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THE WEEK OF JULY 10, 2003
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Old Timer Recalls A Night At The Copa
We have an interesting letter from William F. Lynam of Forest Hills, a former resident of Ridgewood who writes: “I moved to Ridgewood in 1928 when I was 13 years old and only have fond memories of my life there. Your February 20, 2003 edition of the ‘Our Neighborhood’ column mentioned the tavern on Metropolitan Avenue and Fresh Pond Road in which one of your readers currently identified the owner as Jake Haas. She dated the tavern as existing just before or after World War I. As I recall it was there in the 1930s and I believe during and after World War II. It included an outdoor beer garden which was quite popular. The bar room of the tavern had a sign on the front door which read in effect ‘Gentlemen’s Bar–No Ladies Allowed.’
“I also frequented Henry’s Bar & Grill at Forest Avenue and
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Reader Frank Cunningham (kneeling in front row, second from right) recalls that he played at Dexter Park with the 1954 U.S. Steel baseball team in the Queens Alliance. He has identified the team’s field manager as Bill McNaughton (standing at right).
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Old Timer’s note–William Lynam is the third reader who identified Jake Haas as the proprietor of the saloon on the southwest corner of Metropolitan Avenue and Fresh Pond Road. From the favorable comments, he must have been a good saloon keeper.
Henry’s Bar & Grill, mentioned by Mr. Lynam, was located at 66-23 Forest Avenue on the southeast corner of Forest Avenue and Palmetto Street. The proprietor in the mid-1930s and 1940s was Henry Foertsch. This building was old 155 Forest Avenue and it had been a saloon years ago, run by Otto Bunse. Henry Foertsch had a social club, the Cuckoo Club, that met at his tavern and played pinochle. There were over 100 members in the club. His bar was known as the Cuckoo Corner. It was reportedly Rheingold Breweries’ largest customer in Queens.
By November 1988 the Cuckoo Club was gone and the premises was occupied by Societa Concordia Partanna, Inc., an organization that was founded in 1906 to aid immigrants from Partanna, Italy. The photograph showing the club was taken in November 1988. Almost 10 years later on January 12, 1998 at 1:45 a.m., an explosion occurred at the entrance to this club at 66-23 Forest Avenue in Ridgewood. Police officers from the 104th Precinct were on patrol in the area and when they heard the explosion, they quickly responded to the location where they found the door to the club charred and smoldering. Additional police responded, and the fire department was called. The occupants of the two second-floor apartments were roused and brought outside the building.
When the firefighters arrived, they conducted a search of the premises and found no other fires or damage to the building other than the charred front door caused apparently by a bomb. However, police and fire marshals then discovered another bomb, described by a police officer as “improvised illegal fireworks,” lying on the building’s outside window ledge. Reportedly, a partially burned cigarette butt was affixed to the fuse of the second explosive device. Preliminary findings indicated that the first device had been placed inside the door’s mail slot. When it exploded, the damage to the building was minor. No injuries were reported due to this incident.
Whether the perpetrators were ever caught, we do not know.
We thank George Miller of Glendale for his research done years ago, on Henry Foertsch’s Bar & Grill.
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On May 15, 2003 we published an interesting letter from Frank Cunningham. In a follow-up letter to Mr. Cunningham we asked several questions, such as: Was Al DePhillips a younger brother of Tony DePhillips, the fine defensive catcher who played in the New York Yankees minor league organization and with sever
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This photo, taken in 1988, shows the building at Forest Avenue and Palmetto Street in Ridgewood, occupied by the Societa Concordia Partanna, Inc., which was founded to help immigrants from that part of Italy. Older readers familiar with the area may recall why the location was formerly known as the Cuckoo Corner.
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Frank Cunningham responded as follows: “Al DePhillips was the nephew of Tony DePhillips. Al lived off Cleveland Street, which I believe at the time was considered Ozone Park. He and I and a few others also worked at U.S. Steel when we played with the team. We were also going to college and in 1955 Al graduated from St. John’s University. He later became a New York City police officer. I graduated from Brooklyn College. We were older than most students as we had spent some time in the minor leagues. Al played in the Kansas City farm system.
