As local fans mourn the Orioles firing their manager, selling off fan favorite players at the trade deadline, a rash of injuries and a last place finish; as the Ravens’ defense is dismal, Lamar Jackson is limping, injuries are epidemic and hopes of a Super Bowl disappear, we should find comfort in wisdom from one of our town’s neighborhood philosophers.
Al Isella was a celebrity maître d’ at Sabatino’s on Fawn Street in Little Italy, involved in sports gambling, a political leader and credited with inventing the signature Bookmaker’s Salad. He had started working with his dad in the Pennsylvania coal mines in the 1930s until they were both caught in a cave-in. His dad died, and an injured Al left for Baltimore. His first job was at Bethlehem Steel’s Sparrows Point mill for 14 cents an hour. After World War II, he ran Gussie’s Downbeat, a louche nightclub in the cellar of a Highlandtown Chinese laundry, frequented by professional athletes and neighborhood bookmakers settling their daily bets. He claimed he was arrested 50 times for gambling. But when he became maître d’ at Sabatino’s and involved in Democratic politics, he became an East Baltimore big shot. And to his end, in 2010 at age 94, Isella’s trademark phrase was, “Don’t worry about a thing.”
He said that to Frank Sinatra and Hank Aaron and Dean Martin and Joe DiMaggio, and even to Spiro Agnew on the night after he had, in disgrace, resigned as U.S. vice president. That took an earthy sense of compassion. Especially given that, on the day Agnew resigned at one Baltimore courthouse, Al claimed he had been in another paying a fine.
Don’t worry about a thing, Baltimore.
— Stan Heuisler, Baltimore