Introduction (Or Why I Wrote This Book)

I love baseball the way I love a double vanilla ice cream cone. This affection began very early in my life. Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, was the site of the first Major League game that I ever witnessed live.

It was June 1937. I was all of five years old and taken by my mother to the famed ballpark at Bedford Avenue and Sullivan Place (now occupied by a middle-income housing development).

Brooklyn was playing Pittsburgh that afternoon: an ordinary game, which seemed extraordinary to me. For one thing, I was fascinated by the ballpark’s architecture. We entered through a majestic rotunda and then made our way to the left field grand-stands by way of sloping concrete ramps.

From our seats we looked out on to a cozy diamond and straight ahead to the impressive right field scoreboard. I don’t remember who won the game, but I do recall that Leo Durocher was at shortstop for Brooklyn—don’t ask why I remember that—and the hot dogs were broiled, something I found appalling at the time and still do.

From that point on, baseball became as much a part of my life as Public School 54, Tom Mix on the radio, and building model airplanes.

By 1939, I had become a baseball picture card fanatic. Off-hours were spent at Al and Shirley’s candy store on the corner of Nostrand and Vernon Avenues. When the boys weren’t sipping Frank’s (12 ounce) Orange Soda, we were plopping down our pennies to purchase baseball bubble gum picture cards.

We paid no mind to the Fleer’s bubble-gum—tossed it away, actually—but plucked the coveted cards. My favorites hardly were legends. I liked Ernest Gordon (Babe) Phelps, the Dodgers catcher, and Stanley (Frenchy) Bordegaray best.

After buying the cards, our standard sidewalk game consisted of card-flipping. First, one of the lads would flip his card on the sidewalk. Then, his opponent would do likewise. If they matched, the second flipper “won” the other’s card. Otherwise, the vice was versa.

I diligently followed the Major League races via my father’s favorite newspaper, (the World-Telegram), which was the Scripps-Howard flagship evening broad sheet. Its baseball writers included Dan Daniel and Bill Roeder, while Willard Mullin penned the best sports cartoons ever drawn. What I didn’t learn about baseball from the papers, I got on the radio via the voice of the Dodgers, Rod Barber, who was still considered the best in the business.

By 1940, the Dodgers had been built into a National League pennant contender and Brooklyn had become—or so we thought—the baseball mecca of the whole, wide world. First baseman Dolph Camilli was poling home runs over the right field fence and onto Bedford Avenue, Whitlow Wyatt starred on the mound, and a Southerner named Fred (Dixie) Walker had emerged as what Brooklynites called “The People’s Cherce.”

We didn’t win the pennant in 1940, but a year later manager Leo (The Lip) Durocher piloted the Brooks—also called “The Flock”—to the borough’s first pennant since 1920.

Alas, tragedy struck in the World Series. Trailing two games to one to the hated Yankees, the Brooks appeared to have the game wrapped up, leading with two out in the Bombers’ ninth. Subsequently, reliever Hugh Casey threw a harsh curve—some say a spitball—to Tommy Henrich for the third strike and, seemingly, a Dodgers win.

But the ball eluded catcher Mickey Owen, Henrich raced safely to first, and from there the Dodgers completely collapsed. The Yankees rallied for the win and took the Series in five games. For Brooklynites such as myself, it was a borough-wide tragedy that never will be forgotten.

The Casey-Owen blunder left a scar on my baseball-rooting conscience all winter, and by spring training, I had made what was then a monumental decision. I decided to switch my rooting allegiance to the St. Louis Cardinals.

This was easy. They had a Stan in the lineup—Stan (The Man) Musial—and he wore my favorite number, six. I also loved the logo, featuring a cardinal sitting on a baseball bat.

The year 1942 was the best time to become a Cardinals fan. With a lineup sprinkling with such hustlers as Enos (Country) Slaughter, Marty (Slats) Marion, and George (Whitey) Kurowski, the Cards became known as “The St. Louis Swifties.”

And what a pitching staff they had. Morton Cooper, Howie Pollet, Johnny Beazley, and Max Lanier combined to give manager Billy Southworth the best mound unit in baseball.

These elements blended to produce what Mister Baseball, Connie Mack, called “the greatest team in baseball history.”

Naturally, I ate this all up as the Cards rampaged through the homestretch to beat Brooklyn and win the pennant.

During that run to the flag, I enjoyed one game more than any. It took place during the summer of 1942, at Ebbets Field with my best friend, Howie Sparer, who was then a Dodgers fan.

A Cardinals-Dodgers game was always special in those days, but this one had an extra added quality to it because the best pitcher on each team—Whitlow Wyatt of Brooklyn and Morton Cooper of St. Louis—was facing the other.

That, however, was secondary to our capturing our seats and then my opening my Lone Ranger lunchbox and, most importantly, its Thermos bottle. I gingerly flipped the clamp on the outside, lifted the lunchbox cover, and then grasped the Thermos.

Finally, I heaved a sigh of relief as the cork came off. Inside, I could see the amber, sparkling cola which I eagerly poured into the cup. It was the best Pepsi-Cola I had ever tasted!

The same could be said of the ball game. The Cards and Dodgers were tied 0–0 going into the top of the ninth, when St. Louis third baseman Whitey Kurowski, one of my favorites, belted a Wyatt fastball into the lower left field grandstand. Cooper shut out the Brooks in the bottom of the ninth and it ended 1–0 for the Cardinals. My team had won, Howie’s had lost, and the whole package—soda, weather, result—made it one of the best baseball days of my life.

