By Bill Burt
bburt@eagletribune.com
(Editor’s note: Executive sports editor Bill Burt wrote this piece about a Lawrence legend back in 2010. One of the greatest athletes ever produced by the famed city, ended up going to Phillips Andover, Yale University before being signed by the N.Y. Yankees. While he had success with the champs, he had other issues off the field that he never was able to overcome. He died 39 years ago on May 16 as a recluse. Check out the story, a sad one, here.)
Johnny Broaca was the American Dream. Better yet, he was Lawrence’s American Dream.
The son of Lithuanian immigrants, Broaca grew up in a tenement apartment and went on to become one of the greatest athletes ever to come out of Lawrence High.
From there, it was two years at Phillips Andover, and then on to Yale University. He aced his studies at two of the nation’s premiere educational institutions, but it was baseball that put him on the national map.
The New York Yankees signed Broaca, a star pitcher, in 1933, before he had even graduated from Yale. The same Yankees that boasted future Hall of Famers Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Bill Dickey and Tommy Henrich.
Broaca’s second major league start was a complete game three-hitter. His third start was a complete game one-hitter.
A month into his major league career, he was 4-1 for the World Series favorites.
Soon, he would have a beautiful wife, and then a son.
Lawrence couldn’t have been prouder of one of its own.
It seemed Broaca had it all.
Yankees manager Joe McCarthy, usually careful when it came to praising young players, told baseball writers that Broaca was “a promising youngster whom nothing can stop.”
But stop he did.
Within three years, Broaca mysteriously walked out on the Yankees and eventually lost everything, including his contract, his wife, his son, and his passion for life.
“My dad said he just gave up,” said Madeline Varitimos of Methuen, Broaca’s niece, her eyes watering a bit. “My father spoke very little about Johnny. It’s sad. Still, all these years later, it’s very sad.”
Broaca attempted a comeback with the Cleveland Indians 18 months after going AWOL on the Yankees in 1937, but it was derailed by arm troubles.
He eventually moved back to Lawrence, and for the next 45 or so years lived alone in an apartment on Garden Street, working mostly as a union laborer.
Twenty-five years ago today, Broaca was found dead of a heart attack on the floor of his apartment. He was 75 years old.
So what happened to this living legend?
Did he have a breakdown? Was it a sore arm that sent him over the top? Or was it his marital problems?
Why didn’t Broaca pursue his second dream of becoming a teacher and coach? And why didn’t he ever try to contact his only son, who grew up 25 miles away?
Nobody knows, because Broaca took his reasons to his grave at Immaculate Conception cemetery in Methuen.
“When my father and I went to his apartment after he died, he had only two small pictures near his bed,” the 73-year-old Varitimos said. “One was Walter Winchell. The other was Howard Hughes. Both of them were recluses … It was a little strange.”
A baseball prodigy
When Broaca was a boy, his family lived in an eight-family tenement in the Italian section of Lawrence on Middle Street.
Johnny was the second of three children. He had an older sister, Constance, and a younger brother, Victor — Varitimos’ father.
His father, John J. Broaca, worked in the paper mills in Lawrence, while his mother, Anna, tended to the family.
As Broaca told Boys’ Life magazine in a lengthy 1935 interview, baseball was a focal point of his life in Lawrence.
“I played (baseball) all of the time in my leisure and a lot at times when I should have been doing something else,” he said.
Broaca said in 1921, he saw an article in Boys’ Life magazine about the mechanics of pitching.
“I think it must have been about February or March, when we were all thinking about baseball but couldn’t play,” recalled Broaca. “I went to the reading room of the YMCA and picked up a pretty well-thumbed copy of Boys’ Life. One of the first things I turned to was an article about how to pitch … What interested me most were the diagrams.
“I studied that article harder than I studied any school lessons and practiced the grips on the baseball, along with the proper stance and form in front of the mirror.
“As soon as the snow got off the ground, I found a boy with a catcher’s mitt. And I began to practice in earnest.”
When Broaca got to Lawrence High, baseball was only part of his impressive resume. He not only was a straight-A student, he starred in four sports at the varsity level — football, basketball, baseball and track.
