ON THE DEATH OF A FRIEND

In her battle against cancer, Pat Leonard taught me a lesson about facing mortality with courage.

Patricia “Pat” Leonard, died on November 9. She was 87.

Who was Pat? She was my friend. She was kind and generous and she loved to laugh. She was chatterbox too, and at times irascible in that somewhat charming, very New York way.

I met Pat while doing research for an article to mark the 70th anniversary of the New York Giants’ Bobby Thomson’s dramatic bottom-of-the-ninth inning home run in 1951 to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers in a one-game playoff.

Josh Prager, who wrote the book The Echoing Green about that fabled game, put me in touch with Pat. She had been there to witness the Thomson home run. There weren’t a lot of people still alive who were there.

We spoke by phone. Pat was chatty and friendly. She told me she was born and raised in the northeast Bronx. Her parents were big baseball fans — who wasn’t in those days? — but, unusual for the Bronx, they weren’t Yankees fans. They were Giants fans.

In 1951, Pat Kannar — her maiden name — was a 15-year-old high school girl. Her boyfriend was Billy Leonard, two years older, also in high school and who lived on the other side of the borough. He was also the Giants bat boy. Thanks to Billy, Pat could get into Giants games for free. He invited her to the playoff game against the Giants’ hated rivals, the Brooklyn Dodgers.

On October 3rd, she played hooky and went to the game at the Polo Grounds, the ancient, eccentric stadium in upper Manhattan just across the river from Yankee Stadium. As usual, she sat in a section with the players' wives.

Going into the bottom of the 9th inning, the Dodgers led 4-1.

Pat recalled, “I was just nervous, anxious, hopeful, all of those words.”

The Giants scratched out a run. Now it was 4-2 Dodgers as Bobby Thomson came to the plate with two runners on base. The Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca hurled. Thomson smacked the ball into the left field stands and the stadium exploded.

It would be forever known as The Shot Heard Round The World, one of the most dramatic moments in American sports history. Pat was there. She saw it. She experienced it.

“You talk about excitement,” she said. “The Polo Grounds went crazy. Absolutely! I remember being so happy, I was brought to tears.”

She thought she and the other women all hugged each other in jubilation. But details, she conceded with a regretful tone, were long ago lost in the fog and blur of the passage of seven decades. It was like a memory of a memory.

But just a few minutes later, she was recounting with vivid precision the joy of singing the song that fans in the stadium belted out in unison after a Giants victory.

“Come all you ball fans, all you great ball fans,” she began, reciting the lyrics. But then she started to sing it.

Come watch the home team/
Going places/
Round the bases

For just a few seconds, she was once again that teenaged girl in the ballpark on a summer afternoon in New York.

Billy and Pat.

As a reporter, which is what I was professionally for 40 years, it’s common to slip in and out of the lives of people about whom we report. I figured I’d never have any contact with Pat again.

Pat had other ideas.

A few weeks later, she emailed me. Would I take her to a Mets game? I’m a Yankees fan. I dislike the Mets and particularly dislike going, as I considered it, behind enemy lines to a Mets home game. I asked her if she’d be willing to go to see the Yankees instead. Nope. She wanted to see the Mets. I said yes, of course.

I was able to reach the Mets PR people to ask if they could put a greeting on the big screen. They said sure and also provided me with parking so I could drive her to the game instead of taking the 7 subway train.

We had fun though Pat didn’t seem to be following the game very closely. We didn’t even notice the message board when her name appeared.  I think she more enjoyed just being at the game, the stadium, the crowd. The game itself was more like a background. Mostly, Pat talked. She had a million stories. She told me about her career as an administrative assistant at an ad agency. She had married the batboy but it didn’t last long. She raised their son and daughter, but her son died in early adulthood and her daughter had moved to Arizona. She had friends and stayed active at a neighborhood senior center, but I sensed that she was a little lonely.

When I dropped her off, she invited me to come to dinner sometime. There was a new Indian restaurant near her Upper East Side apartment that she was eager to try.

