EBBETS FIELD AND OUR DODGERS

Although other sports were gaining traction after World War II, baseball was still, by far, the national pastime. My parents, being more prone toward museums, it was with the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts that I was able to see the players I idolized and only able to watch on our grainy black and white TV. A few stops on the Brighton Line brought us to the Prospect Park station, a quick walk up the block from the ballpark. Surrounded by homes and small mom & pop stores; Ebbets Field, the center of Brooklyn’s universe. 

Emerging from the corridor for the first time, shocking flames of bright green flashed before my young eyes as the sun lit up the grass on the field below. The players appeared from the dugout, their snow white and deep blue uniforms creating eye popping contrast against the surface; an explosion of color. Here were our Brooklyn Dodgers!

The ballpark

It was later that I came to truly appreciate Ebbets Field. As long as you weren’t behind a support pole, the sight lines were perfect, everything appearing vividly in view. We sat in general admission, the greater part of the ballpark; most of the time in the lower section along one of the baselines; the action so close it appeared within reach. Couldn’t be a better place to watch a game.  

Ebbets was built at a time when baseball was expanding rapidly. The early part of the 20^th century saw teams replace their old wooden stadiums with those of steel and concrete and two tiers of seating. Each was unique with very different dimensions. Built in or close to urban centers, most had great sight lines and offered a cozy environment to watch a game. Through the years, they were enlarged, Ebbets, starting out with stands just along the baselines to the foul poles. Two of the old timers survive; Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago.     

The team

The center of our world, Ebbets Field had offered mostly frustration through the years with few bright spots. But our guys were different. Dominant in the National League, our Dodgers were now Dem Bums in name only, no longer poor cousins of the Giants, their uptown rivals. Prior to the development of this team they had been scraping bottom with the Boston Braves and Philadelphia Phillies for many years while the Giants and Yankees got the glory in their respective leagues. Problems in our day generally didn’t appear until October when we always faced a Yankee team that was the most dominant in baseball history. Although matching up favorably, our boys turned back into Dem Bums in the series…except for that one magical year of 1955.

With the addition of Jackie Robinson, Brooklyn became the moral center of the baseball world and beyond. From the moment he first stepped onto the field he was a legend. We were always so proud that it was here in Brooklyn. Jackie added a dimension to the game, brought from the Negro Leagues; his unique way rattling the opposing team when on base. A great player overall, he won a batting title in 1949.

The greater acceptance of black players in the National League ended the dominance of the American as the stronger overall although the Yankees still kept winning. All of the early black major leaguers came from the Negro leagues and many became instant stars.

Of course, we all revered Jackie but the Dodgers had so many stars. My favorite was Roy Campanella, also a product of the Negro Leagues. Best catcher ever in the game until then. A winner of three MVP awards, a record at the time, in 1953 he set a major league record for home runs by a catcher and team record for rbi’s. I could never imagine why anyone would want to play his position but you had to love Campy!  

At the time, the three best center fielders in baseball played in New York; Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider. All dominant players, Duke might have been a bit behind the other two but he was my idol. The best hitter on a great hitting team, he hit over 40 home runs five straight years and was generally at or near the top in most offensive categories. And that was a position I could relate to, especially as I really got into playing approaching my teens.

The great Gil Hodges married a Brooklyn girl and settled into the borough full time, raising his kids on Bedford Avenue in Midwood. One of his sons attended Midwood High School with my younger sister. He’s also left us with a question that forever begs an answer, ”Why was one of the best fielding first basement in history and one of the best overall of his generation not in the Hall of Fame?” And this is the man who also managed the lowly Mets to a world championship in 1969! Criminal!!!

Who could ever forget the team captain and one of the best shortstops in the league, Pee Wee Reese? Known for his acceptance of Jackie Robinson, he was the heart of the team and the only one left from the pre-war NL championship team of 1941, which, unfortunately, also lost to the Yankees.

Probably the most underrated of the core players was Carl Furillo. A rifle arm in right field, lifetime .300 hitter, winner of a batting title in 1953, regularly knocking in 90+ runs with a couple of years over 100; how much might he be making today? After retirement from the game, he went to work in construction!

His first year Jackie Robinson played first base; Eddie Stanky being entrenched at second. Traded at the end of the year, Jackie moved over to his natural position. In 1953 however, a young kid came up and took it away. Jim Gilliam was the second baseman with whom I was most familiar while Jackie played mostly third base and left field in his later years. Jim ended up spending most of his career in the land of baseball heathens. The only picture I could find of him was wearing an LA cap…totally unacceptable! 