He was only the second athlete in school history to letter in four sports en route to winning the Cregg Medal as the school’s outstanding student-athlete in 1928.
“He could have been a great football player or a great basketball player, if that’s what he focused on,” said 87-year-old Sam Musumeci of Methuen, who grew up idolizing Broaca. “But baseball was his life.”
After Lawrence High, Broaca spent two prep years at Phillips Andover.
He ended his career there on a high of highs, beating rival Phillips Exeter in the final game of the year behind a brilliant 12-strikeout performance.
First signs of trouble
Broaca chose to attend Yale University on a partial scholarship in the fall of 1930. Part of that was due to the fact that he would be playing for ex-Red Sox pitcher Smokey Joe Woods.
It appeared to be a dream come true, but Broaca struggled for the first time in his young life. And it had little or nothing to do with baseball.
His family was poor compared to those of his classmates, which meant he had to work a regular job as a waiter at a Yale fraternity to help pay for school. That alienated him from many of his teammates and classmates.
Broaca’s father would send money when he could, which wasn’t often. His mother would go down to the train station in Lawrence and send a care package that included homemade rye bread and $2.
Baseball at Yale wasn’t a problem. He was the ace of the staff each of the three years he pitched there. In 1932, he struck out a then-school record 13 batters in a win over rival Columbia.
But he also started having arm problems, which didn’t put him in good stead with his famous coach.
In early April 1933, Broaca’s junior season, he was suspended by Wood because he didn’t show up for practice for a week. Later in the month, he complained about pain in his back and arm. Wood still wanted him to pitch.
So Broaca quit the baseball team at Yale and called famed Yankees scout Paul Kritchell, who signed Broaca to a contract a few days later.
Broaca was immediately farmed out to their top minor league affiliate in the International League, the Newark Bears, where he was allowed to rest his arm for a few weeks. He eventually pitched and finished with a 7-2 record.
He returned to Yale in the fall of 1933, after the baseball season, to finish his coursework. He graduated on time in 1934 and said leaving Yale early was a blessing in disguise.
Broaca joined the big club, the Yankees, after he was done at Yale in May.
His dream of pitching in the big leagues was about to come true.
Disappearing act
Broaca’s first career start, on June 2, 1934, was one of his worst. He allowed five runs and five hits, unable to get the Philadelphia Athletics out in the second inning before being yanked.
In his second start a week later, he allowed just three hits in a 4-2 complete game loss. In his third start, he made national headlines, striking out 10 St. Louis Browns and allowing only one hit over nine innings.
“It was one of the proudest days of my life,” recalled Musumeci of Broaca’s big day. “I was 11 years old. He made all of us proud to be from Lawrence.”
Broaca earned a regular spot in the famed Yankees rotation, which included future Hall of Famers Lefty Gomez and Red Ruffing. He finished his rookie season at 12-9.
In 1935, the Yankees were favorites to win the World Series, but finished second to the Detroit Tigers in the American League. Broaca, though, did his part, finishing at 15-7.
It was much the same in 1936, when he finished 12-7 and was among the top 10 in the majors in won-lost percentage (.632), earned run average (4.24) and fewest walks per nine innings (1.2).
This time, the Yankees won the World Series, beating the New York Giants in six games. Broaca was available in relief, but never saw any action in the fall classic.
But that was OK, because a few weeks after the season ended, Broaca married Cordelia Ireland, 22, of Orleans, Mass. The two had met during the summers when Broaca was at Yale and pitched in the famed Cape Cod League.
Armed with a World Series ring and a new wife, with their first child on the way, Broaca was supposed to be entering a new era of his life.
But 1937 proved to be his undoing. He got into arguments with McCarthy over his workout regimen, and his arm was in constant pain.
After a great first start in which he allowed six hits and one unearned run against the Athletics in late April, he didn’t win another game. Again, arm pain kept him off the mound — he was 1-4, pitching only 44 innings.
His Yankees career came to a head on July 16 in Detroit. McCarthy brought a disgruntled Broaca in to pitch in the eighth inning with the Yankees trailing 9-5.
