. When the social occasion seemed to call for the maturity of ordering a mixed drink, he would order a vodka gimlet \u2013 he must have heard someone else doing it \u2013 but would never take a sip.<\/p>\n
I went to Atlanta with him and his first wife, Mara (I\u2019m still friends with her too), during the World Series of 1973. He had little interest in watching the Mets-Oakland games. He was not a spectator, and his attention span was fairly limited. I once gave Mara something for their home and she said, \u201cThis would go well in Ronnie\u2019s study,\u201d which I thought was a fantastic oxymoron, until I realized she was serious.<\/p>\n
We stayed at his parents\u2019 home, and his mother Goldie was constantly reminding him to towel off the sink in the bathroom, because he had a habit of splashing the room full of water. I thought I was having a sleepover at a 5th grader\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
In his driveway, we played home run derby with wiffle golf balls and a plastic bat. The road was a home run. I reached it a few times \u2013 imagine being proud of hitting a wiffle ball home run 75 feet off a major league first baseman \u2013 but what I really remember is him hitting a line drive off me, or rather through me. I think the ball entered my chest cavity, came out the back, and still reached the road.<\/p>\n
Oh, could he hit. You had to be there in Yankee Stadium to see the batting practice shots he sent into orbit because, of course, they didn\u2019t make the box scores or the game stories. I believe \u2013 I\u2019m too much of a perfectionist when it comes to history to say I\u2019m sure \u2013 that he hit the famous old Yankee Stadium fa\u00e7ade once or twice during batting practice, the place where Mantle had twice done it, quite famously, in regular season games.<\/p>\n
We went to Cooperstown together for a winter sports banquet some time after his \u201dfirst DH bat\u201d was put on display and he posed with his bat and asked the director of the Hall of Fame, poor old Kenny Smith, the most outrageous question about local village customs that had surely ever been asked by a visitor to that innocent little town. I\u2019m not sure that Kenny ever recovered.<\/p>\n
Bloomie was an usher at my wedding and walked my 75-year-old grandmother down the aisle, totally enjoying the attention and his mission.<\/p>\n
I never saw anyone better with fans. He signed, he posed, he kibitzed, he learned their names, and if he was too busy, he\u2019d politely make up some outrageous excuse about why he couldn\u2019t stop at that moment (\u201cI\u2019ve got to go study to be a doctor and a lawyer like my parents wanted.\u201d).<\/p>\n
He went to dinner with sportswriters, one of the few players to do that. They were just as good company as his teammates as far as he was concerned. The only real criteria he had for dinner was that the helpings be plentiful and it not last more than an hour. The attention span thing.<\/p>\n
As for his career, he certainly had some highlights \u2013 hitting .400 as late as the 4th of July one year to share a Sports Illustrated cover and. of course, the first DH thing, in which I played a small role by getting the bat up to Cooperstown (only bat in Cooperstown that celebrates a walk!) \u2013 but mostly, and sadly, his was another career that failed to reach its potential. He was riddled with injuries, including the one that essentially ended his career, crashing into the wall in Winter Haven, Florida, running down an unimportant spring training drive while playing in unfamiliar left field. Defense was not his strong suit, either at first or in the outfield, but that was pretty much the end of the Blomberg era in New York. He was technically a member of the championship teams of 1976 and 1977, but he played one game in those two years. I called him at home to get in the team photo because I figured someday he\u2019d want to show his son Adam that he was on a pennant-winning team.<\/p>\n
The Yankees weren\u2019t happy when he opted for free agency and went to the White Sox in \u201977. They had paid for his rehab, and now he was bolting. But he needed a fresh start. He loved the Yankees, but the team had really passed him by, he wasn\u2019t a favorite of Billy Martin\u2019s, and he needed to make a name for himself somewhere else. Sadly, it didn\u2019t happen for him in Chicago either, and that was the end of his short but fabled career.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve kept in touch like two old pals, and the fact that he is a former big leaguer has become largely irrelevant, except when he\u2019s called to ask me about the growing value of his \u201cfirst DH\u201d status in baseball history. I know he could still put a wiffle ball through my chest, and he knows that I can name all the MVPs from the beginning of time, but geez, we\u2019re gonna both turn 60 one of these days, and it\u2019s nice to have a friend who makes you still feel like a kid.<\/p>\n
The attention span, however, is still a little lacking.<\/p>\n
\u201cHey big guy, how ya\u2019 doing,\u201d he\u2019ll say, when he initiates a phone call. And then after a minute or two, comes, \u201cListen big guy, ya gonna be home later? Let me give you a call!\u201d<\/p>\n
He was the one who made the call in the first place. He\u2019s impossible. And this is why I love him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Marty Appel First off, after all these years, what\u2019s with the \u201cbloom-berg\u201d pronunciation? If it\u2019s \u201cBLOOOM-berg,\u201d how come his first name isn\u2019t pronounced \u201cRoon?\u201d Just wanted to get that out of the way. My friend Ron Blomberg has always… Continue Reading