Two gentlemen with some interesting attachments to baseball.
Hermann, one of my favorite actors, passed away Wednesday at the age of 71. Frankly, I thought he was older. He played Lou Gehrig to Blythe Danner in the 1978 TV movie, A Love Affair: The Eleanor and Lou Gehrig Story. I haven’t seen this one in years and would dearly love to. Hermann seems an unlikely sort to play an athlete, but, hey, Gary Cooper. The movie features some quality performers including Michael Lerner (Arnold Rothstein in Eight Men Out), David Ogden Stiers (of M*A*S*H fame), Lanie Kazan, Georgia Engel, and Patricia Neal as Mrs. Gehrig.
Here’s Hermann’s obit (which does not mention this particular film, by Bruce Weber, from The New York Times.
We also lost former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, coincidentally on the same day his son, Andrew, took the oath of office for that position for the second time.
Mario Cuomo’s connection: he was a minor league prospect and a long-time fan. From the Times’ obituary by Adam Nagourney:
It was baseball, not politics, that first engaged him, and he proved as aggressive in one as in the other. After graduating from St. John’s Preparatory School in Queens in 1949, he played on the freshman baseball team at St. John’s University.
A strapping six feet tall, 190 pounds at age 19, he signed a contract to play center field for the Class D Brunswick Pirates in Georgia in 1952, reportedly receiving a $2,000 signing bonus, sizable for that time. Mr. Cuomo “plays hard” and “will run over you if you get in his way,” a Pirates scout wrote.
His baseball career was short-lived. Knocked in the head with a 3-and-2 fastball that summer, he was left blind for a week and forced to give up the game — leaving with a .244 batting average.
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