I see you brought another coffee mug with you.
Well, I guess it’s more of a beer stein. But maybe that’s appropriate, since I want to talk about a baseball team and a ballpark.
About the Dodgers? Oh, that’s right. The write-up in your yearbook mentioned that you were a fan of the team.
Right. But not just the Dodgers. The Brooklyn Dodgers. You know what happened to them, don’t you?
They moved to Los Angeles?
Yep. After the 1957 season the owner uprooted the team — may I say tore our hearts out? — and took them to L.A. And Brooklyn fans didn’t forgive him.
They tore down Ebbetts Field. I would have liked to go there and salvage a piece of the place as a souvenir.
But it didn’t work out.
Anyway, I want to talk about them., the Brooklyn team.
Okay.
For instance, I have a cap from the Brooklyn days.
And I have a book that’s pretty special to me. It’s by author Roger Kahn. It’s called The Boys of Summer.
He writes about the players on the Brooklyn team during what we could call the Jackie Robinson era. From the mid-Forties to the mid-Fifties. You know about Jackie Robinson?
The first black ballplayer?
Right. But not everybody knows that. I remember seeing a black player interviewed a few years ago. He was asked about his thoughts about Jackie and — guess what — he didn’t know who Jackie was. It’s a shame. Some people think baseball has always been integrated.
Do you remember when he broke the color barrier? The so-called barrier?
Sure do. I remember I was in a barbershop, getting my hair cut, when two men reading the paper talked about it.
The Dodgers’ general manager, Branch Rickey, signed him to a contract to play for Montreal, which then was the top farm team.
And playing for the Dodgers’ Triple-A team meant they were grooming you to play for the big club.
And Robinson was the best black player available?
No. But Rickey said Jackie stood the best chance of controlling his temper when he would have to face the abuse of opposing players. He warned Jackie that pitchers would throw at him. And players would spike him. But, Rickey told him, he shouldn’t fight back. Or else the experiment would fail.
And it all worked out?
Yep. Jackie kept his cool. And he was an exciting player to watch. For instance, he was fun to watch on the basepaths. Led the league in stolen bases. And he could steal home.
Incidentally, remember the book I mentioned before? Well, some years later they came out with a video of the same name.
It was narrated by Sid Caesar. It recalled Brooklyn players of the Robinson era. Then it showed us what they’re doing now.
For instance, the Brooklyn team played in Ebbetts Field.
It had an unusual right-field wall.
In the video, the team’s right fielder, Carl Furillo, described how a fly ball could bounce off the wall in different ways, depending on where it hit.
How’s that?
Halfway up, the concrete wall was vertical, so the ball would bounce off it as expected. But the lower portion slanted outward. Can you see that? Where it says “Esquire”? So if the ball hit there, it would bounce off slightly upward, and maybe over an outfielder’s head. And if the ball hit higher up, against the screen, it would drop straight down near the wall.
Tricky.
Let me say just one more thing about the Dodgers. How an outfielder helped change the design of modern ballparks.
Okay.
His name was Pete Reiser. He was a good hitter and a good center-fielder. But, you might say, he was too good. When he chased a fly ball, he forgot about the wall.
In what way?
Well, as you probably know, when an outfielder chasing a fly ball approaches the wall, he often leaps to catch it if he can.
Well, Reiser would concentrate on the ball so much that he would forget all about the wall and crash into it. He would hit his head and smash his arm and hurt himself time and again. It cut his career short, but it led to improvements.
How?
Ballparks began putting rubber padding on the walls. And they installed warning tracks. They were strips of dirt about 15 feet wide running the length of the wall.
An outfielder running to the wall feels the ground beneath him change and knows he’s approaching the wall. Pete Reisier sacrificed his body, but he left a legacy in the form of a safer field for future players.