Column: Benny Wasserman handled the heat — in life and in the batting cage

Every Friday morning for more than five years, Benny Wasserman, a retired aerospace engineer and Albert Einstein look-alike actor, put on his Detroit Tigers baseball uniform and went to the Home Run Park batting cages near Knott’s Berry Farm.

In January 2023 he emailed me to say he’d set a goal for himself — to rip 90-mph fastballs on April 2, 2024, his 90th birthday. “I’m calling it 90 at 90,” Wasserman wrote, adding that he was dealing with — but not deterred by — prostate cancer and pulmonary fibrosis.

At the first opportunity, I drove to Cerritos to meet Wasserman and his wife, Fern. They’d met on a blind date at an El Monte pizza parlor and were approaching their 65th wedding anniversary.

“When I hit a home run, it makes my day,” Benny told me.

“He loves it,” Fern said.

Wasserman took me into his den and played “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” on his organ. He took me into his library — his love of books began as a young man when Carl Levin, a childhood friend and eventual U.S. senator from Michigan, gave him a copy of Jack London’s “Martin Eden” as a wedding present. He showed me the volumes of journals he’d been working on for decades and took me to his backyard, which he’d turned into a miniature baseball park where he hit Wiffle balls off a pitching machine.

I wasn’t sure Wasserman could handle the heat, because a 90-mph fastball is what major league pitchers throw. But he stepped into the batter’s box, the pitching machine cranked, and Benny Baseball went to work.

Ground ball. Line drive. Moon shot.

He made contact on nearly every pitch, with a sharp eye and a quick flick of the wrists. A few of his drives had home-run range.

“We all love him,” said Kris Wysong, the Home Run Park manager. “He hits better than most of the customers do.”

After I wrote a column about him last year, Topps Trading Cards produced a batch of Benny Wasserman baseball cards, and he emailed me a handful of them. ESPN interviewed him and was planning to attend the big “90 at 90” day for a story.

But in mid-February of this year, Wasserman emailed to say his health was deteriorating. He hadn’t given up on his April 2 goal, he said, but his sons — two lawyers and a geriatrician — had persuaded him to visit the batting cage on March 3 and have a “celebration of life” party afterward at his home.

On Feb. 28, he emailed again to say he’d had a blood transfusion and the party had been postponed. “My temperature is fluctuating with associated chills and shivering, and I might have to go back to the ER soon,” he wrote. “Whatever happens I will keep you informed.”