 Our ace through most of the ‘50’s was Don Newcombe, one of the best pitchers of his time…and a great batter, often used as a pinch hitter. Lights out against his everyday opponents in the National League, he had a flaw…and it was really big! He just couldn’t beat the Yankees. if only! Yet, we loved him…Newc was one of ours; one of the greats.

Several pitchers came and went throughout the years but the other mainstay was Carl Erskine, our regular number 2. Day in, day out, he gave us innings…and wins. Oisk set a record for strikeouts in a World Series game that stood for several years.

Relief pitching was very different then. The specialization that exists today didn’t at all. When your starter broke down or you needed a pinch hitter, you brought in the best pitcher not in the regular rotation. For us, it was Clem Labine. Even the best didn’t complete all their games so Clem got to pitch pretty often, at least for the time. He managed to get the job done most of the time and saw action as a spot starter as well.

There is one pitcher, an up and coming middle rotation type, who had his best years in the heathen playground on the other coast. Yet, he will forever remain in the hearts of every true Brooklynite. A monumental feat never before accomplished, a feat impossible to duplicate; on October 4, 1955 Johnny Podres won the only final game of a World Series for the Brooklyn Dodgers!

Betrayal

When I became conscious of the baseball world there were two distinct major leagues; each with eight teams, all of which had been in their home cities since 1903. Baseball was the national pastime yet, only ten cities were represented at the top level of the game; none further west than St. Louis nor further south than St. Louis and Washington. Reflecting the demographics of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, these were the population centers when professional baseball was organized.

Yes, the minor leagues spread throughout the nation and, before widespread media, everyone could go nuts over their hometown favorites. But the vast majority never got to see the fabled players whose names dominated sport pages and magazines.

With shifting populations and air travel growing rapidly, it was certainly time for a change. Not all cities with a team in each league could support both so, with miniscule attendance, the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953, the St. Louis Browns to Baltimore, becoming the Orioles, in 1954 and the Philadelphia Athletics to Kansas City in 1955. All played to near empty stadiums with season attendance hovering around 300,000 the last year in their original homes.

By 1957, jets were crossing the country and the lords of baseball were trying to figure out how to expand their geography. Ebbets was small, in need of rehabilitation with little space for the crowds increasingly arriving by car. Walter O’Malley, principal owner, eyed the riches out west. Robert Moses, with virtually dictatorial power over city planning, and he had differing proposals unacceptable to the other. Reviewing the plans, none made much sense…another borough, no realistic parking, remote from public transportation.

A trip to the west coast wasn’t feasible for a short series making it vital to have another team on the left coast. So, O’Malley convinced Horace Stoneham, owner of the once mighty Giants, to move to San Francisco while he would take the much more lucrative Los Angeles market. The Giants had fallen on hard times. The neighborhood around their home in the Polo Grounds had declined and the stadium itself was badly in need of replacement.

The fact is, consideration for the fans, as usual, was irrelevant. It was all about money. So, in 1958, baseball arrived on the west coast, ripping the hearts out of Dodger fans and leaving the largest city in the nation without a team in the National League. Although the Giants had been down, they still attracted more than double the number of fans than teams that had previously left home. And our beloved Dodgers still managed to bring in over a million to Ebbets Field in 1957; more than respectable.

The desertion left Brooklyn in a collective state of depression. And Walter O’Malley became one of the most heinous fiends to walk the planet.

Epilogue

So now, here we are, able to get around without our parents with no Ebbets field; no Dodgers. Well, all we could do was suck it in and forgive the Yankees for all the years of abuse they thrust upon us and go to Yankee Stadium. And so, we’d pack up all the food and drink we could carry and took the subway to the Bronx to Yankee Stadium, the opulent palace of baseball royalty.

In 1962, the Mets arrived with their sorry take on how the game was played. Incredibly feeble for many years, we experienced what the old Dodger fans must have felt in the days when they truly earned the name Dem Bums. But they were the heirs to our dear departed so we embraced them. And we got to go to the Polo Grounds with its bizarre layout, thus getting to all three legendary ballparks from the golden age of New York baseball.

I still root for the Mets and pull for the Yankees as well.  But watching the players on the field, although the game appears the same, it’s changed so much since the days of the Dodgers that played in that little ballpark in the middle of Brooklyn.

There were no fans more devoted than those in Brooklyn. The Dodgers can never be forgiven for their brutal betrayal.

9/2021

AT LAST!!! The best first baseman of the 1950’s makes it into the Hall of Fame. Correcting one of the great injustices in baseball, Gil Hodges is finally where has belonged for a long, long time!

7/2022