Remembering Reno Bertoia … you’ve made it all the way HOME!

Welcome friends, grab yourself a ‘Cup of Joe’, pull up a chair and let’s chat about one of my lifetime heroes, Reno Bertoia.

April 15, 2016 marks the five-year anniversary of the passing of Reno Bertoia at age 76, a Windsor educator, Major League baseball player, husband, father, friend to many and spokesperson for Prostate Cancer, the disease that finally took his life from us.

Born January 8, 1935, in St. Vito Udine, Italy Reno Bertoia was one-year old when the family immigrated to Canada, choosing Windsor, Ontario as their new home. The family settled in the Drouillard Road area and, by sheer irony, were neighbors to Hank Biasatti, another Windsor native who played major league baseball and a person from whom Reno gained great inspiration and encouragement.

As a youngster attending Gordon McGregor Public School, Reno’s sports passions were soccer and basketball, both sports in which he was naturally gifted. It wasn’t until he turned 13 that he first began playing organized baseball where he again displayed an abundance of natural talent. By the time he was 18 years old and under the tutelage of his coach and mentor at Assumption High School, Father Ronald Cullen, he was voted the ‘Best Baseball Prospect in Detroit’.

He sparked the interest of major league baseball organizations who scouted him. The following year he signed his first professional contract with the Detroit Tigers that paid him $10,000 for himself, in addition to $1000 to allow his mother to travel to Italy.  It also included a commitment by the Tigers to pay his future college tuition.

Windsor Ontario, Canada’s southerly-most large city, has been home to many NHL hockey players throughout the years. After all, hockey is Canada’s ‘national game’. Even the NFL has had a number of Windsor area athletes in their ranks.  Less frequent, however, has been the incidence of Windsor area residents playing baseball in the major leagues.

In 2015 Baseballreference.com reports that of the approximately 18,337 men who have played Major League Baseball in its 140 year history going back to 1876, only eight have come from Windsor, Ontario (one from LaSalle and one from Amherstburg). Reno Bertoia was one of these eight.

Another interesting note is that in the history of Major League Baseball, no less than 93 players have come directly to a big-league team, bypassing the minor leagues. The Detroit Tiger baseball organization boasts six such players; one of them was Reno who, along with Hall of Famer, Al Kaline, was signed in 1953 to the big-league club. During his career with the Detroit Tigers, Reno roomed with Kaline on the road and enjoyed a long lasting friendship with him.

Reno began his 12year major league baseball career with the Detroit Tigers playing infield (primarily third base) for them for six years from 1953 to 1959. During the next four years, Reno touched down in Washington DC, Minnesota, and Kansas City before returning to conclude his last two years of pro baseball back home with the Detroit Tigers in 1961and 1962.

In his 612 game major league career, Reno Bertoia hit 27 home runs and had a batting average of .244.  Although these are not ‘Major League Baseball Hall of Fame’ numbers by any means, Reno’s great strength was as a defensive player where he played most of the infield positions. Hall of Famer, Brooks Robinson, once observed that in addition to his very strong throwing arm, Reno “had the softest ‘hands’ of any infielder he had seen.”

Before finally “hanging up his spikes’, Reno and his family moved to Japan in 1964 where he played just 29 games with the Hanshin Tigers in the Japan Central League before returning home due to a family illness. Years later Reno shared with us in class how intrigued the Japanese people were with his young son’s blonde hair, something of a novelty not frequently seen in their country.

I recall a story about Reno’s playing days with the Detroit Tigers, a story I’ve not been able to verify and which could well be urban legend. It involved Reno hitting not just one, but two, home runs in a single game at venerable Briggs Stadium (Tiger Stadium), leading the hometown Tigers to victory. This feat allegedly made front page headlines in the next day’s Windsor Star.

There are also stories about Reno’s rookie year when he would walk across the Ambassador Bridge from his home in Windsor to Briggs Stadium for games, and then be spotted during the games studying for his university courses on the player’s bench in the Tigers’ dugout during games (when he wasn’t in the starting lineup). Though signed as a professional baseball player, Reno had the common sense to continue his education at the University of Windsor while playing baseball, a move that prepared him for a long and distinguished career as a Windsor educator.

