Professor Fishman on Deck

Don Larsen toed the rubber on the Yankee Stadium mound, ready to pitch the fifth game of the 1956 World Series. A half-continent away, Professor Irving Fishman prepared an afternoon biology lab at Grinnell College. In the Clark Hall television lounge, a conflicted Yankee fan and Fishman student sat on the sharp horns of a painful dilemma. Baseball or biology? Larsen or Fishman? I was that student.

The World Series in those days captivated the nation like a week of Super Bowls. Other faculty showed an interest in the annual spectacle and might have accepted my tardiness, but not the all-business Fishman. Besides, I had struck out on several embarrassing encounters with the professor, including one instance that threatened him with bodily harm. 

A squeeze play seemed apt. I would watch the game until shortly before class, and then run for it. Play ball!

Larsen zipped through six innings, retiring 18 consecutive Dodgers. The Yankees led 2-0. Lab time approached, and so did a no-hitter. Should I go or stay? I stayed, but with mounting feelings of guilt.

Between innings, I worried about my relationship with Professor Fishman, also my faculty adviser. It had begun with a counseling session a few weeks earlier. “For your first semester,” he said, “I recommend English, algebra, American government, and biology.”

“Oh,” I responded, “I took those in high school.”

Fishman’s look spoke loudly. I took the courses.

Another inning passed. Still no Dodger hits. My thoughts turned to an early lecture of Professor Fishman (nicknamed “Fishy” by students) that included comments about research on dog feces.

I had raised my hand and asked, “What are feces?”

“Excrement,” the terse Fishman replied.

I didn’t know that word either, but with the muffled classroom laughter, I figured I had stepped in doo-doo.

Garland DeNelsky ’60 nudged me and whispered, “Poop.”

Aha, got it.  But I was red-faced and making a poor impression on my mentor.

An opportunity to make amends occurred, so I thought, when I discovered a dead bat lying in the grass near Fishman’s office. If he found sorting through dog poo interesting, I assumed he would be ecstatic over a dead bat. I picked up the ugly needle-toothed creature by the tip of a wing and proceeded to the professor’s office. His door was open.

“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “I thought you might be interested in this bat.”

He wasn’t.  “Drop it in the waste basket,” he said.

Eight innings passed without a Dodger on base. Three outs stood between Larsen and a perfect game. 

While Brooklyn prepared for a final at bat, I recalled yet another embarrassing, potentially injurious, incident involving my adviser.  High on the side of Goodnow Hall on stacked scaffolding, I was on a student work assignment, scraping paint with a double-bladed tool the size and weight of a hammer. I saw a familiar figure striding along the sidewalk below. “Hello, Professor Fishman,” I hollered. 

He looked upward. I waved with the hand bearing the paint scraper, lost my grip, and watched in horror as the tool plummeted toward a possible victim.  “Look out!” I screamed. 

The professor jumped aside as the scraper bounced off the sidewalk. He then resumed walking, obliviously and without hearing my faint “I’m sorry.”

The climactic ninth inning passed quickly when Furillo flied out, Campanella grounded out, and Mitchell struck out. A perfect game!

I leaped from my seat, raced to class, and slipped through the door and onto my lab stool. Professor Fishman, busy assisting students with a microscope assignment, didn’t seem to notice. I had executed a double play: watching the game of the century while escaping the wrath of the stern professor.

“What’s happening?” I whispered to my lab partner, Gordon Hunt ’59.

“You’re supposed to place the microscope pointer on the items listed on your worksheet,” Hunt whispered back. “Then call Fishy to verify your answer. If you get it right, he’ll circle the word.”

I peered into a microscope searching for an elusive phloem cell, but observed nothing more than a blur. Time slipped away. I needed to identify something and settled on a dot that was at least distinguishable. I raised my hand.

Fishman approached, said nothing, and looked into the microscope. It seemed he hadn’t noticed my late arrival. I had pulled it off! 

“That’s not a phloem cell,” he scolded. “That’s a dust speck on the slide. You didn’t adjust the instrument correctly.” 

Professor Fishman had no reason whatsoever to circle “phloem cell” on my worksheet. Yet he was writing something. He handed me the form and walked away. I read: “YOU ARE LATE!”

I suffered no dire consequences for my freshman foibles with Professor Fishman, beyond additional work on identifying phloem and xylem cells. Indeed, we soon developed a respectful relationship.

Fifty years after the only perfect game in World Series history, I met and spoke with Don Larsen at an autograph event. I mentioned how his feat made me late for class and upset my instructor.

“Really?” he responded in disbelief. “Over a lab?”

It seems the pitcher didn’t care any more about biology than the professor did about baseball.