Dodgers and Mets. My Childhood/My Career

Carl Erskine knew glory in Brooklyn. I have a replica cap at home, and wear it proudly. Now Shohei Ohtani wears the same colors and the same No. 17.

It used to be so simple. Hate Walter O’Malley for moving the Dodgers from Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, to Chavez Ravine.
That’s how it was when I was 19 and the Dodgers went away. My friend Steve Jacobson, the great sports columnist at Newsday, recalls being on army duty in the U.S. and seeing a New York paper – Dodgers to LA -- bad news on the doorstep.
Steve remembers throwing some of his gear around the bunk – no sergeants lurking, apparently.
This angst was followed by a generation of New York sportswriters ---Dick Young of the Daily News, the giant who covered the Bums, who whipped up communal hatred.

But there is another way to look at it: without the O’Malley family packing Reese and Hodges and Furillo and Snider and Erskine and Newcombe and that young Koufax prospect – plus, without the Stonehams taking Willie away -- there would not have been this gaping hole in life in New York, to be filled by the Mets. 

It all comes back to me this week, with the Dodgers of Los Angeles playing the Mets of New York for the National League pennant.
I cannot hate the Dodgers. In fact, just seeing their home-white uniforms with the blue letters and numbers gives me a swell of nostalgia.
​
The Dodgers opened the best-of-seven series Sunday evening in the hillside holler where Mexican immigrants used to camp. The Dodgers won, 9-0,  but are dangerously low on healthy starters, and the Mets tied up the series Sunday with a 7-3 victory.
My  rooting for the Mets may yet have some success.
I can root but I cannot hate,
I came to realize life was complex was in the mid-60s, on my first trip to Dodger Stadium as a sports reporter for Newsday. I settled into the pressbox and looked at the purple mountains in the north, and the pastel colors of the ballpark nestled in the hillside.  
A sedate lady played the organ – songs with cowboy themes and Latino themes, of this brave new world.

It was downright pretty, and I smiled and thought to myself, “Of course. Who wouldn’t? Plus, the bumblers in New York had blown every opportunity to pay to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn or Queens. Of course, the Dodgers and Giants moved west. And of course, they took Roger Kahn’s “Boys of Summer,” however wobbly and grizzled, out to California.

Things changed. This is not your grandfather’s Dodger Stadium. I was reminded of this Sunday evening as I did the New York Smart Thing and watched the game on mute and listened to Howie Rose broadcast the game on AM radio. (Network baseball is to be avoided, even if the action comes onto the tube a full 15 seconds after it emerges from the radio. To paraphrase Casey Stengel, “Why wouldn’t ya wanna listen to a guy who’s been following the Mets since their earliest years?”)

Howie Rose – who is having one of his great seasons, describing the glories of Lindor  and Co. -- waxed nostalgic about the sweet feel to Chavez when he was a lad, traveling with the Mets, and how nice the organ music was, and how invasive the current system is. Why, he said, you (in the East) can probably hear the blare coming out of the speakers around the ballpark.

Then Howie launched into a sweet monologue about his earliest years traveling with the Mets, and how the traveling band of NYNY broadcasters and writers paid homage to the Fordham kid, who had become a suave institution in the broadcast booth.
Howie recalled how Vin Scully (who passed two years ago) would greet callers in his booth, pre-game, and how he would inquire about life back East:  how’s the family, how’s so-and-so?
Scully knew the name of the cleaning lady who worked the broadcast booth, Howie continued. Knew the name of her husband. Knew the names of her kids. Scully was a mensch, Howie suggested.

A lot of people moved west with the Dodgers. I have another reason to care about that team. In 1980, I signed on to write a book with Bob Welch, the fireballing right-hander who had saved his life by going to alcoholism rehab the previous winter.
Via my association with Bob Welch, I got to know the Dodgers of the early 80s – Al Campanis, the general manager, Tom Lasorda, the manager, a concessions manager, a road secretary, a trainer, a clubhouse man, Dusty Baker, Rick Sutcliffe, Steve Garvey, Rick Hunnicut, the pitcher with a thumb tack in his glove. And the great Don Newcombe, who as a Dodger official, had sobered up on his own, years earlier, and later hawked Bob Welch into going to rehab.

So there is a direct line from the Dodgers I saw in my first game in Ebbets Field in 1946 – when my sportswriter father took me to the pressbox, pre-game.
Many Dodger numbers have been retired or reserved, out of respect. But other current numbers jar me into nostalgia.

For example, Kiké Hernández, who hit a home run Sunday evening, wears No. 8. That reminds me of two earlier Dodgers – George Shuba, one of Kahn’s “Boys of Summer,” and later a pal of mine, plus John Roseboro, the stalwart catcher in Brooklyn and LA, who got hit on the head with a bat by Juan Marichal in that epic 1965 brawl.
Then there is No. 17, currently worn by Shohei Ohtani, the Japanese one-of-a-kind unicorn, who hits and pitches in Ruthian fashion, and wears No, 17, once graced by Carl Erskine, the stylish pitcher who died at 97 this past April.   

The seasons and the generations overlap in Chavez Ravine. I am long retired, allowed to root. I hope  Sugar Diaz will  get sorted out, and Pete Alonso will figure out the mysteries of the slider. But I grew up watching the Brooklyn Dodgers...and that never goes away. 
                                ***
(The ripoff at Chavez Ravine. Ry Cooder put a melancholy touch on it:)