Originally published February 27, 1990, by Mike Barnicle for The Boston Globe
It was a big weekend for obituaries. Johnnie Ray, the singer, and Malcolm Forbes, the publisher, disappeared from the stage. Vinnie Teresa, the mob stoolie, died of unnatural causes an illness. And Gen. James Gavin, along with Tony Conigliaro, also hit checkout time.
Gavin was a thoughtful, honorable, gentle man. He was one of the youngest American generals in World War II, a commander of paratroopers who went out the door with his men and walked from Normandy across Europe in the fall of 1944.
He was an expert on warfare and an eyewitness to an awful lot of death. He never forgot what he saw and could thus provide compelling arguments against the ease with which so many old Washington politicians, out to earn their letter sweaters, committed so many young men to a war in Vietnam that no general knew how to win and few soldiers wanted to fight.
In 1976, he was back in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where Joe Levine, the producer born on Billerica Street in the West End, was making a movie of Cornelius Ryan’s book “A Bridge Too Far.” Thirtytwo years earlier, Gavin had been part of an Allied operation to cross the Rhine, cut into the heart of Germany and, hopefully, end the war by Christmas 1944.
The plan failed. A lot of good men died. Gavin, a quiet hero for all his days, saved a regiment from the brutal German counterattack. Then, on this one October night, after a day watching a film being made, the general went to dinner at a restaurant on a narrow street in Nijmegen. When the owner was told that Gavin was his guest, the place became a shrine.
After accepting a hundred tributes with embarrassed charm, Gavin and the rest of his party made their way to the street. It was nearly midnight, yet there were perhaps 200 local residents standing in the darkness, waiting for him. And while he made his way to a car, people he had helped liberate three decades before quietly applauded. Gen. James Gavin was history.
And Tony Conigliaro was summer. He had a special magic that exceeded even his ability to hit a thrown ball with a wood bat. He lived and played on a permanent field of dreams located in his back yard. He went quickly from St. Mary’s High of Lynn to the major leagues.
In 1960, at 15, he made the Hearst AllStars. The ballgame was at Fenway Park and every kid on the team walked onto that grass, glanced at that wall and absolutely believed, totally believed, that he was born to play in the bigs.
“Tony didn’t start that year and he was pissed,” Chet Stone was saying yesterday. “I can remember him sitting on the bench, fuming. I think he played a couple innings that year. I started. I was 18, and I said to myself, ‘Oh . . . him. He’s only 15. He’ll start three years from now.’ Three years later, he was in the big leagues. He was great.”
Today, Chet Stone runs Harvard University with help from Billy Cleary, Derek Bok and Artie Clifford, who used to throw a baseball with tremendous authority for Archbishop Williams High. Clifford, too, played against the kid from St. Mary’s.
“The only time he ever faced me, all he got was a foul ball off me,” Artie Clifford said. “Tony hit the ball about 550 feet foul. Then I walked him on four pitches.”
Joe O’Donnell grew up in Everett, went to Malden Catholic and played three sports against Tony Conigliaro: baseball, basketball and football. “He was the best athlete I ever faced,” O’Donnell said. “An amazing athlete. He never knew what it meant to quit. That’s why I always thought he would beat this thing. I never thought he’d die.”
The first time the two tangled, O’Donnell, bigger and burlier, was assigned to guard Conigliaro in a basketball game, and he figured he would shoulder Tony into the seats all night. But Conigliaro made O’Donnell look as if his sneakers were made of cement. He scored 24 points while O’Donnell fouled out in the second period.
Later, despite the fact that he never had any luck with high, outside fastballs, O’Donnell got a scholarship to Harvard and became captain of the baseball team. One day in 1966 when the Red Sox were working out behind Harvard Stadium, the two men who began getting in each other’s face when they were 13 years old stood together on a diamond just about as far away from Lynn and Everett as you can get. One wore college crimson. The other, the red stockings of a child’s dream.
Now Tony Conigliaro is dead, but in a funny way he’ll never die because memory and all those games carve their way into permanence. So he’ll be with us as long as boys play baseball, stepping into the batter’s box with that swaggering move and big righthand stroke, making us believe that you really can go from St. Mary’s to the bigs and that summer might never end.
###