Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir (27 page)

Roy’s death sealed Elaine’s unhappiness and brought an end to our hopes for enjoying our last summer together. I wanted her to share my grief over our imminent separation, but instead she looked forward to the move, comforted, she told me, by the idea that in a new place she would have “a chance to become another person.” Her enthusiasm for departing made it difficult for me to tell her how terrible I felt. As the weeks went by, we were unable to talk about anything that mattered, and when the moving van finally arrived, it was almost a relief. I watched from my house as two burly men carried an endless stream of boxes, books, rolled rugs, and furniture out of the house. When the truck was loaded, we said goodbye in an odd, remote, dreamlike way. The Friedles got into their car and drove away. Four decades would pass before I saw Elaine again.

A new family moved into the Friedles’ house next door, but I have absolutely no memory of them or of any of the children they might have had. Nor do I remember the people who moved into the Greenes’ house across the street. As people left and time passed, I could still look out at the same houses, skirted by their tiny, neat, green lawns with the same flowering shrubs. It all looked the same. But it had all changed. Images of the days when our block was an extended family rose in my imagination: the Sunday barbecues, our excited gatherings in the early days of television, reading with Elaine under the maple tree, and the marathon games of hide-and-seek. Summer had always been my favorite season. Now I couldn’t wait for the opening of high school.

A
LTHOUGH THE
D
ODGERS
won the pennant in 1956, it was an uneasy and disquieting season. Uncertainty about the
team’s future beclouded the summer days, diminishing pleasure in the season at hand. The previous August, in the midst of Brooklyn’s triumphant ride to the World Series, Dodger owner Walter O’Malley had sent shock waves through the city with his announcement that the National League had granted permission for the Dodgers to play seven or eight “home” games in Jersey City, New Jersey. The announcement was considered a first step in O’Malley’s campaign to find a new stadium for the Dodgers. Each year, despite one successful season after another, attendance at Ebbets Field had continued to slide.

News of Jackie Robinson’s retirement in January 1957 left me feeling empty. His career had been my childhood.

Critics complained that Ebbets Field was too old and too cramped, situated in a neighborhood that was rapidly deteriorating as more and more middle-class families moved to the suburbs, leaving behind poorer blacks and Puerto Ricans. It was said that the new suburbanites were finding it more comfortable to watch the game on television than to venture into the city at night, and that no ballpark could survive with space for only seven hundred cars. I hated to hear talk about the deficiencies of Ebbets Field. I loved the old ballpark and couldn’t imagine the Dodgers in any other place.

In the middle of May, 1956, I awoke to the stunning announcement that our nemesis, the feared and hated Sal Maglie, had been acquired by the Dodgers. Who could have imagined that the scowling Number 35, whose brush-back curve year after year had sent Dodger batters sprawling, would end up in a Dodger uniform? “I’ve no grudge if he has some mileage left in his arm,” said my father, chuckling. “Well, I won’t root for him,” my mother said. “How many times has he tried to bean poor Furillo, Robinson, and Campanella?” Columnist Jimmy Cannon spoke for many Dodger fans when he wrote that life would hold no more surprises for him now that Maglie was coming to Brooklyn. It was as if “the Daughters of the Confederacy are building a monument to General Grant in Richmond.”

Before the season was done, respect for Maglie’s contributions silenced much of the initial opposition to the trade. He helped the Dodgers win the ’56 pennant and
performed yeoman duty in the World Series, which the Yankees won 4-3. He went the distance for the win in Game One and gave up only two runs and five hits in Game Five, where he had the misfortune to come up against Yankee pitcher Don Larsen’s perfect game. I was grateful for the victories, but I could never bring myself to think of Maglie as one of us. Every time I saw Campanella walk out to the mound with his arm on Maglie’s shoulder, I shuddered, unable to erase the image of Campy crumpled at home plate after one of Maglie’s bean balls.

