The Last of the Coney Island Red Hots.

That was the name of the amateur team Joe Pepitone played for, back when he was a can't-miss, $100,000-bonus baby in the making. 

Before he got shot in shop class. Before he took a $20,000 bonus, all of "which he immediately squandered on a souped-up Bonneville and a fiberglass speedboat," as Peter Golenbock put it.

(Hey, can you ever really squander money on a souped-up Bonneville?)

A couple other facts Golenbock, a keen interviewer, gleaned from Pep was that the much-maligned Yogi Berra was the only manager who could ever handle him, with a sort of fatherly firmness:

"I liked Yogi as a manager. Yogi got me to play in 160 ball games. I used to come up to him and say, 'I don't feel good today.' He'd say, 'You're playing.' I'd say, 'Yogi, I'm sick.' He'd say, 'You're playing.' And he'd turn around and walk away. I played 160 ball games. And I had my hundred-RBI season that year. Twenty-eight home runs. He made me play and I admired him."

Later, he talked about how he quit the game—in America, at least—after Harry the Hat Walk dared to yell at him, down in Houston:

"Here's a manager making $20,000 yelling at $100,000 ball players. I just couldn't stand it. I gave up. I need the money? You can take the money and shove it up your ass. My own head and my own being mean  more to me than the money. I can go down to Coney Island and buy four Nathan's hot dogs and lie on the beach all day. A lot of people say, 'Who are you going to live off of?' I'll live off my mother. She'll take good care of me."

Ah, Joe. Simultaneously claiming that money means nothing and that people who make less money have no right to yell at people who make more! It was that sort of confused thinking that got him where he ended up.

Coney Island is a cold place out of season, and nobody's mother lives forever. In the end, the money meant a good deal. So much so that Joe ended up disgracing himself and going to jail. 

Somehow, when I heard about his death, that old Dion song came to mind. It's the wrong team, of course, but the right borough:

"I used to be a Brooklyn dodger

But I ain't a hitter anymore

I used to have a reputation

I loved to hear the home crowd roar.

I used to be a Brooklyn dodger

But I don't play there anymore."

Well, what the hell? Somewhere, in one of the Alternate Yankeeverses of our dreams, Joe is the smooth-fielding, power-hitting first baseman-outfielder of our dreams, leading the dynasty on along with a healthy Tom Tresh at short and young Bill Robinson in the outfield, and Al Downing on the mound.  

The picture below I scanned from my very first Yankee yearbook, in 1967. Back when it was NOT the size of a phonebook, and cost all of 50 cents. Back before Joe started to look like Savonarola and was just one more, wide-eyed kid in the presence of the great DiMaggio. 

It was from a section in which Yankees players talked about their greatest moments in the game:

 Joe Pepitone, RIP.