Had Miss Rosen out at
Ball game, I was glad
after I saw her home. —
She is far from the type that
I need, No more such
matrimonial tryouts.
Spent the entire evening
visiting various Zionist
Clubs on the East Side.
———-
Matt’s Notes
Poor Miss Rosen. Papa had been down on her from the moment his friends, the Linzers, introduced him to her a few days earlier, and she obviously didn’t help her cause at the ball park. (I’m tempted to say she “struck out” at the game, but as you can see I restrained myself.)
I’m not sure which game they saw that day, but Papa must have felt heavily handicapped by Miss Rosen if he couldn’t enjoy himself at either. Out in Brooklyn, the National League champion Giants climbed into first place with a 5-2 victory over the Robins (a.k.a. Dodgers) which would have been tough enough to frown through on a sunny, 60-degree day. Meanwhile, up at the Stadium, the Yankees defeated the Red Sox, 4-3, in an 11-inning thriller that included an inside-the-park home run by Wallie Pipp and a game-winning bunt by Whitey Witt. “Search the records far and wide and you won’t find many better games,” declared the New York Times, “it was packed with all the thrills of a lifetime.”
Papa would have needed catastrophically bad chemistry with Miss Rosen to see such games and remain unmoved. But what offense could she have given? Did she eat ketchup on her hot dog? Did she say she didn’t like movies? Had she never heard of Palestine? It’s hard for me to imagine what might have made Papa so dismissive of her, but maybe his romantic sensibilities didn’t permit him to enjoy something as crass as a “matrimonial tryout.” Maybe Miss Rosen wasn’t really that “far from the type” Papa needed — she just might have been a victim of his desire for a less contrived love story.
——————–
Additional Notes:
I think Papa says “spent the entire evening” at the beginning of the third paragraph of this entry, but I’m not sure if I have the word “entire” right. Here’s what it looks like:
Please write or drop a comment if this looks like something else to you.
Also, if you’re a baseball fan, do yourself a favor and check out the Times‘ recaps of the day’s games. I can’t get enough of their baseball writers’ bemused tone: