By KEVIN OKLOBZIJA
To commemorate ROC the ROC Night on Wednesday, the Rochester Red Wings gave away Mt. ROCmore statuettes, a miniature 585 version of Mount Rushmore.
“Carved” into the molded resin and plastic were the faces of Susan B. Anthony, Frederick Douglass, George Eastman and Morrie Silver, depicted on Cobbs Hill in front of the reservoir’s upper gate house.
You know how you know this limited-edition giveaway was a keeper? There still wasn’t one listed on eBay as of the sixth inning.
The game was a keeper, too, with the Wings rallying from a 4-0, third-inning deficit to win 6-4. Kenny Vargas belted a go-ahead, two-run homer in the seventh — over Morrie Silver’s likeness on the fence in left-center — and pitchers Chase De Jong, Tyler Duffey and Alan Busenitz were all solid, or better.
“Tonight was a good night all-around, with the ROC the ROC and everything,” Wings manager Joel Skinner said.
But truth be told, the real treat came just before the game, when two true legends of Rochester baseball — Joe Altobelli and Johnny Antonelli — came onto the Frontier Field diamond for the ceremonial first pitch.
If there was a baseball Mount Rushmore in the ROC, then Altobelli and Antonelli are George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. They’re our Big A’s of Baseball.
First, Wings general manager Dan Mason introduced Altobelli, who was seated in a wheelchair as son Mike brought him out onto the field.
Slowed by a stroke in the off-season, the smile on Alto’s face on Wednesday night said it all. For a few moments, Mr. Baseball of Rochester was at home, on the ball field, listening to an avalanche of applause.
“He was my coach when I was with the Yankees,” said Skinner, who spoke with Altobelli in the tunnel before the ceremony and again on the field.
Now 86, Alto has quite the one-of-kind superfecta of accomplishments with the Red Wings: player, manager, general manager and radio/TV analyst. A native of Detroit, Alto came to Rochester in the 1960s and never pulled up stakes, even when he was managing the San Francisco Giants and Baltimore Orioles, or coaching with the New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs.
The fans made sure Alto knew just how special he still is in this city.
“Just think of all the player he’s touched in his career,” Skinner said.
Mason then welcomed Antonelli to diamond and the fans cheered again. A six-time National League All-Star and World Series champion with the New York Giants in 1954, he remains a sports icon in Rochester.
He may be 88, but he looks at least 20 years younger and he probably remembers every one of his 1,1,62 strikeouts during a 12-year career that featured a 126-110 record and 3.34 career ERA.
“To be here with Joe Altobelli is special,” Antonelli said. “I remember spring training in Arizona; he was in Tuscon with Cleveland (Indians) and I was in Phoenix with San Francisco (Giants). I think he hit .400 off me in the spring.”
Antonelli threw out the first pitch, using his once dynamic left arm to hurl the ball to Skinner.
And of course he had a memory involving Skinner. Well, not Joel, but rather Joel’s father, Bob, from a game on April 20, 1954.
“He hit me with a line drive right in the ribs,” Antonelli said. “I had the mark on me the whole season.”
He wasn’t deterred by the direct hit, that’s for sure. Antonelli went 21-7 with a league-best 2.30 ERA for the New York Giants that year. Then in the World Series he was 1-0 in two starts, posting an 0.84 ERA with 12 strikeouts in 10 2/3 innings en route to the championship.
He was named Pitcher of the Year, the predecessor to the Cy Young Award, and also finished third in most valuable player voting. The MVP winner: Willie Mays.
“Willie was the best player I ever saw,” Antonelli said. “I think he could have played all three outfield positions by himself in the (cavernous) Polo Grounds.”
That year of 1954 had added significance: he started his Johnny Antontelli Firestone dealerships, a business that eventually grew to 28 locations and 287 employees. He sold his company in 1994.
“That’s how I retired,” he said of the business, “because we made no money in this game.”
His salary for each of his first five sesasons: $5,500. “My sixth year I got a raise to $6,000.”
By comparison, Chris Sale of the Boston Red Sox will earn around $50,000 per inning pitched this season.
So how did Major League Baseball scouts even find this 1948 graduate of Jefferson High School in Rochester?
“My father (August) would go to spring training every year and brag about “my 15-year-old son,” and then “my 16-year-old son,” and then “my 17-year-old son.
“Finally the scouts called his bluff. ‘OK, Gus, let’s find out.’ ”
They came to Rochester in the summer of 1947 to watch a 17-year-old Antonelli pitch against a team of older, area all-stars at Red Wings Stadium (later renamed Silver Stadium). He threw a no-hitter, struck out 14 “and I got two hits,” he said.
He also got a contract out of it 10 months later and went directly from the high school ball diamonds of Rochester to the Polo Grounds in New York.
Antonelli never left his home, though. “Rochester is a great city,” he said.
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