- Relects on Bill’s Childhood
October 4, 1960
By Zora Unkovich Pittsburgh Post Gazette
“Happy days are here again” for Mrs. William Doak of Stratford Ave. in the East End. She’s going to see her Pirates play in the World Series. (“I think they’ll win by four out of seven”)
So what, you say? So will thousands of other Americans converge on Forbes Field tomorrow to watch the opening game. Right you are, but there’s one small difference – Mrs. Doak is 92 years old, which undoubtedly will make her the Bucs’ oldest fan in the ball park.
Also, she’s one of their most consistent rooters. All this season … as in most seasons … Mrs. Doak has seen at least four out of five games every time the team’s been home. She knows all the players – and their plays – but she does admit to a favorite, Elroy Face.
Her all-time favorite in the baseball lineup, throughout the years, was, of course, the late William (Bill) Doak, one of the major league’s great pitchers in the game’s hall of fame.
Decided at Seven
Bill, her son, saw his first ballgame when he was seven years old, when his father, after whom he was named, took him to Exposition Park down at the Point. That was in 1897. Young Bill came home and announced at dinner that night:
“I’m going to be a bat boy.”
His father, who very much approved his son’s ambition, would play ball with him in a field in Knoxville, near their home. Some of the mothers would ask Mrs. Doak if she didn’t think it was unfair for a grown man to pitch to a little boy – he threw too hard, they said.
Bertha Doak just smiled; she didn’t agree with them. She knew how wild her son was to improve his game.
Mrs. Doak saw her first ballgame when Bill played for Knoxville High. That did it. She’s had the bug ever since. Back about 1918, she remembers, the Pirates used to play a game in the morning and another in the afternoon.
Instead of taking vacations, Mr. and Mrs. Doak often celebrated their holidays by going to the ball park for the day, leaving Forbes Field for lunch at the Betsy Ross Restaurant on Forbes St. a few blocks away.
Back in 1913
Young Bill joined the St. Louis Cardinals as a pitcher in 1913. Within a year he was the leading pitcher in the National League. In 1924 he left the Cards for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Because Doak played with Casey Stengel, his family became great fans of Casey’s. They’ve rooted for him throughout the years, but this week will be different. There will be no cheers for Stengel, not in his job as skipper of the Yankees!
Mrs. Doak’s companion at the World Series will be her daughter, Hazel Shook, who’s been going to Forbes Field with her mother for years. As a child, Hazel used to catch ball with her brother on the way to and from school, and when he joined the big-time, he became her hero.
Although Hazel shook is some 25 years younger than her mother, she frankly confesses she can’t always keep up to nonagenarian Mrs. Doak. At the recent 16 inning-game between the Bucs and the Cincinnati Redlegs, Mrs. Shook was exhausted with excitement by the end of the eleventh inning. Not her mother. She would have stayed to the very end, regardless of the hour.
‘Especially for You’
Because her son was a baseball player and, likewise, because she and her daughter have been such faithful rooters at all the home games, Mrs. Doak was given the special privilege of buying tickets for the two of them for the World Series (Their tickets are for the first, second, sixth and seventh games.)
When the mailman brought the envelopes with the Pirates stamp on it, he didn’t trust it to the mailbox. He rang the bell and delivered the much-sought-after ducats in person.
The mailman, like everyone else who meets Mrs. Doak, exclaims that she doesn’t look like 92. To which she makes the wry retort:
“I don’t know what someone 92 is supposed to look like. Anyway, I’m going to be 93 the end of this month.”
Her daughter has her own explanation for her mother’s youthfulness.
“Baseball keeps her in the good shape she is. Her determination to go to the games won’t let her get old.”
Bill Doak’s mother, Bertha, age 92, holding World Series tickets for herself and Bill’s sister Hazel.
