Bergino Baseball Clubhouse

“I want you to stay away from my brothers.  You are prone to trouble.  You are always in trouble.”  -Mickey Mantle After a private screening of the award-winning documentary Long Road Home, John Malangone spoke in the Bergino Baseball Clubhouse. In 1937, at the age of six, John found a broken umbrella in the basement of his East Harlem tenement.  He stripped it and turned it into a javelin.  John threw it, accidentally hitting a child in the head, piercing his skull.  The child was only a year older.  He was also John’s uncle. As a teenager, Malangone couldn’t play for his high school team because he was “classified” as intellectually slow.  Paul Krichell, the scout who first identified Lou Gehrig and Whitey Ford as prospects, spotted John in a sandlot game.  Soon, Malangone was a 17-year-old catcher in the Yankees organization. John’s life story -- as featured in Pinstripes and Penance by author Michael Harrison -- offers an unvarnished look into that organization and a man’s struggle with memories of a