Brooklyn's Dodgers: The Bums, the Borough, and the Best of Baseball, 1947-1957

225 Pages·1996·14.228 MB·English

by  Carl E. Prince

Brooklyn's Dodgers
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Brooklyn's Dodgers
The Bums, the Borough, and the
Best of Baseball
1947-1957
Carl E. Prince
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York Oxford
Oxford University Press
Oxford New York
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and associated companies in
Be Ibadan
Copyright © 1996 by Carl E. Prince
First published by Oxford University Press, Inc., 1996
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 1997
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,
without the prior permission of Oxford University Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Prince, Carl E.
Brooklyn's Dodgers : the Bums, the borough, and the best of baseball
1947-1957 / Carl E. Prince,
p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-509927-3
ISBN 0-19-511578-3 (Pbk.)
1. Brooklyn Dodgers (Baseball team)—History. 2. Brooklyn (New
York, N.Y.)—Social life and customs. 3. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—
History. I. Title.
GV875.B7P75 1996
796.357'64'0974723—dc20 95-26483
13579108642
Printed in the United States of America
For Jon, Liz, and Marcia
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Contents
Introduction ix
1. Integration: Dodgers' Dilemma, Dodgers' Response 3
2. Political Culture: Reds and Dodger Blue 23
3. The Dodgers' Male Culture: The New \brk Rivalries 45
4. Male Culture: Owners, Chokers, and Dumb Kids 60
5. The Baseball Culture of Brooklyn's Women 77
6. The Dodgers and Male Bar Culture 92
7. The Dodgers and Brooklyn's Ethnic Isolation 102
8. Kids' Ball: The Dodgers and Brooklyn's Boys 119
9. The Outer Edges of Dodger Memory 138
Appendices 149
Notes 153
Index 193
vii
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Introduction
When Bobby Thomson's home run cleared the high left field
wall in the Polo Grounds in 1951, my mother, a normally voluble
woman, got up from the sofa, turned the tiny television off, and
went into the bedroom, closing the door behind her. When my
father, white-faced, came home from work two hours later, he en-
tered the apartment with an equally unusual silence. He asked us
(I was sixteen; my sister thirteen) where our mother was. We
pointed to the bedroom; he peeked in, backed out, closed the
door, and for the only time I can remember, made supper. I
never before or since saw him at a stove. True, he only heated up
four cans of Spaghetti-O's, and opened three bottles of Royal
Crown, but it was supper. My mother stayed in the bedroom for
sixteen hours. She appeared the next day to take up her usual
domestic responsibilities. She never said a word about that loss,
that season, that home run. Not ever.
We took our baseball seriously; it was a common basis for
communication in a family that needed it. I still take it seriously
as a means of communication. Now, on another coast where I
spend my summers, my grown children and I share season tickets
to a major league club. No, heaven forbid, not the L.A. Dodgers.
That is no team of mine. Now I follow the Oakland Athletics,
ix