© Milano Baseball
A day of endless sadness. Two Milan legends left on the same night. Even though they are very distant in age, they are linked by the same passion, even by the role of first base, and above all by the fact that they have always remained linked, each in their own way, to Milan. In fact, he left together with Ivan Guerci Andrea Goldstein87 years old, whose health conditions worsened in a few days.
Talking about Andrea Bolocan Goldstein means talking about a giant, physically but also figuratively, of Milan’s first championships. Protagonist of the Invincibles, the one who dominated the ’61 and ’62 championships without losing a single match. And he was the starting first baseman of that team in 31 out of 36 games (one he played as right fielder), putting his signature on one of the greatest feats of Italian baseball.
Raised in the Ambrosiana of Lou Campo, or rather of “Doctor Campo” as all those who knew him called him and still call him obsequiously, Goldstein arrived at Milan in ’57, together with the Balzani brothers, helping to immediately bring him back into Serie A and to immediately reach the scudetto in ’58. Which for Andrea will be followed by another 4. Not only that, but Goldstein is also the author (with Bob Gandini and David Sheldon) of one of the three “cycles” in the history of Milan, created against Casaldi, Tagliaboschi and the Lauri brothers in a Milan- Nettuno of 1961. A series of successes that also opened his path to the national team, in which he made his debut with a homer against Germany at the ’58 European Championships and above all in ’59 he was the protagonist of the first historic Italian victory against the Netherlands in Utrecht: 8-3 with three home runs scored by Gandini, Glorioso and himself.
Great protagonist in the red and blue jersey (116 appearances and 15 home runs) until ’67, when he decided to step aside, but after a few years he returned to baseball, transferring his passion to coaching young people. And, even taking into account his qualities as a player, many argue that this was the best Goldstein, immersed in the rigid but paternal figure of the youth manager. And in so many years working in the youth sector, how many players he molded: just see in the condolence messages of these hours how many remember him as their first coach. From the late 1960s to the early 1990s, Goldstein dedicated himself precisely to boys, which even seemed counterintuitive for a gruff and bearish man like him. Yet, in years when it was not necessary to respect the protocols of the protective regulations of these times, Andrea knew how to make everyone love him, even with a pedagogical approach that today would have immediately called the person in charge of the “safeguarding policy”…
A bear to the core, Andrea has always declined invitations to get-togethers, parties and so on, barring exceptional circumstances, and then perhaps camouflaged himself in the stands to follow the matches, even in recent years. Because he too, deep down, has always felt like a player-founder of the Milan spirit. And we were keen not to hide this.
