Alfred Ferrara Jr. was born on December 22, 1939, in Brooklyn, New York to Al Ferrara Sr. and his wife Adele. Al Sr. was a New York City fireman for 20 years who later was an air conditioning technician for Chase Bank before working the gate at Jackie Gleason’s Inverrary Country Club in Florida in his retirement. Adele Ferrara, a homemaker, died when Al Jr. was 17, leaving her mother, Assunta Paulucci, in charge of Al and his twin siblings Frank and Theodora, who were 12 at the time.\n', 'As a youth he was also an accomplished piano player. “I never wanted to play the piano, I wanted to play baseball,” Ferrara said. “But a first-generation Italian woman like my grandmother didn’t know anything about baseball, so I had to play the piano, starting at age eight. I learned the classics. Mr. Morvillo insisted that I read music and play the pieces as they were written by Beethoven and Bach. I got pretty good and I learned to use piano to do what I wanted to do. I had a deal with my grandmother that after playing for an hour she would give me a quarter to go to the Bat Away at Coney Island. In those days you could hit about 25 balls for a quarter. After a while I got a reputation as a pretty good hitter and men would come around when I was hitting and put more quarters in the machine so I could hit for maybe a half-hour. Finally, I got my grandmother to agree that if I were to become Mr. Morvillo’s number one student I could give up piano and play baseball. He would have showcase recitals at Carnegie Hall, and the number one student would play last. When I was 16, I went on last as the number one student, kissed my grandmother, and never touched the piano again.”\n', 'Ferrara attended Lafayette High School (New York City) where he was a high school classmate of Bob Aspromonte and played sandlot baseball with Joe Torre and Joe Pepitone. The summer of 1957 was a turning point for Ferrara. He did well enough for the amateur traveling team Dodger Rookies that Dodgers\' scout Buck Lai, who was also the athletic director at Long Island University, arranged for Ferrara to get a baseball scholarship to LIU. After a successful season there, he signed a $9,000 bonus contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1958.\n', '

He made his major league debut at age 23 on July 23, 1963, in a 5-1 Dodgers\' loss to the New York Mets at Dodger Stadium. His first hit was in his third game, off Dick Ellsworth. His first homer the next day, off Bob Buhl, was one of three hit by the Dodgers in the fifth inning of a 5-4 loss to the Cubs.\n', '

He did not play in the 1963 World Series. He came up again in 1965 for 41 games but again saw no action in the 1965 World Series.\n', '

Return to Al Ferrara Autograph Profile