Frustrations of a Brooklyn Dodger fan
My how time flies. As a boy I suffered the immense torture of being a Brooklyn Dodger baseball fan. Ah sweet innocence. Red Barber comes to Brooklyn as the Dodger radio announcer and Leo Durocher takes over as Dodger manager. Those two developments in late 1938 turned me from an innocent baseball fan into a fervent, obsessed Dodger junkie. And for the most part a disappointed kid. From 1939 to 1957 I lived and died with the Dodgers. Disappointment after disappointment filled those years. Only once did the team thrill me and win a world series - 1956 - and before I could even savor our monumental victory over the hated Yankess the team left me in the lurch and fled to Los Angeles.
To recap for my readers the Dodgers won the pennant in 1941 only to lose to the Yankees in great part due to catcher Mickey Owen's error on a third strike to Tommy Henrich.In 1942 ahead of St.Louis in the race for the pennant their all star center fielder, Pete Reiser,crashed into the concrete wall in St. Louis sustained a fractured skull and was never the same. The Dodgers lost the pennant by three games.In 1946, the first full season after the war they again lost to the Cardinals(beginning to sound familiar?) in a playoff game no less. It was always the Cardinals who in those days made the team look like bums. In addition to the great Stan Musial who hit homers over the right field wall at Ebbets Field the Cards had a left handed pitcher name of Max Lanier who only had to throw his glove on the mound at which the Dodgers rolled over and died. . In 1947 they won the pennant again only to lose to (guess) the dreaded Yankees. In 1949 they lost the series to (guess again) the Yankees. In that series Gil Hodges, their star first baseman went completely hitless. All these years were enough to drive an ordinary fan insane. I was not an ordinary fan - I was a fanatic.
Let's move on to 1950, the year of the Philadelphia Phillies "Whiz Kids" who beat the Dodgers on the last day of the season no less. But the cruelest blow of all those many years was 1951, like Pearl Harbor in baseball parlance was the year of infamy for the Dodgers and their fandom. The team was ahead of the New York Giants by 13 and a half games by mid August - a runaway - it was so so easy. All of a sudden the Giants caught fire, the Dodgers stumbled and the Giants caught them at the very end of the season forcing a three game playoff series. That was the year of the Bobbie Thomson home run which broke thousands of hearts completely, including mine and 1953 saw another series loss to the Yankeees. Incredible isn't it that one team for all those years should have had a jinx on another team? So it was. In 1955 again against the Yankees I found myself at Yankee Stadium for the fourth game of the world series and, lo and behold, Don Larsen of the Yanks pitches the first perfect game in world series history. Talk about rubbing salt in the wound. But I guess every dog has his day and in 1956 the Brooklyns actually beat the Yankees in the world series and did it again in 1963.The 1963 win didn't really count because the Dodgers were already in Los Angeles. So all those years passed when I was young rooting for a team that never won the big one except for one year. Strange to say, in spite of my youthful disappointments my love of baseball has endured to this day. Except I don't love the Dodgers anymore.
