Guys Like This Give Heroes a Good Name

With another season having passed in which big-money corporatism drained more juice from the grand old game of baseball, a letter arrived.

It was from Gregory Bartone, a civil litigation lawyer in Santa Ana and a baseball fan who spent his early boyhood in the Italian section of Cleveland. Now 47, Bartone had a story to tell about sports heroes and what can happen when a boy now all grown up finally meets his for the first time.

Near the end of the 1955 season, the Cleveland Indians called up a young Italian named Colavito, and Bartone’s father began mentioning the slugger to his young son. Over time, while his friends deified obvious stars like Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Stan Musial, young Greg Bartone adopted Rocco Colavito as a hero.

“For some reason, the name flows off the tongue,” Bartone says. “I picked him up, and I started to follow him. Then, he started getting really good. When he batted, he aimed the bat right at the pitcher’s head, then he’d pull it back like he was cocking a gun.”

Of such things are heroes bred, bonds forged. “I don’t know what it was,” Bartone says. “It was more than his ability. It’s something about the name, the looks, the way he carried himself.”

Even though his family moved to Anaheim in 1956, Bartone maintained his long-distance adulation for the strong-armed right fielder who slightly altered his first name to “Rocky.”

As Bartone wrote in his letter, “I do not remember having a visual image of him hitting a home run or throwing out a runner, but I followed his every movement in the early ‘60s when he played for Cleveland and later Detroit. The reason that, back then, an idol took on mystic qualities was because we hardly saw them. The only time I saw Rocky play [on TV] was the All-Star game at Fenway Park in 1961. He hit a home run for the American League. . . . This was the best I could have hoped for and validated my opinion that he was the best player in baseball.”

Bartone never saw Colavito, who retired in 1968, play in person. Rocky the man existed in Bartone’s imagination. Rocky the player, with his 374 career home runs, lived through baseball cards, magazines and the sports pages.

This past summer, a good friend of Bartone’s named Cindy Yost invited him to Reading, Pa., where her father, Duke Zilber, was being inducted into the Reading Baseball Hall of Fame. Zilber had been general manager of the Reading team that was an Indians’ farm club in the ‘50s. One of his players was Rocky Colavito. In fact, for Bartone’s 40th birthday, Zilber had imposed on Colavito to send Bartone an autographed baseball.

Despite his ties to Zilber, Bartone balked at making a short, expensive trip to Reading. Until, that is, Cindy mentioned that Colavito would be at the ceremonies.

“I said to myself, what am I going to do?” Bartone recalled for me this week. “It’s going to cost me a thousand dollars to go, but Rocky has RSVP’d to the luncheon. I’m an adult now. Do I like the guy that much? Then, I thought about all the times I read about his exploits. My dad just passed away this year. We always had arguments who was better, Mantle or Colavito. I thought, I’m going to do this.”

All the way on the plane trip to Pennsylvania, Bartone wondered and worried. What if his boyhood idol, whose persona he had basically created in his youthful mind, was a jerk, like some modern-day “heroes”? What if the Colavito he defended all those years to his boyhood friends was someone he instinctively disliked? And, what would the former strapping 6-3, 190-pounder look like now?

Myth and reality intersected about 1:30 p.m. on Aug. 28 when a silver-haired man walked into the banquet room. From Bartone’s letter: “I could have picked him out from 500 feet away. He looked just like his baseball card picture and even though he was about 65 years old [actually, 64], you could tell he was in great shape.”

Eventually, Bartone approached Colavito.

“I said, ‘Hello, Mr. Colavito.’

“He said, ‘Rocky.’ ”

For the next hour or so, Bartone said, Colavito sat with him and other guests and talked about baseball in the ‘50s and ‘60s. He told the group how Don Drysdale would “juice up” the ball, and how he and Herb Score held out because Duke Zilber wouldn’t pay them an extra $50 a year. And then he told stories about the Yankees, Mickey Mantle and the other stars of the era.

Hoping against hope that Colavito wouldn’t have clay feet, Bartone wasn’t disappointed. “He didn’t appear to have one jealous bone in his body about the salaries today,” Bartone wrote, “but he wondered about the current state of the game. He believed baseball was still the best sport because of the memories it evokes. . . . I do not think I could have been any more satisfied. He was a gentleman, held court for over an hour and treated me as if we had known each other for years.

“I wish I could have had a little more time with him. I wanted to ask about the games and players that were etched in my mind when I was growing up . . . and I regretted that I had to share time with my idol with others.

“In a way, though, I hope I never see or talk to him again. Idols from that era, to me, stand taller than those that play the game today. We weren’t exposed to them that much and they carried with them an aura of mystery. . . . I really didn’t want to know where he lived, what he ate, or where he shopped. I now know just enough about him.”

I thanked Bartone for his letter and said I knew exactly how he felt. Like him, I can’t explain sports idolatry. Like him, I just know it can enrich lives.

“I don’t know if those guys realize how adored they were,” Bartone said. “The guy was exactly what I wanted him to be. It kind of validates the guy you picked as a kid--it’s like the emotional attachment you have to him is validated. Because when you’re 9, 10 and 11, they’re everything. They’re your whole world.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com