Why Short Al, Talkative Fan, Calls No More
Despite his nickname, Short Al stood tall in the pantheon of overnight callers to talk shows on the New York sports radio station WFAN-AM.
Such callers, sometimes called FANdroids, are known by name, neighborhood and loyalties.
Bruce from Bayside likes the Cleveland Indians, while Bruce from Flushing is a Yankees man. There is Marc in the Bronx (Denver Broncos) and Miriam from Forest Hills (Islanders and Mets). Regular listeners know that Jerry from Queens is Jerry Seinfeld, a proud FANdroid and occasional host of the show.
Albert Kaufman, 81, a caller on WFAN, is known as Short Al from Brooklyn. A host told him, “Time is short, and so are you.”
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Short Al from Brooklyn was a Mets devotee who, having been a regular at Ebbets Field since boyhood, provided an old-timer’s perspective. He called in the predawn hours nearly every day since WFAN went on the air in 1987, becoming a favorite of Steve Somers, a host known as “The Schmoozer” who shared Al’s love for the Mets but prodded him to get to the point by saying, “Time is short, and so are you.”
Short Al suddenly disappeared from WFAN’s airwaves last year, leading some listeners to worry that he had joined the great lineup of FANdroids who have died, including John from Sandy Hook and Doris from Rego Park. “I can’t tell you how many times people called in and asked, ‘Why hasn’t he been calling? What happened?’ ” said Marc Malusis, another of WFAN’s overnight hosts.
Short Al’s silence led to a long period of searching to solve the mystery.
Jim Burns, a writer and actor known to FANdroids as Jim from Long Island, said, “These callers are part of New York’s sports world, and they keep a lot of people company every night. You get attached to someone like Short Al, who’s been on the radio a few minutes every night for more than 20 years.”
Mr. Malusis, known on the air as Moose, described the callers as a kind of family, with clearly demarcated roles: “From midnight to 2 a.m., you get the people calling in who are reacting to the game. From 2 to 4 you get the guys working overnight. After that, you get the early risers.”
Short Al was an early riser and was able to reach the station using speed-dial. Short Al’s familiar phone number yielded no answer, but Mr. Malusis finally managed to find out — “Someone had a friend in law enforcement,” he explained — that Short Al from Brooklyn was Albert Kaufman, an 81-year-old retired letter carrier and a widower. Last year, Mr. Kaufman was hospitalized after a fall, and he left his Marine Park apartment to live with a daughter in Bensonhurst.
“He’s doing fine except for one thing,” Mr. Malusis said. “He can’t call anymore. His daughter won’t let him.”
Reached at his daughter’s apartment, Mr. Kaufman — in his familiar Brooklyn accent — confirmed that she did indeed put the kibosh on 4 a.m. phone calls to WFAN-AM (660).
“She gets up at 6 to go to work, and if I talk on the phone, I wake her up,” he said. “I miss calling, but people still recognize my voice on the street or in the supermarket. They’ll come up and say: ‘Are you Short Al? Oh my God, you’re the best.’ ” Also, he said, his daughter’s phone doesn’t have speed-dial.
Mr. Kaufman agreed to meet at a diner near his daughter’s apartment. He had already had his morning bagel, so he ordered coffee and coconut custard pie. Immediately, he went into a FANdroid-worthy rant — “How could a manager leave a pitcher in that long?” — about the Mets’ defeat the previous night.
As if making up for all those call-ins he missed, Short Al talked about how much potential he sees in Omir Santos, a Mets catcher, and declared that the Yankees should make their catcher, Jorge Posada, a designated hitter. He rattled off the starting lineups from the 1941 World Series between the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, and then for the 1944 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns. All before the waitress brought his slice of pie.
Short Al is 5-foot-4, and he tells the story of his life as a baseball fan as though writing a script worthy of Kevin Costner.
Growing up in Coney Island, he said, he worked as a child in a penny arcade on the Boardwalk for money to go to Brooklyn Dodgers games. In 1934, at age 7, he went alone to his first game at Ebbets Field, by bus, trolley and subway. On June 15, 1938, he said, he was there when the Cincinnati Reds pitcher Johnny Vander Meer pitched a no-hitter against the Dodgers — four days after pitching a no-hitter against the Boston Braves, the only major leaguer ever to achieve such a consecutive feat. Short Al himself did not play serious baseball, but he ran track at Lincoln High School.
“I got my speed by selling ice cream illegally on the beach,” he said. “You had to be fast, to run away from the cops.
“I started boxing at age 7 because I was a little guy and got beat up in school,” he added. “I had 130 amateur fights and I was never knocked out because I have no neck, which is good for boxers and baseball catchers. Look at Yogi Berra and Johnny Bench.”
Short Al said he trained with Whitey Bimstein at the legendary Stillman’s Gym in Manhattan and took pride in joining a great line of Jewish fighters. “You had Barney Ross, Benny Leonard, Kingfish Levinsky, Georgie Abrams, Al ‘Bummie’ Davis — Bummie was shot by a holdup guy,” he said. “You didn’t get paid as an amateur, but they’d give you a gold watch and you could sell it.”
Mr. Kaufman took a job with the post office and requested the route that included Ebbets Field. That meant delivering registered mail to the players’ clubhouse. He also worked as a vendor at the ballpark, selling beer for 35 cents a can; he said he witnessed Jackie Robinson’s first game as a Dodger on April 15, 1947.
“During infield practice, I yelled to him and he came over and I told him, ‘It’s about time the Negro ballplayers got their shot,’ ” he recalled.
These days Mr. Kaufman keeps busy knocking around the neighborhood and bowling in a league at Gil Hodges Lanes in Mill Basin.
He finished his pie. “I want you to tell everyone at the FAN and all my listeners that I’m doing O.K. and I’m still rooting for the Mets,” he said. “Send my regards to all the callers, but tell them it’d take them a lifetime before they’d know as much as me — I saw the greatest players ever.”
COURTESY OF: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/nyregion/05shortal.html
