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BROOKLYN BASEBALL  "I listened to Armed Forces radio as the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the New York Yankees for the 1955 World Championship. The Brooklyn Dodgers? Is that the same team in LA? Well, that’s another story...." |
It was an unforgettable time of Brooklyn greatness
of TheColumnists.com
It is that glorious time of the year in the northeast,
gentle September winds, kids out of the way in school, vacation
bills finally paid off and baseball pennant races exploding across
the land.
Can the Red Sox threaten the Yankees? Is this the year of Reverse
the Curse? Can the Cubs sneak in after last fall’s foul
ball fiasco? Is Roger Clemens really immortal as he leads a moribund
Houston team? Are the Cardinals the Gashouse Gangsters of the
21st century?
Is a blowhard like George Steinbrenner worthy of another title
or can Anaheim make it again without any help from Azusa and
Cucamonga in Jack Benny’s memory?
Let me tell you how emotional this can all get.
Fifty years ago next fall, I was a GI in Japan. I listened to
Armed Forces radio as the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the New York
Yankees for the 1955 World Championship. The Brooklyn Dodgers?
Is that the same team in LA? Well, that’s another story.
Anyway, a bunch of us Brooklyn natives with long memories are
connecting and collecting the 11 survivors of that 1955 Brooklyn
title for a whiz-bang blast of a party on October 4, 2005, back
in Brooklyn.
Led by the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame boss, Marty Adler, and
lifelong Brooklyn fan Constance D’Agosta, those aging Dodgers
of half a century ago are being asked to return to Brooklyn next
year for a first hurrah.
They never collected together for a feast like this and the memories
are too sweet to miss the golden anniversary opportunity for
a rejoining of these epic heroes of our youth.
The man who made it all happen was a left handed pitcher named
Johnny Podres. He won two games in that World Series, an 8-3
win in the third game when the Dodgers were down to the Yankees
two games to none and that vital seventh game, 2-0, with the
help of a great catch by a little Cuban named Sandy Amoros
Mickey Mantle was injured and couldn’t start the final game.
So the committee putting this all together decided the irony
of the official announcement would work if it was done in New
York in Mickey Mantle’s restaurant on Central Park South.
Worn, wonderful and witty as ever, Podres stood before the press
and restaurant crowd the other day and talked of the joys of
that triumph half a century ago.
“If I did it over the St. Louis Browns nobody would be here
today,” he said. “Right? It only got big because it
was the Yankees.”
Well, it was Brooklyn’s only title but it was the hated
Yankees the Brooklyn Dodgers had to beat before all was right
with the world.
It is always the minutia of baseball that makes it special. Podres,
72 now, recited it all as if it happened a few minutes ago.
“There was one more out to get. We’re up 2-0 in the
ninth and Elston Howard is the batter. I just looked at Pee Wee
(Reese) and realized he had been losing Series games to the Yankees
since 1941. I wanted to get the last ball to him. I threw a changeup,
a perfect ground ball pitch, and Howard hit a ground ball to
Pee Wee. He threw it to Gil Hodges at first for the last out
and I jumped three feet in the air.”
The borough exploded in joy, unmatched in five decades. They
partied in Anaheim when the Angels won, in Phoenix when the Diamondbacks
won and in Florida when the Marlins won. It never reached the
crescendo of the Brooklyn public partying almost 50 years ago
when the Dodgers won.
There was no public joy as rowdy and rakish as the collective
experience on that October evening in 1955.
“I remember when I walked out of the clubhouse after the
game,” recalled Podres,
“and there were 50 cops lined up to guard me as I walked
to the team bus. I felt like I was the President of the United
States.”
The honored 11--Podres, Don Zimmer, George Shuba, Don Newcombe,
Billy Loes, Carl Erskine, Roger Craig, Clem Labine, Ed Roebuck
and two Hall of Famers, Duke Snider and Sandy Koufax--will be
the cherished guests of the Borough of Brooklyn next year.
There will be, of course, as in any event 50 years later, missing
men. That list will include Jackie Robinson, Reese, Hodges, Roy
Campanella, Carl Furillo and Don Hoak.
Because of that 1955 victory, their names and their deeds last
in Brooklyn memories forever.
“That really wasn’t the best Dodger team ever,”
said Podres. “The 1953 team really was better. I was a rookie
that year and I could really appreciate that talent.”
Talent wasn’t what the 1955 triumph was all about. It was
the unique event of a Brooklyn championship, just in time, just
two years before the team abandoned the town and moved to La
La Land.
The Dodgers have won more pennants and more World Series titles
since. Nobody in Brooklyn cares.
We had one championship, one team, one title and that was given
to us by the gracious gods of 1955, led by Podres and his teammates.
Is this all too syrupy for the folks in Anaheim, Azusa and Chicago,
the faithful curse busters in Boston or the party planners under
the arch in St. Louis?
No one in Brooklyn cares. We had 1955. No one can take it from
us. Just ask a Brooklyn kid if it means that much almost half
a century later. You bet it does.
©2004 by Maury Allen.
The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. The illustration
uses elements from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco
Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA.
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