Water Under The Bridge:
New Yorkers Remember The Jamaica Bay Hurricane, Part 3 by Chris Oakley
(adapted from material previously posted at TIAH.co.uk)
Summary: In the first two chapters of this series we charted the path of
the Jamaica Bay hurricane, a.k.a. Hurricane Cleo, across New York City and
up the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and delved into some of the consequences of
the storm. In this segment, we’ll hear from a well-known online baseball
commentator about how the destruction of Yankee Stadium adversely affected
the Yankees’ fortunes during the final weeks of the 1960 baseball season
and meet a retired construction worker who played an unsung but critical
role in the reopening of the iconic Empire State Building.
Webmaster and baseball commentator Wade Kimball was born the same
night Reggie Jackson hit three home runs in one game for the Yankees in
the 1977 World Series-- and, to hear his admirers tell it, can recall
seemingly every play of every inning of every Yanks game that’s happened
since then. As creator of and chief baseball writer for the online sports
site Gothamlockerroom.org, the thirtysomething Central Park resident is a
walking encyclopedia of diamond history; his reddish crewcut is a familiar
sight in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium. So when people are curious about
what effects the Jamaica Bay hurricane had on the Yankees’ fortunes, it’s
not surprising that they frequently turn to Kimball to get answers. Indeed,
he started Gothammlockerroom.org partly to serve as an archive for pictures
and information about the impact of the storm on the New York sports scene.
“When I first made the decision to create Gotham Locker Room,” Kimball says
as he puts the final touches on his latest article, “I was really struck by
how scattered all the material related to Hurricane Cleo and its effects on
New York sports was....One of my hopes in setting up the site was to build
a central archive for that material.”
The millions of visitors who click onto Gotham Locker Room every day
would tell you he has succeeded admirably on that score. With the possible
exception of the New York Public Library, no single entity has a larger or
more thoroughly cross-indexed compilation of images and articles related to
Hurricane Cleo’s impact on New York sports-- and even the NYPL staff hasn’t
got Kimball’s Starbucks-fueled verve. One of the site’s best-known images is
a Kodachrome snapshot of the ruins of Yankee Stadium originally taken for aTime magazine photo essay on the post-Cleo rebuilding efforts in New York.
“There’s probably no other picture in history that better sums up how hard
the city as a whole and its sports fans in particular were hit by the storm
when it passed this way.” Kimball says, using image resolution enhancement
software to highlight the worst damage spots. “A lot of people still think
that seeing the stadium trashed like this might have been what killed Casey
Stengel.”
Stengel had been on the verge of leading the Yankees to a tenth World
Series appearance in twelve years when the Jamaica Bay hurricane descended
on New York City; his death in the wake of the hurricane’s destructive
sojourn through the five boroughs dealt a catastrophic blow to the Bronx
Bombers’ morale and sent them into a tailspin which would result in them
finishing the 1960 season well out of first place. Having to play many of
their remaining home games at an unfamiliar minor league ballpark in New
Jersey only served to exacerbate their troubles, and in the end they’d be
left on the outside looking in while the usually hapless Baltimore Orioles
overtook them to win first the American League pennant and then the 1960
World Series.
“When Brooks Robinson(the Oriole third baseman at the time) hit
that home run off (Pittsburgh pitcher)Roy Face,” Kimball says as he holds
up a picture of the Series-clinching hit, “it basically poured salt in the
wound as far as Yankee fans were concerned. Casey had been the heart of the
team during his time as manager....when he had that heart attack and died
after seeing how the hurricane had devastated Yankee Stadium, it was like a
part of them had died too.” Stengel had such a hold on the hearts and minds
of Yankee fans that thousands of people lined the Big Apple’s storm-blasted
streets to pay their final respects the day of his funeral. And it wasn’t
only fans of the Bronx Bombers who felt this sentiment-- when the New York
Mets’ new home stadium was opened in Queens four years after the hurricane,
a petition drive led to the new park being named Stengel Field.
Originally the new park was to have been named Shea Stadium in honor
of the Queens city council member who was crucial in securing the National
League’s return to the Big Apple after the Dodgers and Giants relocated to
the West Coast in the late 1950s. But a flood of sentiment and affection
towards Stengel and appreciation for his contributions to baseball during
his lifetime prompted the Mets ownership to reconsider their decision-- and
not a moment too soon, according to Kimball. “If they had stuck with their
original name choice, you would have heard the screams of protest way down
to the Jersey shore.” He’s not kidding, either: only a week before the Mets
ownership announced their intention to christen their new home ballpark as
Stengel Field, a group of disgruntled baseball fans in South Bronx had made
plans to stage a protest rally in front of the team’s home offices against
calling the park Shea.
Turning back to the Yankees, Kimball says: “The day of Casey’s
funeral the streets were absolutely packed solid with people wanting to
pay their final respects to him. Even people who’d never watched a game
in their lives turned out for the funeral procession to St. Patrick’s...
that’s how much he meant to this town. Mickey Mantle said just before his
death that it was during the funeral when he and his teammates first made
the decision to dedicate their ’61 season to Stengel.” That dedication may
have done more than just honor the memory of “the Old Perfessor”: the New
York Yankees would rack up a major league-record 132 wins during the 1961
regular season and sweep the Cincinnati Reds in the 1961 World Series. On
top of that, Yankees teammates Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris captured the
imagination of baseball fans over the country by battling opposing pitchers
and one another to surpass the once seemingly unsurpassable single season
home run record set by Babe Ruth in 1927.
