Tony Morante started his career with the New York Yankees when he was just 6 years old.
Morante’s father, a former usher at Yankee Stadium from 1949 to 1988, took him to his first game in 1949. Then, he said, ushers were allowed to take one or two of their kids to the games for free.
But Morante didn’t just sit in his seat to watch the game.
“What I did was I ran out into the right field area while batting practice was going on, and when the guys were hitting the balls into the stands I was scurrying around the right field stands, picking up baseballs,” he said. “So I became the popular kid in the neighborhood for about 10 years.”
Morante, who just turned 80 earlier this year, was born and raised in the Bronx — spending the majority of his childhood in the Belmont area. Most of his family has now relocated farther north to Westchester County, but not Morante.
“They keep asking me when I’m coming up and you know what? I love the Bronx,” he said. He now lives in Pelham Gardens.
His professional life has always revolved around the pinstripes — from shagging balls during batting practice in the ‘40s and ‘50s to becoming an usher himself, giving educational tours of the stadium, and eventually becoming the head of the tours department.
But one of his most recent career highlights happened last year, when he was inducted into the 2022 New York State Baseball Hall of Fame for authoring the book “Baseball, the New York Game: How the national pastime paralleled US history” — which supplemented his work as an educator and historian.
MLB, U.S. history intertwined
In Morante’s eyes, Major League Baseball (MLB) and the country’s history are interconnected: one isn’t separate from the other.
But even though Morante is a historian now, it hasn’t always been his strong suit. He said he struggled with it while he was a student at Bishop Dubois High School in Upper Manhattan.
“I was not a history major at all,”…
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