Victor Zalta – owner of Adele’s Linen store on Broadway – is a huge New York Yankees fan, and he still has a lot of fond memories from his days as a boy in Florida when he got to hangout at the Yankees training camp.
And while he wouldn’t trade away those memories, not all of his experiences were pleasant at the time and some remain sad even all these years later, such as the tragic death of Snuffy Stirnweiss who Zalta met in training camp as a boy.
Stirnweiss, a second basemen who won the American League batting title in 1945, was among many of the great Yankees stars posed for a picture with Zalta, and left a big impression.
“His real name was George Stirnweiss and he was a great Yankees player during the war years,” Zalta recalled. “He won the title with a .301 batting average.”
Ironically, Stirnweiss was among the 48 people killed in Bayonne on Sept. 15, 1958 when a Jersey Central Railroad passenger train plunged through the open lift of Newark Bay Bridge that connected Bayonne and Port Elizabeth over Newark Bay. According to an account written later by Yankees short stop Phil Rizzuto, Stirnweiss nearly missed the train that morning.
Zalta had to hide his girlfriends
Less tragic, but perhaps more terrifying to Zalta as a young man were his encounters with what was known in the 1950s as “the rat pack of baseball.”
This included Mickey Mantel, Billy Martin, Whitey Ford, and Hank Bauer, all of whom hung out together, and during their spring trainings in Florida, frequented the clubs that a Zalta as a young man visited as well.
“They would come into cocktail bars in St. Petersburg, Florida, and we would have to sneak out the back with our girlfriends, because they would try to steal our girls,” Zalta said. “All the girls loved them, and we were afraid if we stayed our girls would want to be with them.”
Yankees in St. Petersburg, especially the members of the rat pack were like movie stars, every girl wanted to get close to them, despite the fact that the pack was generally rowdy when they got together.
Zalta remembered once being in the Copacabana club when the rat pack showed up, and Billy Martin – who would later lead the N.Y. Yankees to several pennants at manager in the 1970s – was told to be quiet or get out. Of course, the ballplayers weren’t the only people capable of stealing his dates. Zalta remembered being at a table with famed sports announcer Lindsay Nelson.
“He was sitting next to me at a cocktail lounge. I was sitting with my girlfriend,” Zalta recalled. “I went to the men’s room and when I got back both them were gone.”
A Yankees fan moved south at age 14
Born in 1931, Zalta grew up in Brooklyn, where he became an avid Yankees fan, learning the names of all the players and their statistics.
In 1945, his family moved to St. Petersburg, Florida, the spring training home of the New York Yankees. While he could never get close to the players up north, in Florida he met them, even played some pickup games with a few. Nearly all he met posed with him, giving him a scrap book of memories other fans would envy.
But sometimes, he met his baseball heroes in odd places, such as when he met Yankees catcher Yogi Berra at the dog track.
“I got to talk to him, it was wonderful,” Zalta recalled.
Perhaps one of the most curious moments came when Zalta saw St. Louis Cardinal great “Stan the man” Musial sitting alone with a cup of coffee at the restaurant in St. Petersburg, years after having met him first during a spring training game against the Yankees.
“I told him what a great ball player he was,” Zalta said. “He seemed happy I recognized him.”
Musial, whose 22 years with the Cardinals had made him a superstar with three most valuable player awards, a .331 lifetime batting average, seven batting titles and a plaque in the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown was shocked when Zalta pulled an old photo from his wallet in which Musial had posed with Zalta as a boy.
“He said he couldn’t believe he looked that young,” Zalta said. “For me, it was a great moment because he was one of the greatest players of all time.”