Baseball returned to Brooklyn, New York on June 25, 2001, in the form of a Class A minor league franchise of the New York Mets. It was the first time professional baseball was played in Brooklyn since the Brooklyn Dodgers headed west at the conclusion of the 1957 season.

One fan at the game, who was reported to be 34 years old, and could hardly have ever seen the Brooklyn Dodgers, commented “Its like a throwback to the old-time Brooklyn.” Not quite, and it could hardly be, at least not to this former Brooklyn native.

Brooklyn, New York is one of the five boroughs of New York City (the others being Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and yes, take Staten Island too). Its population exceeds that of most large cities in the United States.

The new Brooklyn team is named the “Cyclones,” in recognition of a landmark roller coaster ride that operates in Coney Island today as it did decades ago. Back then, Coney Island was a thriving amusement area in Brooklyn, and ironically enough, one of the sites offered the Brooklyn Dodgers for the location of a new stadium. Needless to say, whether or not Walter O’Malley really wanted to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn has been rehashed over the ensuing forty-four years since they left. While we will never know, of course, it might well have made a great location for a major league franchise.

Ironically enough, the “Cyclone” sits in the background of the stadium, and is perhaps a hop, skip and jump away.

Opening day at KeySpan Park (named for a New York energy company), the home venue of the Cyclones, was exciting, and there was much media coverage, as well as public reaction. Far be it for me to rain on anyone’s parade, but while minor league baseball is exciting to some, and a cheap evening out as compared to the real (i.e., major league) variety, the occasion was more for rekindling old memories than anything else.

Perhaps the changes brought on by the Dodgers’ moving were coming anyway, with the growth of suburbia and movement out of New York City. However, the fact is that not too many years later, a major league team was located in the Borough of Queens, not that far from Brooklyn. Today, Shea Stadium occupies a location reportedly offered the Brooklyn Dodgers to stay in New York.

Brooklyn’s history has been colorful, but yet, it is perhaps best known for two things, one of which still stands, and one which has been gone for over forty years. The Brooklyn Bridge is the former, still a structure of grace and beauty. The latter of course, is the Brooklyn Dodger Baseball Club, now gone forever,

Incredibly, the Brooklyn Dodger team is still remembered by hundreds of thousands, and talked about by countless more, many of whom never saw the team, or its home in Ebbets Field. So strong is the mystique of the Brooklyn Dodgers that after decades, it is still spoken of reverently. Perhaps this is so because the Borough of Brooklyn and the famous bridge added to the glory that was the team.

Indicative of how time has flown by is evidenced by the fact that only one individual remains in a major league baseball uniform today who once wore a Brooklyn Dodger uniform: New York Yankee coach Don Zimmer, who has been in baseball for over fifty years.

Over time, the Brooklyn Dodgers came to have a reputation for ineptness in a way that endeared them to fans. This perhaps was something which began in the days when the Brooklyn Dodgers were best epitomized by Babe Herman, an outfielder once hit in the head by a fly ball. A lifetime .324 hitter in eleven seasons, it was said of him “He wears a glove for one reason: because it is a custom.”

A lot of what Brooklyn was about stemmed from its inhabitants, who became the butt of jokes and yet affectionately known throughout the country for several reasons, including the fact they spoke with their own unique accent. Brooklynites also were identified with the trolley tracks crisscrossing the borough’s major thoroughfares. Avoiding injury from being hit by those vehicles caused the folks to be called “trolley dodgers,” leading to the team nickname (i.e., Dodgers).

Casey Stengel began his major league career in Brooklyn in 1912, and was with the team through 1917. To be sure, the presence of Stengel on any roster was sufficient to generate excitement, fun, and a few laughs. Casey’s famous “bird under the hat” episode actually took place in Brooklyn when he returned to play in 1918, after having been traded to the Pittsburgh Pirates. After being roundly booed in his first game back at Ebbets Field, Casey secured a sparrow, placed it under his cap, and removed the cap the next time a chorus of boos greeted him in Brooklyn. It is reported that when the bird lifted off from his head, Casey turned the boos to laughter. Conceivably, in so doing, a pattern was set for many situations that would happen at Ebbets Field over time, as the Dodgers became loveable losers. Decades later, Stengel would achieve great success as manager of the dreaded Yankees and would be around to win a few World Series encounters with the Dodgers.

Baseball aside, Brooklyn (despite the legal title of “Borough”) was a city within a city, a geographical entity that attracted citizens in a manner that made it truly, a “melting pot.” It was an entry point into the middle class, and its people would scatter all over the country as they became upwardly mobile, taking with them a fierce loyalty to the baseball franchise. Such were the people that the Jackie Robinson “experiment” could not have been conducted in a better environment.

