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Mostly Cloudy A new commander leads the VFW
John Mallico to head Post 2736
Before John Mallico joined the armed forces in 1945, he was a centerfielder in the New York Yankees organization.
The Brooklyn native said he played baseball regularly with his friends growing up, and at 18 he signed a contract with the Wellsville Yankees, a minor league affiliate of the team. He played there for a year before he was drafted into the Army two months before World War II ended.
In basic training in Georgia, Mallico learned to fire machine guns like the M1 carbine and the Browning automatic rifle, eventually earning the rank of sharpshooter. Afterward he was sent to Pisa, Italy, where he helped repatriate German prisoners of war. He was discharged from the Army in 1947.
Having been too young to be drafted while World War II was raging, Mallico said he anxiously waited his turn to defend his country. “I felt it was my obligation,” he said. “My friends, my brother, everyone else was in the service, so it was my time to go.”
Mallico, 87, has lived in North Bellmore since 1953. Late last month he became commander of the East Meadow Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 2736. The post welcomes members from neighboring communities Bellmore, Merrick, Wantagh, Seaford, Lynbrook and Rockville Centre.
While he was in the service, word spread of Mallico’s baseball prowess, and he was selected to play in an Army round-robin baseball tournament involving three teams of American soldiers deployed in Italy. He was the player-manager for his team, which was based in Livorno.
His team won the tournament, earning the right to play an American team in Germany that won a similar tournament. The schedule, Mallico explained, called for three games near Frankfurt, and four games back in Italy. The army flew Mallico’s team to Frankfurt, where they won one game and lost two.
