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| Steve Rosenblatt signs autographs at Rosenblatt in August. |
One particular night, he told a couple of us he thought the gravity of the situation would hit him as the final seconds of the final UFL game played at the stadium ticked off the clock. That night is coming soon. The UFL Championship Game will be played on Saturday at Rosenblatt and then the stadium will go dark for the final time.
The UFL Championship Game is a new wrinkle. Rosenblatt planned to head home to Phoenix on Friday since the final Omaha Nighthawks game has already been played. But he changed his plane reservations to stay in town for the championship game.
“I really feel, kind of inwardly, that having been there, and having been a bat boy at the first game ever played there, I certainly wanted to be there for the last sporting event,” Rosenblatt said in a phone interview this past weekend. “It’ll rev my memory up a little bit.”
Having his memory revved up has been happening a lot lately. In September, when the Omaha Royals’ played their final game at Rosenblatt, he went down onto the field for one final hit. He told the fans if he hit one that Johnny Rosenblatt would be proud of, he would turn around, give the thumbs up and the fireworks would begin.
So, what was he thinking that night as he stood at the plate?
“It’s over,” Rosenblatt said. “It’ll probably be the last time in my life I ever hit a baseball. Of course, at 72 years old I probably should have stopped about 30 years ago.
“We had a lot of fun that night. It was a great evening. As difficult as it was, I got a big kick out of it because, you know, my daughter did the national anthem and she did a great job – I think she over shone my hitting ability – and we had a lot of Rosenblatt people in town. It was the first time I’ve ever got together with my other three cousins named Rosenblatt – all four of us together. They are of course, Johnny’s nephews. It was a sad but neat evening.”
Tom Kelly was the man who threw batting practice pitches to him that night. Kelly is the grandson of Tommy Kelly, the man who threw the first pitch ever at Rosenblatt in October, 1948 – the night Steve was a batboy in the third base dugout.
“I didn’t want to disappoint the fans. I think I hit a couple halfway decent. But it brought back a lot of memories because I had several at bats there when I was playing many, many years ago when I probably could swing a little better. It was almost like every pitch, I was thinking about something other than hitting the baseball.”
How could he do anything but remember? He’s a walking baseball encyclopedia. He tells one story that connects Rourke Park, the stadium that used to stand on 13th and Vinton before it burned down in 1936, with Municipal Stadium, which would eventually become Rosenblatt Stadium. He says Satchel Paige pitched in both ballparks.
But the memory doesn’t end there.
“In 1951 or 52, the [Kansas City] Monarchs came through here and played a game in the Negro American League,” Rosenblatt said. “I think my dad may have been involved in setting the game up – he was running the stadium at the time. His job was the city commissioner.
“We get to the game. I’m probably 13 or 14 years old and we walk into the stadium and my dad says to me, ‘Steve, you’re upstairs on the PA. You’re doing the public address.’ I said, ‘What?’ So, I’m doing what Bill Jensen [the current PA announcer] does, except I’m 14. So here I go upstairs and pitching for the Monarchs is Satchel Paige.
“He was in the big leagues I think in 48, 49 and 50 with Cleveland. He has this thing called the ‘hesitation pitch’ and he used it on a number of occasions during that game, which was the most memorable thing to me. It was mind boggling to see anybody do what he could do.”
Rosenblatt describes the hesitation pitch in detail.
“Most people in that day – including myself, because I was pitching a little bit at that time – had kind of a rocking chair windup. They’d have the ball in front of them. They’d bring their hands down, come back up over their head, using lots of energy the pitchers today don’t use.
“So, he’d do that and then he’d go up on his right foot and he’d come down on his left foot, but when he came down on his left foot, he didn’t throw. So the batter sees him coming forward and his weight begins to shift because you’ve only got a microsecond and his weight is slightly transferred but Paige still hadn’t thrown the ball yet.
“Then, he’d turn loose about a 92 mph fastball from that position and he’d catch the hitter literally flatfooted. You’d think, ‘How in the world would you get any power on a baseball that way?’ but he had that kind of a whip, lean body that was very flexible.”
The Satchel Paige connection doesn’t end there.
In 1935 or 36, Rosenblatt says that during the AAU semi-pro tournament in Wichita, Johnny Rosenblatt played for the Nebraska team and they went up against a team from North Dakota that Satchel Paige played for at the time.
“My dad gets up to hit against him and Paige gets two strikes on him,” Rosenblatt said. “The catcher threw the ball back to Paige, Paige grabs the ball, walks halfway to home plate and he says to my dad, ‘You won’t see the next one.’”
“He walked back to the mound, made his pitch, Johnny swung and his comment in the Wichita paper was, ‘Never saw it.’”
On September 2, 2010, some 75 years later, Steve Rosenblatt made his way to home plate for what would be the final at bat ever at the stadium.
He attempted a few bunts, then he began to swing. He made contact on a couple and he swung and missed a couple. The crowed urged him on – video cameras running, anticipation building. After making good contact on a ball he pulled toward third base, he figured that was good enough for Johnny, so up went his thumb, and down went the lights.
