As the Springfield News-Sun informed its readers March 14, 1944, 17-year-old “Harry was signed by Scout Hollis Thurston after the Legion team returned to Springfield from Miles City, Mont., where they copped runner-up honors in the national American Legion tourney last fall.”
That legion team was sponsored by the George Cultice Post, which would be renamed the Cultice-Ward Post in honor of Dick Ward, whose heroism two years and four months earlier had earned him the Medal of Honor for “conspicuous devotion to duty, extraordinary courage and complete disregard of his life … during the attack on the Fleet in Pearl Harbor by Japanese.”
When Ward perished while holding a flashlight to show shipmates the path out of the burning U.S.S. Oklahoma, the Seaman First Class was also third baseman of one of the Pacific Fleet’s top baseball teams. In a posthumous tribute, Al Murway of the Springfield Daily News quoted a letter home in which Ward reported one of the benefits of his celebrity: “If I want a haircut, I don’t have to stand in line.”
The same sports pages that had covered Ward’s rise through sandlot, county league and high school baseball covered Amato’s athletic career. That coverage included the game he “personally accounted for 42 points on six touchdowns and three drop-kicks” when Snyder Park Junior High’s six-man football team routed Schaefer’s 49-0 to win the 1942 city championship.
A seasonal player
Amato gave the $5,000 signing bonus from the Pirates to his parents so they could buy a house. His father, who delivered vehicles around the country for International Harvester, “didn’t stay around long” much of the time, he said. “But he was there every summer, and he coached our ball club. The “our” included his older brother, Mike, who caught when Harry pitched and played second base on the Springfield High School team.
Like his Legion coach Aaron Halloran, who had helped negotiate Amato’s signing bonus, the rest of the city followed reports from Pirates camp being held in Muncie, rather than sunny Florida, due to wartime gas rationing.
“We didn’t get any farther south than Evansville (Ind.),” Amato recalled.
A March 25 Associated Press story reports that while “the little 160-pound Italian is not a slugging home run type of batter … coaches are well satisfied with the smooth, effortless way he ties into pitches for sizzling line drives to any section of the field.”
It then quotes Manager Frankie Frisch’s remark: “I don’t think I’ve seen a kid so young with such an excellent swing unless it was Mel Ott when he first reported to McGraw at the age of 16.”
Two subsequent stories have Frisch first moving Amato from the pitcher’s mound to the to the “outer garden” (outfield), then reconsidering when his pitching staff is eroded by a veteran pitcher’s decision to keep his job in a war plant instead of returning to the majors.
“With the (selective service) draft likely to cut into the dwindling (Pirates) forces,” the story adds, “Amato has a chance to stay longer than usual in his first time up. (He) will not be subject to military call until sometime in mid-summer when he reaches the minimum service age of 18.
On May 14, local sports columnist Homer Circle chimes in:
“’Lefty’ Harry Amato, former American Legion star hurler, has been transferred to York, Pa. for further seasoning, according to the youthful Pirate Saturday. Home for a short stay before again donning his baseball togs, he was with Toronto in the International League until his recent transfer and had plenty to relate concerning his professional career.
“His biggest thrill to date … was when he pinch-hit for Vince Di Maggio in an exhibition game between the Pirates and Detroit and poled out a single scoring Babe Dahlgren from second base.”
Circle chimes in again July 1.
“At the present time … Amato is recovering from a pair of slightly sprained wrists. According to Lefty’s letter, he was hot on the trail of a soaring clout when he suddenly found himself flattened against the fence …. However, he reports he is recovering rapidly.”
The letter carries a slight hint of homesickness.
“Sometimes, I wish I was still playing in the County League – I could at least have fun. … Here they don’t play for fun.”
Early hopes of a stint in the Big Leagues gave way to assignments in Toronto and York, Pa., whose “White Roses” team was named for the runners up in England’s historic Wars of the Roses.
But in a recent interview Amato said he didn’t set foot on Forbes Field.
“I spent about two weeks up there after I got hurt. I was Frankie Frisch’s errand boy when we needed something in the bull pen.”
He found Frisch to be controlling, but a good manager — one he would not see again for some time.
After the season — on Dec. 7, 1944, the third anniversary of the attack that killed Dick Ward — the Springfield papers reported that “The Pittsburgh Pirates’ National Defense list was raised to 30 Wednesday when President William Benswanger turned in the name of Harry Amato … who is now in the Maritime Service and stationed in Brooklyn. Amato … was just 18 in July.”
Two memories of WW II
Not yet a high school graduate, Amato spent his war years in a ship that moved oil for the Coast Guard, which had temporarily taken charge of the Merchant Marines. His shipboard experienced lowered Amato’s opinion of the average merchant marine but also produced a story he loves to tell today.
Having delivered oil to the Philippines, his ship was about to depart for the Persian Gulf to refill when Amato spotted the first, the second and then the third number of the U.S. Navy LST his brother Mike was serving on.
He leveraged personal charm and the offer of two boxes of fruit a ship’s captain had been longing for into a ride to the LST only to be told by the captain that his brother wasn’t aboard — a tale Amato learned wasn’t true when he kicked a pile of clothes under his brother’s bunk and Mike emerged.
Back in the minors
The Sept. 1, 1948, Springfield News Sun carried a notice announcing the July 10 birth of a son to Mr. and Mrs. Harry Amato in Keokuk, Iowa.
“Mrs. Amato was formerly Miss Jeanne Rank of Springfield. Amato, former local American Legion player, is a professional baseball player with the Keokuk Pirates in the Central Association; The couple also have a daughter.”
Amato had batted .248 that year in 125 games with the Pirates and the next season would raise his average by nearly 40 points, “and I led the league in triples and runs scored, and I got a ticket for demotion,” he said.
The demotion, he says, was due to a Pirates staffer who had shown a romantic interest with Amato’s wife that wasn’t reciprocated when Amato was with the Selma, Ala., Cloverleafs four years earlier and had moved up the organization’s food chain.
With that in the air, the Amatos came back to Springfield in 1949, the year Harry, his brother and many other war veterans earned their high school diplomas, and Harry took a job with W.T. Smith.
“I delivered over to Dayton — all the big restaurants” — and, he said, the Frigidaire plant.
“The guy that ran the cafeteria liked baseball, and once a week I’d spend an hour and a half talking with him.”
That led to a conversation with the recreation director, who ran a program well-funded by the company, and not only a job offer and invitation to play on the company team, but free lodging for the Amato family in the recreation building.
With another child on the way and the prospects of Harry’s having to work a second job to support them, the Amatos accepted the offer.
Nor were they swayed when Amato got a call from a friend in the Pirates organization informing him that the Pirates staffer who has hit on his wife had been fired.
“It was the best decision I ever made,” said Amato, who now lives in a retirement home not far from The Greene in Kettering.
Because it led to a 60-year association with Frigidaire and its recreation park during which “Lefty” played plenty of baseball in the kind of atmosphere he had so enjoyed in his Springfield youth.
(NOTE: Thanks to Natalie Fritz of the Heritage Center for the tip on this story, making the photos available and providing background information.)
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