“You can take the boy out of Brooklyn, but you can never take Brooklyn out of the boy” has been a tag line associated with “Brooklynites.” With pride, I admit to being one who fits that bill, despite the fact that I grew up as a New York Yankee fan. Let me tell you, living in Brooklyn being a Yankee fan was not easy.

Even as a Yankee fan resident in the borough I would root for the Dodgers (except at World Series time). Vividly I recall the construction crews who tore Ebbets Field down. I took a last drive around the ballpark with my wife. There were no crowds, and it was a bitter occasion, one which literally brought me to tears.

You see, Ebbets Field and the Brooklyn Dodgers were not a team and a place; they were a way of life. It is impossible to adequately express to anyone who never saw Ebbets Field exactly what it was about. Those who spent summer afternoons there will understand, and those who did not will have to take my word for it.

My family moved to Brooklyn when I was around ten, and my formative years were spent there. I attended James Madison High School in Brooklyn, and a year behind me was Frank Torre, older brother of Joe Torre. Frank went on to spend several years in the major leagues. My younger brother Stan was Frank’s contemporary, and played with him in high school, and on the “sandlots.”

Elaine Abrams was a student at James Madison during my time, and lived close to where my family did. As such, I got to know her brother Cal Abrams slightly. Cal was with the Dodgers for a time and (unfortunately) was the runner thrown out at home plate in the bottom of the ninth inning of the last game of the 1950 season. Real fans know that in the top of the tenth, Dick Sisler of the Philadelphia Phillies hit a home run to win the game and propel the “Whiz Kids” into the 1950 World Series. Had Cal Abrams been safe, there would have been a Yankee-Dodger World Series that year.

Like most baseball fans of my generation, I played stick ball. My “field” was underneath a subway overpass, one on which the “Brighton Line” of the New York subway system traveled on its way to the end of line in Coney Island – the very place where the Brooklyn Cyclones began business this week.

My father-in-law operated several amusement venues in Coney Island, and in their time they were institutions. None survive today, for reasons of changing demographics and the change in Coney Island itself. But still, his main establishment then was perhaps a two-minute walk from the Cyclone.

The heyday of my father-in-law’s business was also the prime time for the Brooklyn Dodgers, a team that was not always inept. Commencing in 1941, and prior to moving to California in 1958, the Dodgers were almost always a contending team. Between 1941 and 1956, they would appear in the World Series (always against the Yankees) seven times, and almost made it an eighth in 1951 if not for Bobby Thomson and “the home run heard around the world.” I heard Russ Hodges make his famous “The Giants Win The Pennant” call over the radio while in Denver, Colorado attending a United States Air Force training program.

“Wait till next year” was the dream which became reality in 1955, as the Dodgers would win the World Series against the Yankees for the only time. Nobody around then will ever forget the Willard Mullin caricature of the “Brooklyn Bum” on the front page of a newspaper following the victory with the caption “This Is Next Year.”

By the same token, the phrase “Wait till next year,” now virtually a part of the American language, originated with those Brooklyn Dodger diehards who suffered many years with teams bordering on mediocrity. Only in Brooklyn, as the saying goes!

Around the time of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ only World Series victory over the Yankees in 1955, I graduated from Long Island University in Brooklyn, which I had attended since completing my Air Force Service. At that time my wife was employed as the manager of a beauty salon in Brooklyn, and Joan Hodges (wife of Gil) was a regular patron.

Since I reminisce here of Brooklyn as much as baseball, it must be noted that the main campus building of Long Island University in Brooklyn had once been the “Brooklyn Paramount Theatre,” a house at which a young singer named Frank Sinatra performed in the late 1930s.

Larry MacPhail took over as general manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1938, and things began to change. Finishing seventh in 1938, the Brooklyn Dodgers began to move in 1939 by finishing third. In 1940, they were second, and won the National League pennant in 1941. Baseball historians have studied the evolution of the Brooklyn team. Suffice it to say that it was under the leadership of Macphail that the change began. Two young players who would be immensely popular arrived in 1940. They were Pee Wee Resse and Pete Reiser, who joined such stars as Billy Herman, Joe Medwick and Dixie Walker. It was the beginning of better days for baseball in Brooklyn.

Pee Wee Resse, of course, would become a member of the Hall of Fame, while Pete Reiser never realized the greatness that was predicted, largely due to a series of injuries. More than once Reiser ran into unpadded outfield walls to catch a ball, and on one such occasion he sustained serious head injuries.

