Facing Ted Williams a myth, but Johnny Mize was a blast

   Each year about this time, my thoughts turn to my late father. My mind is jogged by Major League Baseball spring training games and the start of high school practices. March was Fran Holleran’s birth month so memories percolate.

     How could I forget those breezy, cold afternoons on the Morristown bus garage pavement with wind coming in off a cold St. Lawrence River? Coach Holleran would be slapping rubber baseballs across pebbles while we waited for our field to dry from a spring snowstorm. Guys named Colburn, Perretta, Spilman or Crosby would be fielding those bouncers and throwing out imaginary runners. Today, a nearby sign declares that soggy diamond “Holleran Field.’’

   That nostalgia was exacerbated this spring when I was recruited to review a book for a lunchtime series at the Rochester downtown library. A reviewer had backed out, so a former newspaper colleague begged me to conduct an emergency review of “The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams’’ by Adam Lazarus. It’s the story of unlikely, unusual, unbreakable friends –  actually polar opposites ­ – that lasted 50 years.

   My friend encouraged me to boost the review by adding any background information and personal insights. That activated the lightbulb in my brain. My father often had lamented that he missed playing against Williams, perhaps baseball’s greatest hitter during his Hall of Fame career with the Boston Red Sox, by two days during World War II.

   Fran Holleran was drafted after Pearl Harbor in 1942 out of Herkimer, N.Y., and enlisted into the Army Air Corps. He completed his basic training and did a stint in Red River, Texas, before a transfer to Baer Field in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

   He drew easy duty.  Each morning, he reported to the motor pool and did menial jobs like retrieving weapons from training exercises. Each afternoon, he reported to the baseball diamond, where he played center field and hit leadoff for the base team.

   So I dug into the book and the Internet looking to confirm the story. Williams had played for a base team during his pilot training in Chapel Hill, N.C., along with four other major-leaguers in the summer of 1943. He was transferred that September to Bunker Hill Naval Air Station in Peru, Indiana, just 60 miles from Fort Wayne. But there was no evidence Williams played in Indiana before his next transfer to advanced flight training in Pensacola, Fla.

     Perhaps the story was a myth. Perhaps it was based on a rumor floating around the camp. But one Hall of Fame member Fran Holleran did not miss out on was Johnny Mize, the “Big Cat’’ who lost three years (1943-45) of his pro career while he was stationed at Great Lakes Naval Station north of Chicago.

    Coach Holleran told me of the service pitcher who decided to challenge Mize (359 career home runs) with his fastball. When Mize connected, my father never came out of his stance in centerfield. The ball sailed over the brim of his cap and he never broke his position. He said he turned around long enough to watch the ball sail beyond the wall, well over 420 feet.

   He missed Williams and he was humbled by Mize, but baseball had two huge benefits. Base commandants controlled the movements of their men, and it was no secret they were betting on games and bragging about their teams. So when Holleran’s outfit prepared to ship out, he was given a special order.

      “Holleran, report to sick bay,’’ his superior barked. “You’ve got appendicitis.’’

   That happened twice, and kept him out of the European and Pacific theaters. Friends recount German atrocities that parents witnessed or kinfolk who return “shellshocked’’ from D-Day at Normandy or the Battle of the Bulge at Ardennes. Today, we call that PTSD.  I used to wisecrack that Fran Holleran guarded center field from the Nazis in Fort Wayne until I humbly developed a more respectful understanding of wartime service to your country.

  After the war, armed with the GI Bill, Holleran studied for four winters at Ithaca College, earning a degree in physical education. He spent his summers playing baseball for Gaffey Motors in Herkimer when my aunt lied about her sister’s age and introduced Eileen Maxwell to her future husband.

  There were plenty of stories about my Irish biddy of a grandmother, Mary Agnes McCann Holleran, wailing on a fan with her purse for criticizing my Dad. My introverted mother sat silently, wishing she could crawl out of the bleachers. On a trip to Yankee Stadium, my Mom, exhausted from an overnight shift at a Utica hospital, fell asleep before the third inning.

  They married in 1950 and moved to their border outpost on the St. Lawrence River. After coaching baseball for 32 seasons at Morristown and raising six children, they owed baseball a debt of gratitude.

   My father missed Ted Williams, but as Garrett Morris intoned on a Saturday Night Live skit 45 years ago: “Baseball has been very, very good to me.’’

   Morristown native Jim Holleran is a retired teacher and sports editor from Rochester. Reach him at jimholleran29@gmail.com or view past columns under “Reflections of River Rat’’ at https://hollerangetsitwrite.com/blog/