Our Pop, Peter Iarussi

Peter Iarussi (Pop) was born in late June of 1913 in a two story frame house on east 187th st. one block west of Jerome ave. in the upper Bronx, New York City.  His parents were Ermando and Lucretia, both immigrated from Abruzzo, Italy six or seven years before. Lucretia was a beautiful friendly and funny girl from the family Mascio who came from the same little mountain town as Ermando, called Rivisondoli in present day Aquila province..

Pop told us he was always in the streets after school (and Saturdays and Sundays) playing stickball, dodging wagons and trolleys. When new model T's disturbed their games he and his friends always sent them off with a raucous, "Get a horse!"

Pop learned to run very fast and sure footed because he loved to chase  the fire engines that tore out of the local fire house belching smoke and drawn by three horses abreast.  He became so fast at running, that he later won gold and silver medals in high school, county and state competitions at track and hurdles. He was accepted to train for the 1932 olympics after high school until a dire warning (and misdiagnosis) by a doctor told him he would never live to see 21 and had to stop training. Though Pop never slowed down in his ninety years of life, he was barred from training. But that was much later and I am getting ahead of my story.

Pop loved baseball as did most American, almost all New  Yorkers and every single person  in the Bronx.  Babe Ruth was the main attraction but not the only one.  There were many other ball players who were even better than Ruth (though not in home runs). One player, whose name I cannot recall, use to come by Pop's house often for Sunday dinner.  Sunday dinner was a  big deal in at his house with everyone helping prepare, eat and cleanup. Meat was served in plenty.  This was atreat as pasta and beans with salads bread vegatables and fruit was the fare most days, fish reserved for Fridays. On Sunday, homemade ravioli (the size of a soup plate) was laid out in six foot strips to clean linen to partially dry, then get spooned with fresh sweetened ricotta chese, sealed, and boiled in big spaghetti pots and served with braciole, which is rolled thin beef stuffed with parmagean, basil, garlic, butter and pinoli (pine) nuts, browned and stewed in tomato sauce with homade sausage and meatballs.

So getting invited to this weekly feast was a big deal, especially for the young men who had  no family, coming out of orphanages (like Ruth) or homes broken by the Influenza epidemic of 1918, World War I, etc. 

There was one particular ball player played for the yankees and invited Pop and his friends to come down to many of the games at Yankee Stadium telling them to sit up high in the 'bleeders' (the origin of the word 'bleechers')these were the highest seats in the stadium few ventured to climb to. This player had so much control at bat that he could tell the boys where to sit and pop foul ball to them whenever he came up to bat.  Pop said all of the players could do this.  That's what they did.

After the game, the boys would hang out at the dugout and this player would pass the balls around and get other players to sign them before returning them to Pop and his friends.

Once, Pop was playing stick ball and a "Ooooooh!" came out of all the kids.  Pop turned to  look, and a great big canary colored Dussenberg convertible coming west on 187th street, turned left (south) on Jerome avenue. In the driver's seat and alone was Babe Ruth chomping on a cigar. As he made the turn clutching the cigar in his teeth and one hand on the steering wheel, he held his other hand palm up moving it leterally and called, "Hi-yah, kid."  Pop never forgot that moment though at the time Ruth was just a good player making money and (of course) not the icon of baseball stardom history has raised him to.