When the Dodgers were on the road, my dad would take me to a different kind of ballpark with different kinds of players.

The baseball stadium in question was called Dexter Park, which sat on the border of Brooklyn and Queens. For decades, Dexter Park was regarded as one of the finest minor league fields in the country.

Its home team—the Bushwicks—was regarded as “semipro,” but in reality the club was on a par with the Triple-A International League teams. Managed by Joe Press, the Bushwicks played the best of the African American teams of the 1930s and 1940s.

This was prior to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Brooklyn and that meant some of the finest players in baseball appeared on the rosters of the Negro National League and Negro American League teams that played the Bushwicks at Dexter Park.

On any given Sunday, I had the pleasure of watching such legendary African American stars as Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, and Josh Gibson going up against the Bushwicks, who always featured a couple of former Major Leaguers on their roster.

The ambience at Dexter Park had the relaxed, homey feeling of a Minor League game, but the competition was keen and for half a buck, who could complain?

Once the Dodgers returned from their road trips, we would bid au revoir to Dexter Field action and again focus on the Major League races.

My affection for the Cardinals was momentarily diluted during the 1944 World Series. In addition to St. Louis’ National League team, what’s known as “The Mound City” also had an American League club, the Browns. And I loved them equally as well in 1944 when they won their one and only pennant and faced the Cards in the World Series. Since I always rooted for underdogs, I chose to back the Brownies, who, alas, had a two-games-to-one lead, but blew it and went down in six.

Once the war ended, I continued supporting the Cardinals and enjoyed one more unforgettable day—a doubleheader at the Polo Grounds in 1946, Cards vs. Giants. By this time, St. Louis had acquired a handsome first baseman named Vernal (Nippy) Jones.

On that Sunday afternoon in Harlem, Jones had the doubleheader of his life. He went something like five-for-five in the opener and five-for-six in the second game. The Cards won both, but that wasn’t the whole story. After the game, fans were allowed to walk past the outfield and onto the street behind the clubhouse.

Someone tipped me off that if I hung around long enough, I would see the players come down the steps from their dressing room and that I could get autographs. That suited me fine because I always remembered the first Cards autograph I got outside Ebbets Field a few years earlier. The signature belonged to one of my favorite pitchers, Harry (The Cat) Brecheen, and the other thing I recalled about The Cat was that he was wearing the pointiest shoes I had ever seen: beautiful brown Florsheims.

I soon realized that my tipster was right. One by one the Cardinals stepped out of the clubhouse door and down the metal steps to the sidewalk. By rights I should have pursued the autograph of Stan (The Man) Musial, my favorite Cardinal, but instead, I sought Nippy Jones. And, sure enough, his black curly hair still sparkling in the sunlight from his shower, Jones walked down and graciously signed my book. That autograph made my one-hour subway ride home one of the most pleasant of my young life.

Much as I adored the Cardinals, my latent affection for our home team, the Dodgers, returned by 1950 and I found myself rooting for Brooklyn once again. These were the golden years of what author Roger Kahn later called “The Boys of Summer” from his book of the same name.

It was a glorious collection of athletes, one which inspired my pal and Dodgers press agent Irving Rudd to note, “There’s not a rotter in the lot.”

Trouble is, they had troubles. The Giants outed them in a memorable Bobby Thomson “Shot Heard Round The World” 1951 playoff, and when Brooklyn finally did win the pennant, the Yankees annually knocked them out in the World Series.

Revenge finally came in 1955, my first year as a full-time sportswriter for Hearst’s evening daily, the New York Journal-American. That was the year for the Brooks.

After losing the first pair of games in the Bronx, the Dodgers returned home for Game Three, one of the most exciting I ever attended. Led by Duke Snider’s big bat, Dem Bums routed the Bombers, and we had a series. It went to seven games, and in the finale Johnny Podres from Upstate New York pitched a beauty and Sandy Amoros made one of the best catches in Series annals and, for a change, we Brooklyn fans did not have to “wait ‘til next year.”

My last memorable thrill as a newsman emerged in 1969, when I covered the New York Mets for the late lamented Suffolk Sun, a Cowles daily with great promise that never was fully realized.

Not that I’m a baseball maven, but down the homestretch I sensed something special about the Mets’ karma. If there was a break to be had, it would break in the Mets’ favor and it eventually carried into the World Series triumph—first for the franchise—at Shea Stadium.

I had the good fortune to be just a few feet away from winning manager—ex-Brooklyn first base hero—Gil Hodges when President Richard Nixon phoned him from the White House for congratulations. For me—newsman and baseball fan—that was as good as it could get.

In my later years—starting in 1998, to be exact—I unswervingly switched my allegiance to the Oakland Athletics. What arrested my attention was the adroit manner in which general manager Billy Beane managed to produce competitive teams despite an extraordinarily law budget.

I also found favorite players, such as pitcher Gil Heredia, whom I had the pleasure of interviewing in the A’s’ dugout pre-game at Yankee Stadium. My latest Oakland hero is Coco Crisp in the outfield. All of which must tell you by now the most obvious thing of all. That is, my love of baseball, which began as a kid growing up in Brooklyn, has remained with me to this day.

Adoring our national pastime with a passion made it pretty darn easy for me to write this book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I had fun writing it.