Best of Picture from the Past
Los Gatos remembers its baseballer, Frank Crosetti
Yankee great was a batboy for American Legion team
By John S. Baggerly
Frank Crosetti, a batboy for the Los Gatos American Legion baseball team and a longtime member of the New York Yankees as both player and coach, died several weeks ago at the age of 91 at his Stockton home.
The tall man at the top of this 1920 photo--provided by Los Gatan Marnya Phelps Campbell--is one of the Sporleder clan. Campbell's father, H. K. Phelps, can be seen at the far left of the top row. He was co-owner of Norton-Phelps Lumber Yard on Bean Avenue, now a part of the Saint Mary's School campus. Phelps transformed his lumber company into California Roofing in San Jose, a firm that still functions throughout the county.
In the bottom row--we're not positive where--are two of the Nino brothers, part of a family that operated our town's largest fruit orchard until the state of California used the right of eminent domain to claim multiple acres to widen the through-town freeway. Nino Avenue flanks the south side of the Fisher Middle School baseball diamond.
Back to Frank Crosetti. His family moved to San Francisco, where his father, a truck farmer, found work with the garbage company and young Frank enrolled at Lowell High School. Apparently Crosetti favored sports over studies and began playing baseball all over San Francisco. By the time the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League wanted to sign him, his mother, Rachel, had to cosign with her underage son. It wasn't long before he caught the eye of the New York Yankees. He played as a shortstop and then as full-time third-base coach. His cousin, Pete Denevi of Los Gatos, said that Crosetti's longevity with the Yankees was because he never aspired to be the team's manager but was a ring-wise coach. As a non-threat, he survived numerous managers.
After her husband died, Norma Crosetti returned to Los Gatos and walked daily from her home on Thurston Avenue to Saint Mary's Catholic Church on Bean Avenue. Denevi called his aunt "a devotee." The couple's son, Frank, settled with his wife, Norma, in Stockton. Denevi's mother, Louisa, and Mrs. Crosetti were sisters. Denevi recalled that his cousin Frank was always the first Yankee on the field and the last to leave. When Yankee management saw the drawing power of Italians by Crosetti and Joe DiMaggio, they reasoned that a Jewish player like Hank Greenberg of the Detroit Tigers would be a big draw in New York City. When Greenberg homered against the Yankees and trotted past the New York dugout, McCarthy (the manager) would shout "I'm going to get you, I'm going to get you." Greenberg never became a Yankee.
From his Stockton home it was easy for Crosetti to hunt and fish the Sierra. Thus, on Mondays in Los Gatos coffee shops it was often heard, "I saw Frank Crosetti fishing in the Sierra over the weekend."
Survivors include his wife, Norma, of Stockton, a son and a daughter, three grandsons and two great-grandchildren.
John Baggerly is now semi-retired. This column is from the Los Gatos Weekly-Times archives.
Los Gatos, California Since 1881
