Anybody out there remember the Brooklyn Dodgers? As a kid, they played a major part in my life. When baseball season began, I’d race home after school to get the score from my mom who had orders to listen to the game and report back to my sister and me. Not that mom was a fan or even understood baseball. She’d say stuff like, “Everything was fine until the last round when one of the players got hit in the head with a ball and the radio blew a tube.”
Back then, I lived, ate and breathed baseball. My old elementary school, P.S. 219, had two class trips a year – one to the Brooklyn Museem, the other to Ebbetts Field, home of the Dodgers. In sixth grade I watched history being made when outfielder Pete Reiser smashed into the wall for the last time. Well, maybe it wasn’t the last time, but it makes me, like, more important to say it, ya know?
In those days, there were no million dollar baseball players. No prima donnas. (There was Louis Prima, but he didn’t play ball, at least not for a living.) Our Dodgers were real people, not a bunch of college boys out for the big bucks. Walk down Flatbush Avenue on a hot summer day, and there’d be Pee Wee Reese heading into Garfield’s Cafeteria or Dixie Walker downing an egg cream at the soda shop. Dolph Camilli used to stroll them streets. Hey, Cookie! (Lavagetto) for all you non-Brooklynites. Remember Whitlow Wyatt? Probably not. They had names in those days. They were raw, rough and ready — and we loved `em for it.
Case in point: One August day when I’m about 10 years old, my big sister Ruthie and me are on the subway after seeing the matinee at the Brooklyn Fox TheeAter. The Dodgers are playing an important game against the Cardinals (boo!) and we can’t wait to get home and hear it on the radio. When we reach Nostrand Avenue, I look up and I see Eddie Stanky, the Brooklyn shortstop. I’m thinkin’, what’s he doin’ here? He’s supposed to be in the ball park. I keep starin’ at him, but I don’t say nothin’ cause Eddie obviously don’t wanna be bothered. When we get back to 94th Street we turn on the Philco and sure enough, we hear that Stanky got mad and walked off the field. Can you imagine A-Rod or Jose Reyes riding the subway? Nah.
A few years later, Jackie Robinson moves into the neighborhood. The first black player in baseball — a guy who’s making history — and he still has time to talk to a coupla kids from “Tilden Topics,” the high school newspaper. I’m not one of them. I’m too young and besides I’m a girl. Just like now. Anyways, the guys tell us that Jackie and his wife were really nice and gave them milk and cookies. Wouldja believe? Bet they’re telling that story to their grandkids now.
As for me, big changes were ahead. I graduated from high school, went to college and dropped the Brooklyn accent. Sort of. (Dzon’t dzentalize. Say “oh” not “aieow.”) But the Dodgers remained a constant in my life. My husband-to-be and I dated regularly at Ebbetts Field. We were married only a short time when the unthinkable happened. Franchise owner Walter O’Malley announced he was taking the Dodgers to Los Angeles. It was ovah. (I mean overr.)
I transferred my allegiance to the New York Mets, but it was never the same. I often look back on those beloved memories –before Rupert Murdoch bought the team. I reflect on my Brooklyn childhood, the trips to Ebbetts Field, the blind loyalty to Dem Bums and those happy days when my biggest worry was if my Dodgers would win the pennant.
Oh well, Canasta anyone?
Copyright 2016 Harriet Posnak Lesser
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Harriet Posnak Lesser is an award-winning journalist and social satirist whose articles have appeared in Long Island’s The South Shore Record and Nassau Herald, The New York Times, Cracked Magazine and others.