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Gordon Shepherd
Hi Everyone,
Many of you remember Joe Caputo, a classmate who attended both Lincoln Junior and South High. I regret to report that Joe died last week. Joe was a gifted athlete, starring in football, baseball, basketball, and track. Before transferring to West, he was chosen by the South High coaching staff as the outstanding athlete of our sophomore class. After high school, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps where he served for four years, including two years of combat duty in Vietnam. Joe had a reputation for being tough, but he was always friendly and cordial to me and Gary. I regret not getting to know him better. My loss.
Joe was a cousin of one of our other classmates—Ken Caputo. Kenny, like Joe, was a good athlete who played baseball for South and, after graduating, went on to play for both Dixie and Weber State Colleges. Kenny’s dad, Frank, was a great guy whom Gary and I met as teenagers when we played summer baseball with Kenny at Municipal Ball Park.
While remembering Joe, we also offer the following story as a tribute to Kenny’s dad, Frank Caputo, who lived to be 100 years old. To many of his adult friends, Frank was nicknamed “The Shiek.” Our story about discovering the Shiek’s identity is a little convoluted, but, to hold your interest as the narrative untangles, we have included a number of references to familiar neighborhood locations where many of us grew up together.
P. S. Gary and I look forward to seeing all of you who can attend our 60th class reunion in September.
SHEIK CAPUTO AND THE BIG DUGOUT IN THE SKY
By Gordon and Gary Shepherd
“Caputo,” Gordon thought to himself, “his last name was Caputo, but what was his first name?” Gordon was trying to remember the first name of the man who, in the early 1960s had been the director of the Elks Club (and coach of the Elks Club softball team we played against during the summer of 1960). The Elks Club was a squat, Quonset hut shaped building on Main Street and 1300 South in Salt Lake City situated on the other side of Derks Field’s left and center field fences. Technically, the Elks Club was “The Boys and Girls Elks Club,” but very few girls ever went there to avail themselves of the cramped basketball court and other modest sports facilities and equipment that the club offered for inner-city kids living in the area. Among area boys it was known simply as the Elks Club.
As young teens, we began frequenting the Elks Club in the winter months during our sophomore year at South High in 1959-60. The “Club” was a mile hike from our home at 1166 Denver Street, a half block from Liberty Park on Fifth East. Unlike many of the local LDS Ward chapels, the older Liberty/Liberty Park Ward Chapel did not have a basketball court included as part of its amusement hall wing of the building. So, if we wanted to shoot baskets and work on lefthanded layups after school, our first (and often only) option for practice was the Elks Club.
The two of us had been reminiscing about the summer we played fast-pitch softball for the Salt lake County Recreational league and faced the Elks Club team in the championship game at White’s Ball Park (since torn down) across from the Fairgrounds on North Temple. Gordon clearly remembered that the Elks Club’s coach was, in fact, Coach Caputo, but what was his first name? It’s funny in older age how frustrating minor memory lapses concerning retrospectively trivial things can be. What was his first name? We had known and played baseball with Kenny Caputo in junior high and (not to mention Joe Caputo, a same-aged cousin of Kenny’s, who was a superb athlete and feared fighter). Was the Caputo in charge of the Elks Club a relative? This nagging question was about to open up some unanticipated discoveries.
A few days later, out of nowhere, it suddenly came to Gordon: Coach Caputo’s first name was John. John Caputo. Was that right? How could one be sure? Well, that’s what Google is for. Gordon googled the name “John Caputo, Salt Lake City.” A number of obituary entries flashed on his laptop screen. In particular there was one for Frank John Caputo and another for John Joseph Caputo that seemed promising. Gordon tried Frank John first. The opening lines of the obituary read:
August 4, 1915 ~ August 9, 2015. "Our beloved father, grandfather and dear friend, Frank John Caputo, known to many as "The Sheik," passed away shortly after his 100th birthday, on Sunday, August 9, 2015 in Holladay, UT. The son of Rosario and Christina Mary Brunino Caputo, Frank was born on August 4, 1915 in Sunnyside, UT. He was the third of 11 children in the family."