Broaca finished the game, but not before allowing two homers, a triple, two doubles and a single, leading to five more Tigers runs.
He joined the team on the trip to Cleveland after the game. But he never showed up at the park the next day.
Broaca made history, becoming the first Yankee to “jump the club” in Jacob Ruppert’s tenure as the team owner (he bought the team in 1914).
McCarthy didn’t hide his anger from the press corps.
“This might cost him a share of his World Series cut?” a reporter asked McCarthy.
“Might?” said McCarthy. “He’s lost that already.”
A public spectacle
In news stories about Broaca’s disappearance, reporters weren’t afraid to throw some subjective color into their copy, calling Broaca “moody and aloof” and saying, “He has few friends.”
Days went by, and the Yankees had no answers as to Broaca’s whereabouts.
Worse, his wife of less than a year, who was eight months pregnant when he left the Yankees, claimed she hadn’t heard from him either.
Two months later, a newspaper account said Cordelia Broaca had filed for divorce, citing cruel and unusual punishment. Their son, John Jr., was just 5 weeks old at the time.
Out of money, she had to leave their home, and she and her son moved in with her mother.
The Yankees, who won the World Series again in 1937, showed their agitation with Broaca by voting a $1,000 World Series share to his wife.
“It was the right thing to do,” McCarthy said. “That’s no way to treat your wife.”
Broaca eventually resurfaced, but things only got worse from there.
The divorce proceeding became a public spectacle on Cape Cod. According to the New York Mirror, Cordelia Broaca claimed her husband began “beating” her a month into their marriage. She said her husband was “cheap” and would have fits of rage, many times over her spending.
She said one evening her husband chased her out of the house to a potato field in her underwear, where neighbors heard her screaming before finding her shivering.
Perhaps the most telling comment attributed to Broaca came during the deposition, before the divorce trial.
Cordelia Broaca said her husband told her, “(I’d) rather cut my throat or put a bullet in my head” before giving his ex-wife a penny.
A career cut short
A former heavyweight champ at Yale, Broaca tried professional boxing when he was out of baseball in 1938. But his boxing career never really got off the ground.
That was also the year that Broaca lost his father, whom he had hoped to repay for all of his help getting him through college.
Later in 1938, the Yankees made overtures about bringing Broaca back. But he wanted the Yankees to reimburse him for medical expenses and questioned their treatment of his arm.
When he was reinstated by the commissioner after the 1938 season, it was clear his next baseball home would be elsewhere. He hoped the Yankees would deal him to the Red Sox. Instead, they sold him to the Indians.
Other than the fact that Broaca got to play with a baseball legend, 20-year-old pitcher Bob Feller, the 1939 season didn’t live up to its billing. Broaca was primarily a reliever, pitching only 46 innings over 22 outings. The Indians finished 87-67, 24 games behind the Yankees.
“I remember Johnny had those heavy lenses on his glasses,” Feller recently recalled of Broaca. “We had a few laughs together. He was a little bit strange, a little weird at times, hard to figure. He sort of kept to himself.”
Broaca was sold to the New York Giants at the beginning of the 1940 season, but never pitched in a game for them and was released two months later.
His baseball career over, he moved back to his native Lawrence, and all of the controversy stopped.
Upon his return, he is believed to have worked at Tyer Rubber in Andover as warehouse worker.
Then in January 1943, he was drafted by the U.S. Army during World War II and sent to Fort Devens and later Camp Beale in Sacramento, Calif. He never served overseas, probably because of his age (33) and his poor eyesight. He was honorably discharged on Sept. 24, 1945.
He again returned to Lawrence, where for the next 40 years he basically lived the life of a recluse.
Always alone
Tony Fusco said it happened two or three times a day on this particular job site.
Broaca, then about 50 years old, would stop digging a trench. He’d stand up straight, adjust his glasses, and lean on the top of his shovel with one arm. And then he’d just stare off into the sky.
“It would always last about 45 seconds to a minute. Then he would just go back to work,” recalled Fusco, then a teenager working summers for the Laborers Union Local 175. “I always wondered what he was daydreaming about. I wondered if he was thinking back about a baseball game.”