Maris ended up winning the home run derby, belting sixty-two
homers compared to fifty-seven for the injury-prone Mantle; their
mutual quest to surpass Ruth’s mark and New York’s surge toward the
American League pennant and a subsequent World Series championship
provided a welcome relief for New Yorkers who hadn’t had much to be
happy about since the hurricane. Indeed, nearly every Yankee home game
during the ’61 MLB regular season played to sellout crowds and Games 1
and 2 of the 1961 World Series would set postseason attendance records
that stood for nearly four decades. “You literally could not find any
open seats at Yankee Stadium after the first week of May.” Kimball says.
“Tickets were going faster than they could be printed...” He holds up an
old New York Daily News back page bearing the headline “YES, WE HAVE NO
MORE TICKETS” and showing a gaggle of disappointed would-be World Series
attendees trudging away from the Yankee Stadium ticket office. “The Yanks
had to turn away something like 50,000 people just for the first game as
a result of the quick sellout.”
******
For every name immortalized by the history books during the effort
to rebuild New York in the wake of Hurricane Cleo, there’s another name
that got obscured by time and lost to memory until someone had the luck,
or the determination, to bring it back to light. One of those forgotten
(until now)people is a retired construction worker who played an unsung
yet vital part in restoring one of the Big Apple’s most famous landmarks,
the Empire State Building. Bruno Magliani spent most of his adult life in
the building trade, and even in retirement he hasn’t let go of his passion
for that trade.
Magliani lives in a second-floor apartment about 90 minutes’ drive
from the Empire State Building, and much of that apartment’s wall space
is decorated with photos from the building’s post-hurricane renovation;
most of the pictures he took himself or clipped out of the city’s daily
papers. “Best job I ever had.” he says, pouring himself an extra strong
cup of coffee and pulling out a fairly hefty scrapbook containing years’
worth of news stories regarding the renovation process. “I wouldn’t have
traded it for all the gold in Fort Knox.” He is one among hundreds of men
who answered a newspaper ad placed shortly after Hurricane Cleo and in the
process became part of what’s still considered one of the most significant
urban restoration projects in American history.
“You wouldn’t believe how many guys showed up that first day.” says
Magliani as he remembers his first interview for the Empire State Building
restoration project. “I swear, it’s like half of New York was standing in
line behind me....but that just goes to show you how much we all wanted to
see the placed fixed and back in business. Some guys who’d retired from the
trade actually came back so they could work on the rebuilding project.” They
weren’t the only ones anxious to see the venerable skyscraper come back to
life; New York City schoolchildren by the hundreds sent in nickels, dimes,
pennies, and quarters to help finance the effort to restore the Empire State
Building to its former glory, and former cast and crew from the epic movieKing Kong reunited to film a short documentary aimed at encouraging people
in other parts of the country to help support the renovation project.
Not since the days of FDR’s National Recovery Administration had a
civic construction project stirred so much interest from the public. No
sooner had the first workers been hired for the restoration of the Empire
State Building than sightseers flocked to the wounded but still majestic
skyscraper to watch the construction crews in action; tour bus companies
organized special trips so that people could take snapshots of the men at
work. “Some days they’d have ten buses in a row passing by.” Magliani says
as he turns the scrapbook page to display a black and white snapshot of a
tour bus parked near the front door of the Empire State Building. “We even
had a game going for a while to see who could count the most tour buses.”
More often than not Magliani ended up winning that game; from his perch on
the Empire State Building's fourth floor he could see the buses pull up to
the sidewalk long before many of his co-workers did.
When the Empire State Building restoration program was complete he
went on to another post-hurricane rebuilding project-- the effort to re-
open the Statue of Liberty. One of the worst things about Hurricane Cleo
in the eyes of many people, next to the massive loss of life and the utter
disruption of vital mass transport systems, was the fact the hurricane had
forced the closure of this historic landmark. Indeed, the American public
felt an aching collective distress over the closure of the Statue. "I knew
this one guy, lived out in Spanish Harlem, who just cried like a little kid
when he saw what had happened to Lady Liberty." Magliani says reflectively.
"I knew how he felt...I couldn't sleep or eat for two days after they closed
the statue."
Not surprisingly under these circumstances repairing Lady Liberty was
given a high priority; by a fitting coincidence the statue was reopened for
business on the Fourth of July in 1961, taking place as part of the larger
annual Independence Day festivities in New York. The reopening of the statue
not only boosted civic morale, it energized the city's economy by injecting
millions of tourist dollars into local businesses-- which in turn helped to
boost the city's tax revenues for the '61-'62 fiscal year. Further helping
the Big Apple's economic recovery, a group of philanthropists came together
in August of 1961 to establish a museum dedicated to preserving records and
artifacts from the time of the hurricane and its immediate aftermath; when
the museum opened the following spring it quickly became one of the biggest
tourist attractions in the city and pumped further millions of dollars into
Gracie Mansion's tax coffers.
"I used to visit there all the time till my back went out a couple of
months ago." Magliani reminisces, opening his living room cabinet to show
off a collection of Jamaica Bay Hurricane Historical Center museum passes
and visitor’s guides dating back almost half a century and taking up three
full drawers to boot. “Even now I still send donations to ‘em twice a year
to keep the place going.” And money isn't his only form of support for the
Historical Center; many of his weekends are spent writing study guides for
local educators planning field trips to the center, and despite increasingly
serious health problems he still faithfully attends the Historical Center's
Labor Day weekend fund-raising luncheon ever year.
Magliani's days of semi-anonymity may soon be coming to an end,
as it turns out. A Columbia University student film documentary about
the men who worked on the Empire State Building restoration project is
making the rounds at film festivals across the United States and Canada
to glowing reviews and has also garnered serious consideration from the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences for an Oscar nomination in the
Best Documentary category; Magliani, although he wasn’t interviewed by
the film crew, figures prominently in at least three segments during the
film(four if you count the opening credits).
