Commentary: In 1975, as a young reporter, Ron Berler was looking for a major league-quality glove when Chicago Cubs pitcher Oscar Zamora gave Ron his.
Oscar Zamora, a pitcher for the Chicago Cubs in the mid-1970s, gave Ron Berler this glove in May 1975.Oscar Zamora was a relief pitcher for the Chicago Cubs in the mid-1970s. He wasn’t very good, to put it kindly. During his Wrigley Field tenure, Cubs fans would serenade him as he exited the game, often in mid-inning after having surrendered a blizzard of runs. Here is a sample verse, sung to the tune of the long-ago Dean Martin hit “That’s Amore.
No problem, the infielder said. He named a price, and I handed him the money. A week later, I returned to the clubhouse, and the infielder waved me over. He reached into his locker and tossed me a new glove.Don't miss: Baseball is back and Chicago’s Ira Berkow gives us dozens of tales about ‘Baseball’s Best Ever’I thought he was joking at first. It was a Wilson A2000 — a popular model readily available in any decent sporting goods shop. Not a pro-quality glove.
You’d think after such unprompted kindness that I would have sought him out regularly in the clubhouse, sat with him at his locker and gotten to know him as a treasured acquaintance, if not as a friend. I certainly had the time and opportunity. But I was 25, self-absorbed, oblivious. To my shame, I never did. By the time I realized my error, my loss, he had left the game. I never saw him again.
I’m 73 now and haven’t played catch since hanging up my cleats. But every so often, I slip on Zamora’s glove and flex it till the pocket brushes my palm, till it feels as it did on the ball field, like a second skin. And I think, too, of the man who’d once worn it and of his selfless generosity.
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