The idea of Maglie as a Dodger was bad enough; the concept of Jackie Robinson as a Giant was unthinkable. Yet, on December 13, 1956, Brooklyn announced that Jackie Robinson had been traded to the Giants for pitcher Dick Littlefield, a journeyman whose continual moves from one team to another presaged the modern era. Robinson, seemingly stunned, asked the Giants for a few days to think things over. “After you’ve reached your peak,” Robinson said, “there’s no sentiment in baseball. You start slipping and pretty soon, they’re moving you around like a used car. You have no control over what happens to you.”

News of the trade left me feeling saddened and empty. Jackie Robinson had entered the majors two years before I had learned how to score. His career had been my childhood. Without him I would never have cared for the Dodgers in the same way. I was not surprised when Robinson announced he would retire a Dodger rather than report to the Giants. I knew he would never wear a Giant uniform.

The loss of Robinson seemed to accelerate the talk of moving, as if the central mast of the big top was gone, and it was time to strike the entire tent and move on. The architect Buckminster Fuller produced a design for a bizarre
domed ballpark. O’Malley floated a plan to construct a new stadium on a large parcel of slum land at the junction of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. It was an ideal location, eliminating the need for parking since it stood at the terminus of the Long Island Railroad and the meeting place for two subway lines. But the controversial plan required the support of city officials to condemn the slum, compensate property owners, and sell the land to O’Malley, something no one in a position of authority was willing to do. In the meantime, Robert Moses developed his own plan for a multipurpose stadium in Flushing, Long Island, that would accommodate thousands of cars.

In retrospect, it can now be seen that baseball was changing. After fifty years of stability, during which fans could depend on seeing the same teams in the same cities, three major-league franchises, one after another, picked up and moved elsewhere, abandoning their fans in the hopes of securing increased revenues. The Braves of Boston were the first to go, moving in 1953 to Milwaukee. The following year, the St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles, and the year after that the Athletics of Philadelphia became the Kansas City Athletics. Though each owner was able to justify his move on economic grounds, the transactions signaled the ever-increasing intrusions of business considerations into the national pastime.

In 1957, the auguries of Brooklyn’s betrayal began to multiply. For the first time we heard that O’Malley might actually leave New York for Los Angeles. We learned that Baseball Commissioner Warren Giles had told O’Malley that he could not move to California unless another team went with him in order to make the long trip to the West Coast more economical for the rest of the league. O’Malley, it was reported, had begun talking with Horace Stoneham,
owner of the Giants, about moving his team to San Francisco. Every day, a new piece was added to the dismal puzzle.

That summer, I joined thousands of fans signing petitions imploring O’Malley, city officials, and anyone who might help to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn. I attended a clamorous “Keep the Dodgers” rally in the city. And I wrote a long, personal letter to O’Malley, begging him to consider what the move would do to the community and all the fans. On more than one occasion, I daydreamed of going to O’Malley’s office to make the case for Brooklyn. I pictured a brown velvet couch in the middle of the room with its back to the drapes, two leather chairs encircling a small table, the floor covered with a large patterned rug. O’Malley was seated behind a cluttered desk, his thick eyebrows casting a diabolical shadow on his florid face. I was wearing my favorite dress, a black-and-brown-striped sheath, with black stockings and black high heels that gave me an extra three inches in height. He did not rise when I entered, but as I started to talk, his face softened, and when I finished my monologue, a perfect blend of logic and emotion, he threw his arms around me and promised to stay at Ebbets Field. I had saved the Dodgers for Brooklyn!

It was, of course, only a fantasy. No flow of petitions, no appeal to loyalty or tradition could stop O’Malley once it became clear that Los Angeles was prepared to give him three hundred acres of prime land and five million city dollars to create new roads and improve access to the site. On August 19, 1957, Horace Stoneham announced that the Giants were moving to San Francisco at the end of the 1957 season. “We’re sorry to disappoint the kids of New York,” Stoneham said, “but we didn’t see many of their parents out there at the Polo Grounds in recent years.” Attendance at the Polo Grounds had been falling steadily each year.
Indeed, without the eleven home games against the Dodgers, which accounted for nearly one-third of the box-office receipts for the entire year, the Giants could not possibly survive. The two teams were inextricably linked. On the day Stoneham made it official that the Giants were leaving, we knew that the Dodgers were also gone.

