Jeff Torborg passed away yesterday.
It’s funny how you are aware of someone one day
and then you lose track and he transforms into
a minuscule thread of the complex fabric of your life,
taking up a cell or two in your hippocampus –
until one day you check for the latest stories
on your favorite sport and there it is! Torborg, a man
I’d mentally compartmentalized along with Wayne Garrett,
Marv Throneberry and Jay Hook to a misty recess,
was suddenly brought back and ironically it took an obituary
to resuscitate him. And even now all I have to grasp hold of
are memories of his being named manager, his brief
uneventful tenure as head of the Mets on the field
and the gentleness and dignity he showed one day
when he spoke to us parents and coaches of Little League
players before a game at Shea. I now hear his soft voice
and see his motions and wish that he had had a better run
as manager. He’s gone. He was my age.
There are worse epithets than to say a man was kind.