Opinion: Left of Center

Remembering Arnold Hano

By Jean Hastings Ardell

After the Atlanta Braves eliminated the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the National League pennant Saturday night, I thought immediately of Arnold Hano. You all know Arnold and his wife Bonnie for their dedication to preserving the history and beauty of Laguna Beach. But I initially met Arnold in 2005 as a fellow author at a local Barnes and Noble bookstore, where we had been invited to do a baseball talk and book signing. My first book was just out, and Arnold was celebrating the 50^th anniversary of his classic “A Day in the Bleachers,” an account of Game 1 of the 1954 World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the New York Giants, in which the Giants’ center fielder Willie Mays made a spectacular fielding play evermore known simply as “The Catch.” Learning that we were both native New Yorkers and serious baseball fans – he a follower of the Giants, which happened to be my father’s team—we fell into a conversation that never stopped.

So it was that I woke up Sunday morning anxious to call him with the news—Dodgers Lose!— would not be contending in this year’s World Series. This would bring him joy, I knew. Arnold liked to say that a loss by his team’s perennial rival, the Dodgers, gave him as much happiness as a win by his Giants. Then the phone rang. Arnold had passed away earlier that morning.

My husband Dan and I had just seen him the day before, when we stopped by to read to him and Bonnie from this newspaper, a weekly ritual that the Hanos appreciated, as it brought them up to date on the happenings around town. At 99 years old, Arnold’s health was failing, and he knew it, but he usually rallied in response to the various Letters to the Editor and columns of diverse opinions. He still cared deeply about what happened in Laguna. But he seemed especially frail that afternoon, and I suppose I woke up the next morning hoping that breaking the news of a Dodger defeat would once again revive him.

Now only memories remain, of the laughter and baseball conversations we shared over the last 16 years. Early on in our friendship we thought we’d treat the Hanos to an Angel game in the Diamond Club, the poshest seats in the stadium. But Arnold perched uncomfortably on his chair throughout the game, finally confessing that he preferred to sit in the bleachers. How could we have forgotten this? There it is in the very first pages of “A Day in the Bleachers”: How his mother taught him when he was four years old to cross Edgecombe Avenue in upper Manhattan to get to the Polo Grounds, where the Giants played in those days; how he quickly decided that it was way more fun to sit in the rowdy bleachers than the staid grandstand. As his friend and colleague Ray Robinson wrote, “The writer who was to become the National Sportscasters and Broadcasters Association `Man of the Year’ in 1964 had always been a bleachers guy, priding himself on inhabiting that blue-collar venue.”

And oh, the stories he shared: Accompanying his father and elder brother Alfred in 1933 to Yankee Stadium to see the last game Babe Ruth ever pitched. (He won.) His recollection of encountering Ruth out walking in Manhattan a few days later and challenging him—cheeky 11-year-old that Arnold was—with, “Hey, Babe. How come you didn’t strike anybody out?” And Ruth’s good-natured reply: “Aw, I just wanted those palookas playing behind me to get a good workout.”

Arnold always had a heart for the underdog. He possessed vivid powers of observation, noting the Giants’ historic all-Black outfield (Monte Irvin, Willie Mays, and Hank Thompson) of the 1951 World Series. His 1963 profile in Sport magazine on the Latino ballplayer Felipe Alou got on record the mindlessly racist treatment by Major League Baseball of players of color. Several years ago, when Arnold attended the NINE Spring Training Baseball Conference in Tempe, Arizona, I witnessed Alou seek him out to thank him once again for his advocacy and saw the reverence in the old ballplayer’s eyes for this sportswriter who had thought to look beyond the box scores, the easy pickings of the game, for the deeper story.
In 2020, Arnold shared his opinions on the state of the game with the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR). We SABRen are fond of saying that baseball is timeless because it has no clock. Conventional wisdom holds that this is a weakness, but Arnold saw it differently. When asked about the idea of using the Designated Hitter in the National League and starting the team at bat with a runner on second to start the 10th inning, Arnold replied, “I’m against it. I’m not of the school that wants baseball to go faster. I’m happy when it’s slow. I could spend hours watching a game.”

In a perfect world the Giants would have beaten the Dodgers for the National League Division Championship a couple of weeks ago, and Arnold would’ve lived to see his Giants go on to win this year’s World Series. Then, perhaps, it would’ve been easier to say goodbye, to let go of a man I admired as a writer and as a human being. But Arnold was ever the pragmatist. He knew that the game of baseball can break your heart.

As can the loss of a friend. I miss him very much.

Jean is a Laguna Beach resident and member of the Third Street Writers.