Okay, interesting, but this didn’t seem like the right description of the Caputo Gordon was looking for, so he clicked on the obituary for John Joseph Caputo: Eureka! This had to be the right guy.
"John J. Caputo died March 30, 2010 after a courageous battle with cancer. He was born in Salt Lake City on April 3, 1924 to Cristina Brunino and Rosario Caputo. John graduated from West High School and Utah State University where his athletic prowess is legendary. He is still remembered for stealing the football at the 1948 Aggie/Wyoming game which was touted to be the play that won the game."
Hmmm, Gordon thought to himself, reflecting on the two obituary notices, John must have been a younger brother to Frank, the other Caputo he had just read about.Frank Caputo was born in 1915, compared to John’s birth in 1924, and both Frank and John were identified as sons of Rosario and Christina Caputo. Nine years younger than Frank, John J. had been a star athlete at both West High and Utah State University. Sure, of course. Gordon remembered that, as director of the Elks Club, Coach John hailed from Salt Lake City’s westside and seemed to know all the kids who played sports at West High. But who knew he had been such a great athlete in his youth? He certainly knew sports, and you could tell he was a tough competitor, but he wasn’t a big guy, and, in his late thirties, he was already getting a little paunchy.
Reading further in John Caputo’s obituary, Gordon learned that:
"John taught in public schools for 35 years in Utah and California, serving as classroom teacher, coach and vice principal. For 18 years, he meticulously groomed the Ken Price Field [in Murray, roughly ten miles south of Temple Square in Salt Lake] into one of the most beautiful youth ballparks in the Country. He valued education and encouraged many youth to pursue educational and athletic opportunities."
Coach Caputo had been a classroom teacher and even a vice principal somewhere? Holy Toledo! Who would have guessed that? Both of us remembered Coach Caputo as a profane, no-nonsense, tough-as-nails sports adept who seemed perfectly at home on a basketball court or football field, but, to us at the time, not so much in the halls of a school building or classroom. Such are the narrow impressions formed in youth of other people who are briefly encountered in narrow circumstances and whose full lives and histories are scarcely considered or ever appreciated.
***
Following Gordon’s search efforts to remember Coach Caputo’s first name, Gary coincidentally sent him a link to an interview with well-known sports writer, John Schulian (illustrating the sort of serendipity that our wives claim transcends the rules of probability). Along with the link, Gary noted that “we should have given Schulian a second look when we knew him back in the day,” which was acknowledgement of yet another too hastily formed impression.
The relevance of John Schulian for the two of us was that we remembered him joining us as kids for some games of over-the-line at Municipal Ball Park between 700 and 800 East on 1300 South. He was friends with Kenny Caputo, and acquainted with Bill Gehrke and Johnny Parker, but ended up attending East High rather than South. In our youthful opinions, Schulian was only an average ball player and gratingly argumentative about the rules during our pickup games. Following several disagreements over the course of one game, Schulian called a line drive Gordon hit past him in left field to be a foul ball. In disgust, Gordon yelled, “The only thing foul around here is your breath!”—a fatuous insult, but it cracked up Jonny Parker, and we all laughed like crazy as Schulian simmered in crimson anger and embarrassment.
We regret that we didn’t make an effort to get better acquainted with Schulian. We belatedly realize that we share a fair number of his interests as adults and think we would appreciate him much more than when we were kids. And in fairness to Schulian’s ballplaying ability, we should also report that later he matured into an outstanding catcher and solid hitter in high school and went on to win an MVP award playing amateur league ball for Utah Power and Light in 1967. So much for our youthful small-mindedness and prejudicial prognosticating.
Schulian was offered a baseball scholarship by the University of Utah but decided to concentrate on his major in journalism and went on to become a nationally respected sports columnist and author of well-regarded books on sports (not to mention a later and continuing career as a well-known writer of movie and TV screenplays and novels). The interview Gary sent Gordon was dated October 11, 2011, and was titled, “Bronx Banter Interview: John Schulian,” by Alex Belth. Gordon read the interview with great interest. In it, Schulian was insightful, articulate, highly knowledgeable about a wide range of sports topics, and generous in his own appraisals of the sports heroes and their moments on the field, in the ring, and on the court that he had written about over his sports writing career, including such luminaries as Muhammad Ali, Willie Mays, Reggie Jackson, Nolan Ryan, Walter Payton, and Julius Erving (Dr. J), among many others.