Branch Rickey succeeded Larry Macphail, and gave substantial impetus to the evolution of the Dodgers into a first class organization, establishing a sound farm system and bringing many stars to the parent club over the period of his tenure. His foresight and courage in signing Jackie Robinson is well known and documented. Later, Rickey was essentially forced out of the Brooklyn organization by Walter O'Malley, and moved on to the Pittsburgh Pirates, where, if he accomplished nothing else, he brought Roberto Clemente to the big leagues. Legend has it Rickey acted on the recommendation of coach Clyde Sukeforth, who had also scouted Jackie Robinson for Rickey. To the extent that Clemente was drafted out of the Brooklyn organization by its former general manager established another Brooklyn connection of note.

My aim here has been to recall an incomparable baseball team in a unique geographic setting. The greatness of both has been a theme, but I would be remiss if I failed to mention some events and people which made up part of the legend, as it were. For sure, other cities and teams have had their moments and happenings, but Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Ebbets Field were so special that things seemed to happen there that might not have happened elsewhere.

Where else, for example, would there be two ladies who attended every game and were institutions among fans to such an extent that they were almost as much an attraction as the game itself? They were Gladys Gooding and Hilda Chester. Ms. Gooding was the organist at Ebbets Field, and Ms. Chester would bring a large cowbell to the ballpark, sit in a bleacher seat, and ring the bell for encouragement and/or celebration.

Getting to Ebbets Field was easy, and one way to do it was via the same “Brighton Line” under which I played stick ball. As noted before, it ended its run in Coney Island. Exiting at the “Prospect Park” station, a fan had a five-minute walk to the ballpark. A blind man stood right outside the station exit selling pencils, and was sort of an institution. He would tap the ground with his cane to attract attention, exclaiming, “I can tell you the score before the game starts.” Many thousands of people knew his routine, but went along with it anyway, stopping to ask what the score would be. “Nothing to nothing,” he would say, getting us every time.

I was not a stranger to Prospect Park. During my first summer at Long Island University (1953), the year in which I met my wife, I worked as a “playground director” for the New York City Parks Department, a real gem of a part time job for a college student/ex-serviceman.

Could there have been a Happy Felton and his “Knothole Gang” in any other city? Perhaps, but in those early days of TV, his was a pre-game show (telecast from Ebbets Field) in which eager young fans were “worked out” by their Dodger idols, and given a day they would never forget. Picture a 16-year-old third baseman fielding balls hit by Billy Cox, and you may get the idea of what it meant.

Once you were in the ballpark, “concerts” were presented. The “orchestra” was the “Brooklyn Dodger Symphoney (no spelling error),” a group of fans who paraded the aisles playing their instruments (some home made) to have some fun, and harass visiting teams and umpires in a nice, friendly way!

Remarkable connections continue to be evident between then and now. For example, Fred Wilpon, one of the owners of the New York Mets, grew up in Brooklyn, and played baseball at Lafayette High School with Hall of Fame great Sandy Koufax.

Ebbets Field was the scene of many bizarre events as well. There was the time Dodger manager Leo Durocher (a flamboyant character right out of Damon Runyon) once fought an umpire (allegedly) under the stands. Don Newcome, who won 27 games in 1956 (and was the first pitcher to win both the Cy Young and MVP awards in the same season) was knocked out early by the Yankees in a World Series game, and left the park early. Legend has it that a displeased fan challenged him in the parking lot, and a fistfight followed.

Yes, the Brooklyn Dodgers were an organization for the ages, one blessed with success and great players, and players on a stage unique in America – Brooklyn, New York.

What the Brooklyn Dodgers meant to some of its Hall of Fame stars was expressed by Duke Snider during an interview on the video tape version of Roger Kahn’s “Boys of Summer.” When asked how he felt about missing out on the big money deals of today’s players, Duke said “I would not trade the years in Brooklyn for all the money in the world.”

The Dodgers continue on as the Los Angeles Dodgers, and it is possible their staying on at a new venue in New York might have prevented the negative changes in Brooklyn following their departure. But, we will never know, and besides, Brooklyn has recovered, and to a large extent, flourishes today.

One thing, however, is for sure. That fan who thinks “It is like a throwback to old-time Brooklyn” is wrong, at least for me. No, you can’t go home again. Best to remember what was with a warm feeling, and move on from there.

» Sam Person is a retired CPA and university professor. He has been a baseball fan for over sixty years, and enjoys writing on baseball topics.

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