Barron: A watch with a lifetime pass to Ebbets Field has mysterious origins

From James Barron at the New York Times on September 13, 2015:

On Thanksgiving Day in 1990, a customer sat down in a restaurant on the East Side of Manhattan and plopped a gold watch on the table.

“This is yours,” the customer told the startled owner of the restaurant, who flipped the watch over. The lettering on the back said it was a lifetime pass to Ebbets Field, the arched-and-plastered home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The customer was Lt. Col. Anthony F. Story. He had been the personal pilot for Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the supremely egotistic Army war hero fired by President Harry S. Truman during the Korean War. The restaurateur was Jimmy Neary, who understood immediately that the watch was a relic.

What he did not understand then was that the watch was also a mystery. When was it made, and why? And when was it given to Colonel Story?

Read the full article here: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/14/nyregion/a-watch-and-lifetime-pass-to-ebbets-field-in-brooklyn.html



Originally published: September 15, 2015. Last Updated: September 15, 2015.