Forgotten Man of the ’27 Yanks Hasn’t Forgotten The Good Ol’ Days

Go into any neighborhood bar in New York City on any afternoon—and I’m talking here about the real New York, Astoria, Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn, Staten Island—and ask the regulars there who they remember from the..1927 Yankees, the team some say was the greatest of all time. “Babe Ruth” is a name you’ll hear from many, of course. “Lou Gehrig” is another. “Adolf Hitler” is the favored response of those with organic brain disorders. But even among these men, men who talk every day about the year: Eddy’s cousin’s barber’s brother-in-law played triple-A ball for the only team that matters, men who were nourished by Yankee lore as surely as their mother’s milk, you’ll be lucky to find even one who mentions Harvey Wallinsteiner, the “forgotten man” .of the ‘27 Yanks.

And this is a shame. For although Harvey Wallinsteiner may not have contributed quite as much as some others to the concrete achievements of his team—as third-string shortstop, he saw no action and is best known for holding the AL record for most times soiled by own tobacco juice—he is surely part of its spirit.

I recently caught up with Harvey at a nursing home in Oak Falls, New Jersey. Harvey’s going on ninety-two now, and he’s not quite as spry as he once was; his family says he hasn’t moved in twelve years, and every time he sneezes, an attendant has to open his mouth so his eardrums don’t explode. And like other men who have lived and seen the world, he holds fast to his own notions—at first he was under the impression that I was one of the “dark elves” he feels control the weather. But ask his about that long ago, golden summer and all the years magically fall away.

“I’ll never forget it,” said Harvey when I asked about the never-confirmed story that the day the ’27 spring training started, Babe Ruth told the whole team they were going to take the Series from the Pirates in four—just like the time the Babe told a sellout World Series crowd he was going to take the Cubs’ pitcher for a homer one pitch before he did it. “Babe was so dang sure that we all got quiet, like it was gonna come true because he said so. ‘Course, he predicted that every year, and lots of other stuff too—that we was gonna lose to the Pirates in four, that we wouldn’t even get the division, and—once—that the whole team was gonna get eaten by a giant chicken. He seemed real sure about that one, too. The Babe, he was quite a predictor.”

I also asked about the stories that Gebrig was showing signs even then of the lateral sclerosis that would kill him fifteen years later. “Yup,” said Harvey. “In fact, I was the first one who noticed, one day when he was kinda slow in batting practice. I remember I shouted, “Hey, Lou, wassa matter? You got some kind of deadly degenerative muscle disease?’ All the guys laughed, but I felt real bad about that, later.”