Remembering the remarkable Ralph Andreano

The famed UW economist has died at age 97

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My favorite story of the many Ralph Andreano shared with me over the years involved a bar in Oshkosh called the River Inn and an amiable beer-drinking companion who put out cigarettes in an ashtray carved into his wooden leg.

“I smoked back then,” Ralph told me, “and after a couple of beers, I started putting mine out in his leg, too.”

The man with the ashtray in his leg was already a legend that day in Oshkosh in 1966. Bill Veeck was a maverick Major League Baseball club owner who signed the first Black player in the American League in 1947 and sent a three-foot, seven-inch tall batter to the plate as a pinch hitter in 1951.

Andreano and Veeck were talking because Ralph, who was a professor at UW-Madison and had authored a book on baseball economics called No Joy in Mudville, was going to be a key witness in the state of Wisconsin’s antitrust lawsuit attempting to keep the Milwaukee Braves from moving to Atlanta.

Ralph called the professional game “a self-regulated monopoly,” and Veeck, with no love for the baseball establishment, was happy to consult.

The state ultimately lost on appeal, but not before baseball’s attorney, Bowie Kuhn — later commissioner — made the mistake of underestimating Ralph and his knowledge of baseball with trivia questions that Ralph fielded like an all-star shortstop.

Before long nobody was underestimating Ralph Andreano, who died in Madison in early September, aged 97, after a life of accomplishment in academia and government, globetrotting travel for the World Health Organization, and laughter.

Ralph had a great laugh but also a sharp edge. Our mutual friend John Roach observed that Ralph did not go gentle into Dylan Thomas’s good night — he called out fools when he saw them until the end.

He was a figure of note in the Madison landscape for decades. In 1978, the Wisconsin State Journal bestowed unofficial big shot status on Ralph by profiling him in their “Know Your Madisonian” feature.

The piece did a nice job of capturing Ralph’s professional success, noting that he “has taught economics at Earlham College, Harvard University and the Brookings Institute and has been the chief economist for the World Health Organization’s Division of Strengthening Health Services. [He spent] two years running the [Wisconsin] State Division of Health, a position he left to return to the UW.”

Also, “Andreano is a cheerful man, one who loves to play golf, who admits he passed his Ph.D. examination because of a fluke and who would rather attend a Brewers baseball game than a faculty meeting.”

I believe it was shortly after the State Journal article appeared that Ralph started writing columns on health economics for Madison Magazine at the behest of his friend Jim Selk, the magazine’s founding editor.

We got to know each other, and when I started writing an “items” column for The Capital Times in the late 1990s, Ralph would send me brief dispatches from his World Health Organization travels. I recall one about a parade of elephants on the streets of Bangkok, and another about how the American Embassy in Kampala, Uganda, was a virtual ghost town because of security concerns.

But he was not an idle tourist. During his time with the World Health Organization he helped measure the impact of such diseases as SARS, avian flu and ebola. His work helped save lives. His alma mater, Drury University, honored him in 2005, noting he was “best known for being one of the first economists to apply the theorems of economics to medicine and health.” 

When Ralph’s beloved wife, Carol, died in 2003, a half dozen or so of his friends convened a monthly dinner group to keep Ralph company and awarded him the title of benevolent dictator.

We named it the JDS Society after our late friend Selk. We started out at various Madison restaurants but ended up settling at the Nakoma Golf Club, where Ralph was a much-admired member, and where he shot his age — a remarkable golf feat — into his 80s.

Though a couple of other early JDS members — Bill Dixon, Bill Kraus — have sailed on, as Jimmy Buffett’s Sirius radio channel puts it, our group endures, with a few disreputable media types but also a federal judge and former governor.

Ralph himself stepped away from the group a little while ago, just because he felt it was time. He still came to Nakoma and was otherwise in touch by email and text.

Ralph’s kids, Maria and Nick, have organized a service and celebration in honor of their dad, with hopes his many friends can attend. The service and visitation is Friday, Oct. 17, from noon to 3:00 p.m. at Cress Funeral and Cremation Services on Speedway Road, with a celebration of life following at Nakoma Golf Club from 4:00-7:00 p.m.

The stories will flow at Nakoma. As the poet and novelist Jim Harrison wrote so memorably, “Death steals everything except our stories.”

My second favorite Ralph Andreano story — after Veeck and the ashtray in the leg — involved a trip to The Masters golf tournament in Georgia in April 2008.

Neither Ralph nor Tom Fitzgerald — another Nakoma and JDS member — had been to The Masters. It’s likely the hardest ticket in sports and they’d scored two for the Wednesday practice round.

Fitzgerald planned the trip like the World War II invasion of Normandy. Where they would eat, sleep, and play golf on the drive to Augusta was mapped out across three days and two nights.

Fitzgerald forgot only one thing. The Masters tickets, on his bathroom counter in Madison.

He realized this with horror at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday morning in their hotel room, an hour’s drive from The Masters.

He said nothing at breakfast, but in the car, on the way to Augusta, Fitzgerald said, “Ralph, I have to fess up.”

“About what?” Ralph said.

“I forgot the tickets.”

The car was silent. Then Ralph laughed. Soon, he laughed harder. What better response?

Now, some of you may be wondering if they were able to talk their way into the tournament once they got to Augusta. Of course they were. That laugh still makes me smile.