It's not as if Frank Lala's life hasn't had far more highs and lows over his 90 years. He and Jesie was were married for more than 55 years before she passed away in 2019. They raised two sons. He ran a successful construction business for years in Florida before moving to Chattanooga in 1998.
As friend Diane Gutillo, who checks in on him every weekend, said of him: "Everything about Frank makes me laugh. He's amazing. He can talk to you about so many things. He has such a great love for people. A servant's heart."
We should all have that impact on others.
But every now and then, he thinks about what might have been if he hadn't hurt his back in the Korean War. Or more accurately, if the Korean War hadn't gotten in the way of a promising baseball career with the New York Yankees.
"I was about to sign a contract, but I went to Korea," he said Saturday afternoon, his voice still heavily tinged by his New York City upbringing. "Then I hurt my back. I never got to play professionally after that."
That didn't mean he couldn't play, however. In an exhibition game at Yankee Stadium, he got to dress in the club's iconic pinstripes.
"Number 16," he said of his uniform that afternoon. "I'll never forget walking down that hallway to the field. Very impressive."
But his ability was very impressive, too. In that first exhibition game at Yankee Stadium, Lala hit a triple off eventual major league pitcher Herb Score. In a second exhibition against Boston at Fenway Park, he got a double and a single off pitcher Mel Parnell, who spent his entire MLB career with the Red Sox.
If that wasn't enough to prove his talent, longtime Yankee Lefty Gomez wanted the club to sign him as a pitcher.
"I was ambidextrous," Lala said. "And I had a very good curveball as a lefty."
He was also a very good switch hitter who caught the eye of the Splendid Splinter, Ted Williams, during the exhibition game at Fenway.
The last man to hit .400 for a season in the majors, Williams was watching Lala take batting practice when he noticed he was tipping where he intended to hit the ball.
"He said when I was going to left field, I'd stick my tongue out the left side of my mouth, and when I was going to right field, my tongue would go the right side of my mouth," Lala recalled. "I'd worked with all these batting coaches, and no one had ever noticed that. Williams watched me for maybe five minutes and pointed that out. Amazing."
He can rattle off the names of the Yankees greats he met. Joe DiMaggio. Yogi Berra. Mickey Mantle. Phil Rizzuto. Unfortunately, those exhibitions proved to be the end of his baseball career. He went to Korea. Fought in the Battle of Pork Chop Hill. He hurt his back. Flown home, he was operated on at Walter Reed Army Hospital.
"I was almost paralyzed," he recalled.
Asked how much money the contract with the Yankees would have paid him, Lala said: "I had an agent. In those days, they were really just lawyers. I was told it would have been for $79,000."
For years he stayed close to the game he loved, especially the Yankees.
"New York had the Giants and Dodgers when I was growing up," Lala said. "But I was always a Yankees fan."
But if his allegiance didn't change, his love for the sport did.
"So many of the players seem like spoiled brats now," he said. "Not all of them. But enough of them. I saw Roger Craig (the former San Francisco Giants manager) in Atlanta one time. I asked him how he dealt with it. He told me, 'They're multimillion-dollar players. I'm a million-dollar manager. You have to adapt.'"
But the constant pain in his back made adapting to a less active life difficult. He heard of a doctor in Chattanooga who was working miracles on backs. The family moved from Florida for Lala to undergo neck surgery at Memorial Hospital. He and Jesie and the rest of their family got their active lives back. Life was good again.
A story from the old days, after Korea, but before the sadness of the past five years, when Lala has lost his wife, both sons and the family's beloved dog, Koko, a dachshund who passed away at the age of 15 a couple of years ago.
Said Gutillo: "Frank and his wife loved Frank Sinatra and went to shows whenever they could. Frank even had a fake security badge he'd use sometimes to get backstage when Sinatra performed. Sinatra was so taken by this that one night he had drinks with the two of them after a show."
A story from the recent years, after his entire family, over a span of two or three years, was lost.
"They told me my wife needed to go to a nursing home," Lala said. "I told them she had a home. She died in my arms. Koko was the one that alerted me she was about to die."
Like so many born and raised during the time of the Great Depression, he worries about the America he sees today.
"The world's changed dramatically," he said. "People used to want to do everything they could to help others. Now it seems they want to do everything they can to screw others."
Yet more than six decades after his chance to be a Yankee never got off the ground, he remains more philosophical than bitter.
"My chance for a baseball career just came along at the wrong time," he said.
Fortunately, there's never a wrong time to salute a loving husband and father with a servant's heart who served his country when it needed him the most.
Mark WiedmerContact Mark Wiedmer at mwiedmer@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @TFPWeeds.