Frank's Place: Infamous Phillies manager was apparently an anti-Semite, too
Ben Chapman was involved in ugly episodes involving Jewish players and fans.
Carl Brooks was a basketball star at St. Thomas More in the 1960s. All I knew of him then was that he could really play and that, unlike virtually everyone else in the Catholic League, he was black.
St. Tommy played at O'Hara one winter Friday in 1967. I was in my usual spot, assembled with dozens of vocal classmates in a lofty bleacher perch. It was more than a good vantage point. Being part of that anonymous pack conferred on me a courage and sense of belonging I otherwise lacked.
Flush with testosterone, we delighted in loudly berating O'Hara's opponents. That night our target was Brooks.
Whenever he stepped to the foul line, we punctured the silence with shouts of "Say, Leroy!," a racially charged reference to a lyric from Joe Tex's R&B hit, "Skinny Legs and All."
If that seems like a youthful indiscretion now, I'm certain Brooks didn't see it that way then. He was just a teenager, and though he betrayed nothing, it must have stung.
Sadly, all these years later, that same ignorance continues to be displayed at sporting events.
Last week at Fenway Park, Orioles outfielder Adam Jones was the target of racial epithets - as well as a hurled bag of peanuts. I don't know how many Boston fans were involved, but I'll wager it was more than one.
There's an invisible no-man's land between players and fans. No matter how near we might get to our heroes, there are lines that shouldn't be crossed.
Too often, when proximity is combined with youth, anonymity, and alcohol, the results are obnoxious, personal attacks on athletes.
In the case of at least one ballplayer, however, that dynamic was reversed. And it certainly should surprise no one in Philadelphia that when an athlete spewed racial and religious insults at fans, his name was Ben Chapman.
Chapman is recalled most infamously for the 1947 game in which, as the Phillies manager, he led and encouraged a merciless verbal assault on Brooklyn's Jackie Robinson.
After seeing the 2013 Robinson biopic, 42, baseball historian Ray Robinson (no relation) wrote that "Chapman is portrayed exactly as he was in life: a mean-spirited, unreconstructed bigot."
But his shameful resumé extended far beyond that entry. Chapman once punched an umpire in the face. He struck another with a hurled glove and barely missed a third when, after a close call went against him, he fired a ball at the umpire's head.
In a game between his Yankees and Washington, he rushed into the Senators dugout to assault an opposing pitcher. He sucker-punched Birdie Tebbetts after the Detroit catcher tagged him out.
And since Chapman evidently was as rabid an anti-Semite as a racist, there were several ugly episodes involving Jewish players and fans.
"Chapman was a mean man," wrote Hank Greenberg biographer John Rosengren. "As a player, he mocked Jewish fans at Yankee Stadium with Nazi salutes and ethnic slurs."
As a young and talented Yankee, Chapman, according to his Society for American Baseball Research biography, even feuded with teammate Babe Ruth, publicly telling reporters that the legend was "over the hill."
That didn't endear him to New York fans, many of whom were Jewish. When they subsequently jeered Chapman, a four-time all-star, he returned fire with a variety of anti-Semitic vitriol.
Once he climbed into the stands and, according to a contemporary newspaper account, "chased the frightened fan clear into the street."
In 1933, for no apparent reason, he viciously spiked Washington's Buddy Myer. When the Jewish second baseman retaliated, a wild brawl - one joined by teammates and fans - ensued.
The following year, 15,000 New Yorkers signed a petition urging the Yankees to trade him. He wasn't dealt until June 1936.
Chapman was bewildered.
"What is behind this opposition to me I do not know," Chapman said at the time. "In Birmingham [Alabama, his home], I have a host of Jewish friends."
A decade later the animus still hadn't abated. During a game against the Giants at the Polo Grounds, Chapman - 4-F in World War II because of a trick knee - shouted anti-Semitic slurs at a Jewish GI who had lost a leg in combat.
Chapman died in 1993 of a bad heart - yes, he apparently had one - insisting till the end that his hate could be excused as competitive fire.
I don't know what became of Carl Brooks. If he heard our ignorant screams that night in 1967, I hope he has forgotten and forgiven.
And if he needs an example, he can look to some other Philadelphians.
While researching this column, I was floored by a photo I found in the Inquirer archives. Dated May 7, 1947 - just weeks after Chapman's attack on Robinson was national news and days before the groundbreaking rookie's initial Philadelphia visit - it shows an official of a local civic organization presenting the Phillies manager with an onyx clock.
The award, according to the caption, was meant to honor Chapman's "community spirit."
The presenting organization? The Emile Zola Chapter of the Brith Sholom.
So, to Carl Brooks, wherever you are, this much older, not much wiser Philadelphian offers these heartfelt Yiddish words, ones that Ben Chapman's Jewish friends would have understood:
Zay moykhl. ("Sorry.")