Broaca joined Local 175 in 1949, and was a member until his death in 1985. His job was helping with the grunt work on job sites — moving or setting bricks for the bricklayers, mixing mortar, cleaning up work areas, landscaping or digging trenches.
There was an unwritten rule among the union guys of Local 175. Don’t ask Broaca about baseball.
“You just didn’t ask,” Fusco said. “It would never come up. I can’t explain it. But everyone respected Johnny enough to leave him alone.”
One thing Broaca was famous for over the last four decades of his life was walking.
While he owned a Hudson to get him around to jobs that were more than a few miles away, he would walk everywhere in the city. Almost everybody who lived near downtown Lawrence had a story about seeing him out for a stroll. And he was always alone.
“I can’t tell you how many times I saw Johnny carrying groceries on Essex Street or walking down Union Street,” Musumeci said.
Broaca also made it a point to watch youth baseball and adult softball games in the city, particularly at Hayden-Schofield on Lawrence Street.
“He would always stand in the same spot,” said Varitimos, his niece. “It was over the third base side of the stands. He would just sit there quietly and watch. He would always be alone.”
When Broaca died, it was Varitimos and her father who went to clean out his apartment.
“We were hoping he had lots of baseball memorabilia, things he might have saved from his baseball career,” Varitimos said. “But there was nothing. The walls were empty. He didn’t save anything.”
Varitimos said they did find a neatly stacked pile of cashed checks to Broaca’s former wife. He saved all of the support payments he made.
They also found a pile of opened envelopes.
“He had a lot of letters from fans who sent him baseball cards to sign,” Varitimos said. “Unfortunately, he left them in a big pile and probably didn’t send any back, which is too bad, considering most of them were probably from kids.”
‘He quit on life’
It was a phone call Varitimos dreaded, but knew she had to make.
It was a few days after Broaca’s funeral. She called Broaca’s son, Peter, in Western Massachusetts to inform him of his father’s death.
“He was sort of like, ‘What do you want from me?,'” recalled Varitimos. “I told him that we thought he’d want to know and that there were some things that he might want to have, like the (1936) World Series ring. He also had some money in the bank and some stocks.”
Peter came to Methuen, had dinner with the family, and tried to soak it all in. He took the World Series ring, which usually remains in a safe deposit box.
“It was a little strange,” Peter Broaca said. “The fact is, he never tried to get a hold of me. I only lived in Boston, the South End. Maybe at some point I could have reached out to him. It just never happened.”
Peter, now 72, said there were times when he was growing up that he would ask his mother about his once-famous father.
“To be honest, it wasn’t discussed too much,” he said.
Peter said his mom remarried when he was in the third grade. The family eventually moved to Boston so his stepfather could find work.
Even though he never knew his father, in some ways, Peter was a chip off the old block.
He is almost the same exact size his dad was — 5 feet 11 inches tall and 180 pounds. He also played baseball and was a practice player for the basketball team at Boston University.
One of Peter’s first jobs was as the associate head coach/freshman coach at the University of Massachusetts, where he coached Julius Erving, Rick Pitino and Al Skinner.
He went on to become a successful Division 3 men’s basketball head coach, putting in 24 years between Coast Guard Academy and Western New England College. For the last 12 years, he’s been an assistant at Springfield College, also teaching physical education at an alternative middle school in Holyoke. In 2009, he was inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame.
Peter is divorced and the father of two daughters. They never met their grandfather.
“It’s sad. I don’t know what to say other than that,” Peter said.
That sentiment is echoed by others who knew Johnny Broaca.
“He could have done some great things with his life, but he chose not to,” his niece, Varitimos, said. “I can’t really understand that.”
Neither can the 87-year-old Musumeci, who tears up when he talks about his former idol.
“Johnny was the best teacher of baseball that I ever had,” he said. “He taught me how to pitch. I remember clearly he told me to never quit. When things are tough, you have to hang in there.
“Why am I upset? Because Johnny Broaca quit on life. And that makes me very mad.”
You can email Bill Burt at bburt@eagletribune.com.