A few months later, we went to the restaurant. We agreed the food wasn’t very good. We vowed to try somewhere else soon. We never did but we stayed in touch via text, email and occasional phone call. In her texts, she would usually add the emoji symbol of a baseball, a token of what had brought us together.

In February 2022, Pat texted to tell me she’d fallen and fractured her spine.

She texted: “Tomorrow, I’m starting intensive PT. Refuse (even at 86) to give up. Loyal friends and prayer will help me through this difficult time.”

Her difficulties got worse. In March, she said she’d shattered her hip.

“I know now … a walker will always be part of my life,” she texted. “Yes, a bitter pill to swallow but it could be a whole lot worse. No ‘pity party’ for this gal! Pls keep in touch. We could always have Indian food right on York Avenue. I’d love that.” Two emojis followed. The American flag and the Ukrainian flag.

A few months later, in a text exchange, she mentioned her lifelong “OBSESSION” with shoes — “high heels, loafers, sandals, etc.” Now she could only wear shoes with a prosthetic lift. She gave away the rest of her shoe collection and it pained her. But, as always, she sought the bright side.

“A life lesson maybe,” she wrote. “When life throws you a curveball your choice is to lean in and take a swing or strike out.”

In October - on the Bobby Thompson home run anniversary date — she had minor surgery and then bladder surgery. There was also good news: she got new eyeglasses.

“Change is always good & the new glasses are proof of that!” she texted.

In November, she was well enough to go to the Broadway show “Into The Woods,” her favorite Sondheim musical.

At the end of the month, she texted: “Looking forward to 2023 and lots of good things.”

We exchanged texts over the holidays, but early in the new year, we were out of touch for a couple of months.

In late February 2023, I got this ominous text from her with her usual dollop of optimism appended: “Life has thrown me a curve ball but I’m not out yet. In hospital now and working on getting a Home Health Aide for help. Love your travel stories — keep ‘em coming. Pat.”

I asked what she was in the hospital for. She didn’t answer.

In April, “Still around. Latest challenge is Bladder Cancer… Research claims I have 3 to 5 [years] more of life.”

She said she had been admitted to a cancer care hospital in the Bronx.

“Only God knows the future,” she texted. “Making lemonade out of lemons [lemon emoji]. Pat.”

In May, I went to see her, bearing oatmeal cookies that she’d asked for. I met her on the patio where she sat by herself in a wheelchair in the warm spring sun. She was thin and seemed a little irritable. She said the hospital was for end-stage cancer care but she had every intention of battling this disease and getting out of there. She wanted to go home, but couldn’t afford the 24-hour care she needed. She was frustrated about what to do.

After my visit, Pat enlisted me in her search for a good, inexpensive pair of hearing aids. We texted and talked about this for weeks until she said she’d gotten a good pair but needed my assistance in figuring out how to use them.

I saw her again on August 5. By now, she was bedridden all the time. When I went to her room, she was asleep but woke up and was soon fully alert. I somehow got the new hearing aids working. At first, she wasn’t sure if they helped, then decided they did. Then she took them out and put them away.

We had a good visit. She was still determined to go home but I knew that wasn’t realistic. She would not be going home.

In September, she texted: “in BAD SHAPE. NO WORDS!”

I called and texted but I couldn’t reach her.

A week later, she texted to ask me to bring lox and cream cheese the next time I visited. I said I would. But after that, I was unable to reach her by phone or text. My only contact was through her friend, Heather, who visited her several times and had sometimes gotten her by phone.

I was busy this past fall and kept trying to reach Pat to set a date to visit. I couldn’t reach her. Heather advised me to just show up unannounced. I never got around to it. I should have tried harder.

This past week I got the news from Heather that Pat had died.

I didn’t know Pat long. I can’t honestly claim to have known her well. But she was my friend. She was one of those rare people you meet once and you just click. You like each other. We shared a love of baseball, a lot of laughs and a bad Indian meal.

The day Pat died, I woke up and just started writing this. I don’t know exactly why. To remember her. To honor her. To share with the world that this was a person who lived and laughed and made the world in some immeasurable way a better place. And she saw that home run!