T
HE
D
ODGERS
played their last game at Ebbets Field on Tuesday night, September 24, 1957. Though everybody knew the Dodgers were playing there for the last time, the Dodger management had deliberately refrained from staging an official farewell. Consequently, fewer than seven thousand fans showed up, lending an even more forlorn quality to the evening. Duke Snider later recalled that it seemed as if the lights weren’t working correctly, as if the game were played in twilight.

Pee Wee Reese led his teammates onto the field for the last time. Though the Dodgers won 2-0, there was no pleasure in the victory. We were in third place, ten games behind the pennant-winning Milwaukee Braves. The organist, Gladys Gooding, tried to honor the occasion with her own defiant ceremony, providing a medley of nostalgic tunes. After the Dodgers scored their first run, she played “Are You Blue,” and “After You’re Gone.” The second run was accompanied by “Don’t Ask Me Why I’m Leaving.” As the game reached the final innings, she played “Thanks for the Memories,” “When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day,” and “Que Sera Sera.” After the last out was recorded, she started playing “May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You.” Yet even this small gesture toward the feelings of the fans was interrupted when some Dodger official turned on the record always played at the end of Dodger games, “Follow the Dodgers.” Nevertheless, Miss
Gooding had the last say. For nineteen years her organ music had accompanied the Dodgers and she was determined to close out the program in her own way. As the opening notes of “Auld Lang Syne” drifted across the field, fans stood in clusters, arms around one another, many openly crying. Then, slowly, one by one or in small groups, the last fans left the stadium. Behind them, Ebbets Field closed its doors forever.

The following Sunday, the Giants held a special ceremony for their last game at the Polo Grounds, which at least provided a graceful opportunity for farewell. All the old Giant greats were on hand, and the crowd stood and cheered as Russ Hodges introduced each one: Rube Marquand, who had set a record in 1912 with nineteen straight victories, Carl Hubbell, Billy Jurges, Monte Irvin, Sal Maglie. The cheers continued as the starting lineup was announced: Whitey Lockman, Bobby Thomson, Willie Mays, Dusty Rhodes, Don Mueller. The last fan to leave was Mrs. John McGraw, widow of the celebrated Giant manager whose Giants had captured ten pennants earlier in the century. “I still can’t believe I’ll never see the Polo Grounds again,” she said. “New York can never be the same to me.”

The Dodgers officially announced their move a few days later in a terse statement that took no account of our feelings. Even the Yankees had the courtesy to issue a statement of regret that New York was losing the Dodgers and the Giants. In the hearts of Brooklyn fans, O’Malley had secured his place in a line of infamy which now crossed the centuries from Judas Iscariot to Benedict Arnold to Walter F. O’Malley. Effigies of the Dodger owner were burned on the streets of Brooklyn. It was all over. Never again would the streets of New York be filled with passionate arguments about which of the city’s three teams had the best center fielder, the best shortstop, the best catcher.

In the butcher shop, we held our own farewell ceremony. Max put two pegs on the door that led into the giant freezer. On one peg he hung the black Giant cap I had given him in 1951; on the other I hung my blue Dodger hat. “Well,” he said sadly, holding out his hand, “it’s been something, Ragmop.” We started to shake hands, and then clumsily broke off, so we could give each other a hug. “It sure has been something,” I answered.

T
HAT SAME
S
EPTEMBER
, my mother’s health took a decided turn for the worse. The pain in her back and legs intensified, making it hard for her to sleep at night. Her eyes sank into dark hollows, and her already pallid cheeks took on a bluish tone. More than ever before, the slightest exertion left her exhausted. She complained of difficulty breathing until finally the doctors recommended hospitalization. The previous spring she had been hospitalized for two weeks; this time she would remain at Lenox Hill for nearly a month.