No sport is quite as tied to its past as baseball. And for that reason the story of 111-year-old rabid Yankee fan Bernardo LaPallo seemed all the more touching.
LaPallo met with Derek Jeter and manager Joe Girardi before Saturday’s game and went on and on about his epic tales of meeting Babe Ruth. He even went so far as to say:
“I shook his hand and he said, ‘My greatest admirer, my youngest admirer,'” LaPallo said. “I remember that like yesterday.”
After the story went viral of the enchanting elderly Yankee fan’s tales Robert Young of the Gerontology Research Group who specializes in validating birth certificates of those over 110 years old is calling ‘bs’ on LaPallo. Young states that LaPallo isn’t a day over 103.
If LaPallo were in fact 111 he’d be the second oldest person oldest man in the world, and the oldest in America. LaPallo is being accused of lying about his age in order to sell books; he also lends his name to a fitness website, gives lectures and is promoting a second book due out this summer. The book was clenched tightly in is hands and held prominently as he met Jeter on the field.
LaPallo’s family cannot produce any official documentation to help back his claims that his birth date was incorrectly written down. Also, the Gerontology Research Group maintained a file on him, and lists him under their ‘incomplete, exaggerated or fraudulent cases’. He’s made various different claims about the year of his birth from 1901, 1908,1909 and 1910.
His place of birth has also flip flopped, LaPallo first claimed to have been born in Brazil, then changed his story to New York City and then back to Brazil during his Yankee stadium appearance.
The case is most definitely fishy, and odds are he is lying for the publicity. But at the end of the day it’s quite clear Mr Pallo is over 100 so who can really knock an old man’s hustle.
Should people be upset?
H/T: Deadspin