Midway through the interview, Belth suddenly asked Schulian, “Why do you have such a feel, an affinity for doing pieces of players from the past?”
Schulian’s loving response was:
"I’ve always been fascinated by the past, I mean from childhood on. No matter where I was living, I gravitated to talkers and storytellers, older guys usually, the kind who could weave a spell with words whether they realized it or not. I had a neighbor in Salt Lake City who was like that, a railroad machinist named Sheik Caputo who had played semipro baseball until he was in his 40s. He’d start talking about the team he ran at the Naval Depot during World War II, or how his mother used her broom to hit the feds who busted her father for bootlegging wine during prohibition. I ate it all up. When I started writing for newspapers and magazines, I was still that same kid, forever eager to sit down with old timers who had stories to tell, filing away everything I heard and imagining what the world I was hearing about must have been like."
Wait a second! Go back: Sheik Caputo in Salt Lake City? Gordon immediately returned to Google and entered “Frank John Caputo” again. This time he read the entire, lengthy obituary. According to the obituary:
"In 1923, the Caputos moved to Salt Lake City, UT where they lived in the upstairs quarters of the family-owned grocery store. Caputo's Grocery [at 300 North between Sixth and Seventh West, now bisected by Interstate-15] was the heart and soul of the family's existence for the next 57 years, a place remembered fondly for both the wine the father made and the sweaters the mother knitted for her bambini. If there was a clotheshorse in the family, it was Frank, who wore his brand new knickers to Jackson Junior High and instantly became known as "The Sheik," a nickname that stayed with him the rest of his life. But he was far more than just another teenaged dandy. He starred in football, basketball and track at West High, and if you asked him what his fondest memory of those days was, it was not receiving a diploma. It was smearing his football uniform with garlic, a tactic that sent more than one opponent reeling."
So Frank Caputo, older brother to Coach John and the son of Italian immigrants, was “The Sheik,” a nickname bestowed on him no doubt by his mostly Mormon classmates because of the handmade sweaters and cool knickers he sported as a boy. Well in advance of his kid brother John, Frank also had been a star athlete at West High—and, one infers from the garlic anecdote, the owner of a big, gregarious personality who delighted as an adult in telling stories about his wine making father and his broom swinging mother during prohibition days in Salt Lake City. Reading further, Gordon learned that
"The only sport missing from Frank's athletic resume in high school was baseball, which happened to be his best sport. It didn't become part of interscholastic sports in Salt Lake until the 1940's, and by then Frank had already made a name for himself as a first baseman in the Catholic Youth Organization's baseball program, the legendary Utah Industrial League and the Salt Lake Amateur League. In later years he managed a powerhouse team for the Utah Naval Supply Depot in Davis County and coached the American Legion teams from East and Granite high schools, happily chewing tobacco and encouraging his players to "squat low, take squirrel's aim and swing parallel."'
Alright then! As an adult, Sheik was good enough to play amateur and semi-pro baseball and (his tobacco chewing notwithstanding) also coached high school age American Legion teams in the summer. But it was what followed next that caused Gordon to do another doubletake:
"As much a fan as he was a participant, Frank and his son Kenny traveled to New York for the 1956 World Series and saw all seven games between their beloved Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers. When the Yanks' Don Larsen pitched his perfect game, they were standing there watching, right behind the home-plate box seats."
Frank and his son Kenny? Frank “Sheik” Caputo was our boyhood friend Kenny Caputo’s dad! When the two of us were playing summer baseball at Municipal Park, Kenny lived four streets south of the ball field on the corner of Eighth East and Kensington Avenue and we got acquainted with his dad, not as “The Sheik,” of course, but as Mr. Caputo. Mr. Caputo was stocky, had a full head of dark wavey hair, and wore thick-framed glasses. He came to all of Kenny’s games and would distinctively bellow-out each time Kenny came to bat: “Bow your neck, Kenny! Keep your neck bowed!” (Bowing your neck is how a batter takes “squirrel’s aim.”)