“Bob Grim, after his rookie season in 1954, was plagued with arm trouble. He and Hank Bauer were U.S. Marine colleagues and when Hank Bauer went to Kansas City, he brought Grim with him as a reliever. Hank Bauer opened a steak house in Kansas City and Grim stayed out there in the off-season working (in the steakhouse). He may have been a sort of partner in the steakhouse.
“Bill McNaughton [upper right in the team photo] was the field manager of the U.S. Steel team.
“I am glad you clarified my memory. It was 1954 when I played in Dexter Park with U.S. Steel. I should have remembered that Bob Grim was ‘Rookie of the Year’. He, Al and I sort of hung out together and we would go to the Rockaways for a few beers. Grim used to come to our Wednesday night games and every time he showed up, he would be introduced to the fans (at New Farmers Oval).
“The following year (1955) U.S. Steel played Jamaica Water Supply in the last baseball game played at Dexter Park. It would have been the second or third Sunday of September. Bill Saar did the catching that year (for U.S. Steel). The last time I saw him, he was a referee for a Knicks game in Madison Square Garden in the mid-’70s. Al quit to finish school and I met my future wife and my Sundays were then tied up although I continued to play for a few years on Long Island.”
Old Timer’s note–Hank Bauer was a good outfielder. He played in the major leagues for 14 seasons, starting with the New York Yankees in 1948 through 1959. He was traded to the Kansas City American League team and played the 1960 season there as an outfielder. In 1961, he was the playing manager of the Kansas City team. His lifetime batting average was .277.
As a member of the Yankees, Hank Bauer played in nine World Series from 1949 to 1958. The 1955 Series proved to be his best, although the Yankees lost to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Appearing in six of the seven games, he batted .429 (6-for-14).
Longtime fans may remember Hank Bauer’s part in an off-the-field matter which turned into quite a controversy. It happened in May 1957, when some members of the Yankees decided to have a birthday celebration for their teammate, Billy Martin. It was arranged by his good friends, Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantle. After dinner at one Manhattan restaurant, followed by a stop at the Waldorf Astoria, the group—which included several players and their spouses—went to the Copacabana night club, to catch a performance by Sammy Davis, Jr.
At the Copa, as it was known, the Yankees found themselves seated near a party of some raucous bowlers and their wives. When one of the bowlers, who apparently had had too much to drink, interrupted Sammy Davis, Jr. by directing a racial remark at the black entertainer, Hank Bauer reportedly told him to be quiet.
Words were exchanged and a brawl seemed likely, but cooler heads—and the urgings of Copa personnel— prevailed. But when the drunken bowler was found later, lying unconscious with a broken nose, on the floor of the men’s room, it appeared that he had faced off against Bauer, after all.
Although Hank Bauer maintained that he wasn’t the one responsible for the mysterious knockout, the trouble resulted in front-page headlines, an appearance before a Manhattan Grand Jury for the pinstriped partygoers (the case was thrown out), and plenty of embarrassment for Yankee officials.
Each of the players who attended the party was fined $1,000 by the Yankees. The exception was Johnny Kucks, a rookie, who received a $500 penalty.
A month later, Billy Martin—long regarded as a person who never walked away from a fight—was traded to the Kansas City Athletics. It was a bitter pill for him to swallow. As he observed, “How can you be a bad influence on six pennant winners?”
While Martin’s exile came shortly after an on-field incident involving the Yankees and Chicago White Sox (a benches-clearing brawl was seemingly over, when Martin went after Larry Doby of the White Sox) it is thought that Yankees General Manager George Weiss had been looking for a reason to get rid of him and the scrappy second baseman’s fate was sealed weeks earlier, by the incident at the Copacabana.
Martin played on a number of other teams after leaving the Yankees, including the Cincinnati Reds, where he and Bob Grim were teammates, if only briefly, in 1960. Grim pitched for three different clubs—the Cleveland Indians, Cincinnati Reds and St. Louis Cardinals—that season. Martin ended his playing career with the Minnesota Twins in 1961. Grim retired a year later, finishing in Kansas City.
If you have any remembrances or old photographs which you would like to share with our readers, please write (“regular” mail, please; no e-mail) to the Old Timer c/o Times Newsweekly, P.O. Box 860299, Ridgewood, NY 11386-0299. All photographs will be carefully returned to you.