Joseph “Joe” Reistetter passed away on October 16, 2022. He was 84 years old.
Born on November 11, 1937 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Joe was as Brooklyn-raised as it gets. He grew up a die-hard Brooklyn Dodger fan, but had no problem renouncing his fandom the second his beloved boyhood team decided to move out West in 1957– something many of his generation are in staunch agreement upon. He switched over to the New York Yankees and never looked back.
During this time, Joe served in the military reserves. He served in the Army from July 23, 1956 until his honorable release from active duty on July 22, 1959, reaching a “Specialist Four” rank. He would long-hold his Veteran status near and dear to his heart, while also reminding everyone that his birthday was not just Veterans Day, but Armistice Day first.
Joe married Mary Esposito of Brooklyn on October 22, 1960. Their three children Eric, Christopher and Elizabeth were born in 1963, 1973 and 1975, respectively. Joe and Mary settled in Hauppauge in 1969, where they would remain for the next five-plus decades.
Joe worked for Polytechnic Chemical and Coding for 20 years, but he was also much more than that. He was a baseball coach to his sons, and spent even more time as an on-deck circle advisor to his grandsons and their teammates– all of whom he’d urge to “Bat a-thousand!” like their life depended on it. No fan rooted harder, and with more passion than Joe. His affinity for arguing with umpires and often getting ejected from games was nothing he would ever pout too long about afterward, though– because he and everyone else always knew that he was always in the right. Even when he was wrong.
The same man who brought that classic stubbornness to the ball field sidelines also brought it to family gatherings galore. Anyone who ever made it to the end of an argument with the professional chemist who moonlit as a debate artist knew that at the end of the day, all Joe lived for was the big, infectious laughter he was known to let out to ease all tensions– and that which surely carried him far past what his family and medical professionals alike assumed would be his expiration date following a C.O.P.D. diagnosis over two decades ago.
He defied all odds by witnessing one high school graduation after the next from the oldest of his 10 grandchildren– a testament to the fight in the man who knew in real-time he had something to live for. He lived militantly to be there for his family while they were thriving, and especially while they were hurting. After his oldest child Eric’s tragic and unforeseen passing in 2007, Joe clearly gained a renewal on life— to be there to take his grandchildren to school, baseball practice and a myriad of other activities. To be there for his wife, children, daughter-in-law, his entire family that was suffering, but did not suffer long thanks to Joe’s otherworldly paternal instincts.
After his younger brother, Michael, passed away in 2019, Joe took the time to emerge from the confines of his den in what would turn out to be his last Christmas with the entire family together due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. And it was a memorable one for all in attendance. Joe delivered a thoroughly-rehearsed, short yet cinematically sweet speech in which he communicated his gratefulness to Mary for decades of top-notch hosting, and to his family for their year-in and year-out knack for always being just that: a family, through and through.
The same grandchildren he stuck around for long enough to see turn from children to adults would grow up to humorously accost him in the same way the departed Eric would a few years earlier. Generations of Reistetters can endearingly recall driving by the Reistetter home to witness the yard-worker extraordinaire denying the obvious: that he probably shouldn’t be hanging from the gutter or walking on the roof of an older home. No, he preferred to be hellbent on asking zero of his able-bodied, nearby grandsons for assistance, electing to instead fix up issues to his house by himself with one hand while clutching a mobile oxygen tank in the other— inspiring his family to quickly intervene and snap some sense into him.
But that’s what made Joe, Joe.
It’s this relentless commitment to being himself to the end that kept him fighting until the end, serving as proof that God exists. And for Joseph Reistetter – who, after his condition grew to the point where he could no longer attend his grandsons’ ballgames, remained engaged by consuming Yankee games as nightly appointment viewing – to pass between a pair of ultimately victorious elimination playoff games for the Yanks is proof-positive evidence that God is a Yankee fan…
…but was once a Brooklyn Dodger.
“Yesterday somehow slipped by me
It died like an old forgotten friend
Didn’t I just turn sixteen in May?
Now thirty-five’s just around the bend
I threw the dice in all of the alleys
Come on baby, let ’em roll
And boys if you weren’t from Flatbush
Jack, you didn’t have any soul
I used to be a Brooklyn Dodger
But I ain’t a hitter anymore
You know I had a reputation
I loved to hear the home crowd roar…”
“(I Used To Be A) Brooklyn Dodger” by Dion