What impressed us most was Mr. Caputo’s friendly, outgoing manner. He wasn’t aloof and didn’t talk down to us as kids. He engaged us about baseball and was more than willing to play catch with us when we were warming up before a game. Gordon vividly recalls warming up with Mr. Caputo when he and Kenny were teammates for Ken Garff Oldsmobile in the Automotive League. Mr. Caputo said to Gordon, “Hey, you’ve got a little hop on your throw. Throw harder and let’s see what you’ve got.” Gordon started throwing hard and Mr. Caputo said, “You’ve got a live fastball, son. Have you ever pitched before?”
Gordon conceded that, yeah, he had pitched a little when he was twelve, “but that was a long time ago.”
Mr. Caputo said, “That long ago, huh?” and smiled generously. “Well, I’m going to tell your coach to take a look at you. He may want to try you out on the pitcher’s mound some time.” (Which is what happened, but the account of Gordon’s wild pitching debut in a subsequent game is a story for another time.)
Back to Kenny and his dad: They went to New York to watch the 1956 World Series together and saw all seven games, including Don Larsen’s perfect game! Son-of-a-gun. The two of us never knew that. We were also huge Yankee fans and watched the whole series with bated breath on television. Not many of our friends or their dads, as we remember, liked the Yankees. But, in retrospect, Frank “Sheik” Caputo, a first-generation son of Italian immigrant parents, would naturally have been a Yankee fan and pass his fan loyalty on to Kenny. In 1936, when Sheik Caputo was 21 years-old, the Yankee’s starting lineup included Frank Crosetti at shortstop, Tony Lazzeri at second base, and the rookie sensation Joe DiMaggio in centerfield. In later years the Yankees would acquire Vic Raschi (pitcher), Phil Rizzuto (shortstop), and Yogi Berra (catcher), all Italian Americans. It was Yogi Berra who caught Don Larsen’s perfect game in the fifth game of the 1956 World Series.
As recounted in “The Sheik’s” obituary,
"Frank told the story of that great adventure many a night as the back porch of his home on the corner of Eighth East and Kensington Avenue, which was transformed into what was affectionately known as "The Dugout." There was always cold beer on hand to wash down the pepperoni, cheese and olives that he laid out in a seemingly endless parade of characters from his life in baseball."
“The Dugout” is where John Schulian remembers listening as a kid to Sheik Caputo hold forth on sports and the good old days of growing up on Salt Lake City’s west side. In a subsequent correspondence we developed with Schulian, John elaborated on his relationship with Mr. Caputo:
"When my parents and I moved [away from their initial home] to the area near 17th East and Yalecrest, I hadn't made friends there yet. So every day I would jump on my bike and ride down to Muni or the Caputo’s, to see what was going on. Every night without fail, Monday through Friday, the Sheik and his wife, Nell, would set a place for me at the table and feed me dinner. And when darkness had fallen, the Sheik would load my bike in the trunk of his green Mercury and drive me home. I've never met anyone with a bigger heart.
Peace, John
P.S. I still say the damn ball was foul.
***
Too bad the two of us didn’t spend more time getting acquainted with Kenny’s dad, let alone with John Schulian. We think that we too would have eaten up the Sheik’s stories.
Other tidbits gleaned from The Sheik’s obituary confirmed that he worked as a machinist for the Union Pacific Railroad for 37 years; that in retirement he jogged five miles every day around Liberty Park and played golf at the Rose Park Golf Course, while “merrily bickering with his kid brother John” (Coach Caputo to us). The last three years of Frank’s life were spent at Sunrise at Holliday, an adult care facility, where “he always enjoyed his 2:00 a.m. sirloin burger, Bud Light and the conversations that were had.”
Frank John “Sheik” Caputo lived to be an amazing hundred years old. “He will always be remembered,” his 2015 obituary stated, “for his big heart, helping others and treating everyone as his own family.” That’s how we remember him too—as an adult who liked everybody and who took an interest in boys and their games, encouraging them to develop their youthful potential. Rest in peace Mr. Caputo. We can’t help but wonder, when you turned one hundred, if St. Peter greeted you at the Pearly Gates, proclaiming, “Welcome Sheik! Welcome to The Big Dugout in the Sky!”
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