An Old Man,
A Long-Forgotten Pitcher, An Obsession Remembered
BY ROBERT HIRSCHFIELD
I’ve learned to mistrust reverie. One of the unexpected lessons old age has taught me is to beware of what comes out of the soft, furry pocket of memory. Sometimes, it is a thing with edges. Like the time recently when I tried to educate my girlfriend Julia about the game of baseball back in the tame 1950s. “I know the son of a baseball player,” she said. “Who is the player?” She checked with Google to make sure: “Aber.” “Al Aber. Relief pitcher. Detroit Tigers.” Julia gasped. You’d have thought I plucked Aber fully formed out of a hat. I actually amazed myself responding so readily, as if I saw him pitch just the other day. I hadn’t thought of Al Aber in more than 60 years. I had to wonder if, perhaps like Cardinal’s shortstop
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3rd Act magazine | spring 2022
Marty Marion, Aber was one of those players I chased from his mid-Manhattan hotel down into the Grand Central subway station for his autograph. (In the 50s, players routinely traveled up to Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds by subway.) Julia diligently put me in touch with Aber’s son, Mitch, a retired Oak Park social worker. We first exchanged emails to set up a time to talk. He sounded surprised but pleased that a stranger from the East would be interested in his father almost 30 years dead. “In his entire career (1950-1957), my father never made more than $10,000, tops,” Mitch Aber said when I phoned him. “The money a physician might make in those days. After retirement, he worked in a clothing store.”The remnants of baseball’s exalted otherness still makes that seem unimaginable. Some of my neighbors worked
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