THE GREATEST BASEBALL PLAYER

Last week’s All Star game was a spectacular celebration of baseball with the 49 Hall of Famers on the field before the game. Held at Yankee Stadium – the 85-year old “baseball cathedral” in its last season – it was also a celebration of Yankee greatness.

But what came to mind, however, was another ball park, a little, dinky park, hard to get to, hardly fitting between streets and avenues in the middle of a borough some people were ashamed to call home. It didn’t even merit the name “stadium”. It was called Ebbetts Field. And the men who played there were called “bums.” Not meant to insult them, but to describe them. Everyone knew that when the sport sections of the New York newspapers used the word “bums” they were referring to the Brooklyn Dodgers.

I never knew why my father was a Brooklyn Dodger fan. He was anything but a masochist. We lived in the Bronx, a sea, of course, of New York Yankee fanaticism. And now and then, not often, he would take me in that endless subway train ride, then that long, long walk, to Ebbett Field, where, except in rare occasions, we saw why they were called “bums.”

So I was a Dodger fan in the early 40’s and the sea of Yankee arrogance was hard to take. I could not deny, of course, that the Yankee won and seemed to be every year in the World Series. But it occurred to me to argue that the real reason was that the Yankees were simply “lucky.” And to prove it I would cut newspaper stories showing how the Yankees won with bloop singles and ground balls with “eyes” that got through the infield, while the losing team tore the ball with line drives hit right at the fielders, or just inches foul.

Then, after the war, something happened.

It is hard today to imagine how big this was. At the start of the 1947 season, at first base in a Brooklyn Dodger uniform, there was a black man. Today it will seem an exaggeration to compare this to an African-American running for President. But it was big. Jackie Robinson was the first black man permitted to play in the Mayor Leagues in the 20th Century.

Everyone today recognizes that Robinson is one of the great figures in American history. In 1997, the 50th anniversary of that April afternoon in 1947, President Bill Clinton on down led celebrations of that historic event in every ball park.

But for this lonely Dodger fan beleaguered in the Bronx, Robinson did something else. No one could know it that afternoon, but the moment Robinson began to play, the Dodgers were no longer “bums.” By the end of that year, everyone knew it. The Dodgers won the pennant. And Robinson had survived the racism, the death threats and the indignity of racial segregation in some of the cities where he played, to become the first ever Rookie of the Year.

But there was still the Yankees. If it was true, as I passionately argued, that the Yankees were “lucky”, the Dodgers seemed cursed. Who could forget the 1941 World Series when the Dodgers seemed to have won game four as the last Yankee batter struck out, but the ball went through the Dodger catcher? The Yankees went on to win the game and the series.
#Now, after Jackie Robinson, the Dodgers became an overpowering team that won the pennant in 1949, 1952, 1953. But they lost the series each time to the Yankees. Again in 1955 they seemed destined to lose still again, losing the first two games. Then a pitcher named Jonny Podres somehow handcuffed the Yankees twice. The Dodgers finally won a series. The New York Daily News front page was a giant caricature of a bum with a wide toothless smile. It was now official: bums no more.

Of the millions of words written about the Brooklyn Dodgers through the years, the word that keeps popping up is “heartbreak.” In 1956, the Dodgers again played the Yankees in the series and again lost. But the biggest heartbreak was about to happen. The Dodgers had become too big for the little, dinky ball park, but the team owners got into a nasty fight with the City of New York over a new stadium.

In dramatic contrast to the spectacular All Star game, the Hall of Fame celebration at Yankee Stadium this past Tuesday, on September 24, 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers played their last game in Ebbetts Field. There are today old Dodger fans – Larry King confessed to being one not too long ago – who still cannot believe that it happened. The fans lost their team – the Brooklyn Dodgers ceased to exist, and a few years later, so did Ebbetts Field.

Decades later I would still argue that the Yankees were indeed “lucky” – I had after all all those newspaper clippings – but I now know that “luck”, chance, is simply an integral part of the game, more so, I think, than football or basketball. Listen to any baseball player and more often than not he will use the world “luck.

After the All Star game, the front page of the same New York Daily News was a huge close up photo of “King George:” the aging, frail Yankee owner, George Steinbrenner. No use denying that the Yankees have been baseball’s royalty with great players from Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig to Joe DiMaggio.

But the greatest player was not a Yankee. Defining “great” as we do in science, politics, art – that is, in terms of positive impact – the greatest player in baseball history was Jackie Robinson. No baseball player had a greater positive impact on the game, on the nation, on the “bums.” That is one thing no one can take away from a Brooklyn Dodger fan.