Every starry-eyed boy growing up in Windsor in the 1950s and 60s who dreamt of one day being a professional baseball player had Reno as their hero.  As a youngster, Reno was my hero and I was especially fortunate because he was living in Windsor’s west end near the two different homes that I lived in during those years.

As an eight and nine-year old I would frequently ride my bicycle by his grey brick ranch home on Rosedale and stare at it knowing that my hero lived there. On top of that, Reno went to the same church that our family went to, Assumption Church, and Reno’s wife was the nurse who attended to my father’s illness at Hotel Dieu Hospital. I felt I had a special connection with my hero.

Seven years later, during my four years at Assumption High School (1967 to1971), I had Reno as my teacher for 4 different courses, as well as my freshman baseball coach. Reno was the man that I attempted to be like in so many ways as I grew through my teen years. I lost my dad to cancer in 1970 when I was 17 years old and Reno was there for me and mentored me with a father’s love and concern.

To this day, whenever I smell English Leather cologne, or see a man’s burgundy necktie, I am reminded of my high school teacher, Reno. These were two of Reno’s ‘trademarks’, trademarks which many of us in the student body back then imitated.

As an educator Reno Bertoia taught us more about history than just historical facts. He breathed life into history and made it come alive for us in the present. I remember him talking about his baseball experiences in the deep south and the very real discrimination black ballplayers faced during the desegregation years following Jackie Robinson’s break through into the Major Leagues.

Reno shared stories of how Billy Bruton (centre fielder for the Tigers) would have to stay in a separate hotel from the white players and drink from water fountains in southern ballparks with ‘coloreds only’ signs above them. We all could see how pained Reno was even years later in recounting these segregation experiences he had witnessed and lived though. Reno taught us life lessons we could not have learned anywhere else. As painful as it was to recount these events, Reno believed we all needed to know history so as not to repeat its failures.

Almost forty years later after my high school years, in 2007/2008 I had a chance to interview Reno on the Council Warmup Show that I hosted on TVCogeco. He appeared as a public spokesperson for prostate cancer. Reno was a survivor at the time, and volunteered his time and his public persona to encourage men to be proactive in getting tested against this disease. He delivered his important message for with clarity and passion. What a thrill and honor it was for me to interview him and chat with my hero after so many years! We shared some good laughs and memories of our earlier days.

Reno recalled the time I assisted him with the Assumption junior varsity baseball team in 1970 and my car broke down in Detroit. Reno and I were driving the team in our two cars for a game with our cross river rivals, Catholic Central High. While on the Lodge near McNichols, my car broke down. Reno pulled over and we tried to get my car going, but couldn’t. We had only 45 minutes until the scheduled first pitch of the game – and there was no way we were going to forfeit to Catholic Central!

As ‘catholic’ luck would have it, a passing car on the expressway stopped to offer us assistance. It turned out the driver was an alumnus of Assumption High who spotted the Assumption Purple Raiders bumper sticker on my car. He volunteered to take the players in my car on to Catholic Central for the game. Reno gave me some money for a tow truck and I had the car towed to a nearby garage where it was fixed in just a matter of minutes.

I made it to Catholic Central for the 3rd inning of the game. Reno, describing this incident now 40 years later with me, shook his head and smiled, telling me that where my car had broken down on the Lodge was less than two blocks from the epicentre of Detroit’s 1967 riots, three years earlier. I laughed and told him that I was glad I didn’t know that at the time!

Reno was a three-time Hall of Fame inductee: the Windsor/Essex County Sports Hall of Fame in 1982; the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame in 1988; and, the University of Windsor Alumni Sports Hall of Fame in 1988.

We lost one of the truly good guys in this world with Reno’s passing five years ago. A father, husband, professional baseball player, superb educator, public spokesperson for cancer, Reno  was a hero to many. He certainly was one of my life’s heroes.

Thank you, Reno Bertoia, for having been a big part of my life….

Photos courtesy of University of Windsor Alumni Association and the Assumption High School Crusader.