GaryMrMets
07-01-2004, 12:51 AM
http://yesnetwork.com/announcers/article.asp?article_id=207
Growing up a Bums fan
http://yesnetwork.com/images/talent/small/pepe_head_sm.jpgBy Phil Pepe
Special to YES Network Online
June 15 2004
I know your pain, Red Sox fans. I understand your frustration Braves, Mariners, A's and Rangers fans. I, too, know what it's like to endure the disappointment, the anguish, the helplessness of trying to overcome Yankee mystique, Yankee superiority, Yankee tradition, and, yes, we even called it Yankee luck.
I knew all of that growing up in Brooklyn, rooting passionately for my beloved Dodgers, desperately hoping that truth and honor and justice would eventually prevail and my Dodgers would rise up and topple those lordly, arrogant Yankees and their smug, spoiled fans.
To be a Dodgers fan in the 1940s and '50s, and to be surrounded by Yankees fans, even in Brooklyn, was to know true suffering, and to believe in the depths of your heart that good would ultimately triumph over evil and my Dodgers would rule the world of baseball. We kept telling ourselves, and each other, to "Wait 'til next year," only next year never came. Almost never.
How do we come to be fans of one team or another? Are we influenced by the pressure of our peers? By our fathers and grandfathers, our uncles, cousins and older brothers? Is it an accident of birth that places us in one part of the country or another, in Boston or Chicago, Seattle or Atlanta, or Brooklyn and not the Bronx? Was it some misfortune that placed me in Brooklyn in the '40s and '50s? Would my life have been different, better, more enriched if I had been placed in the Bronx? Was I being tested? Would the suffering, the deprivation, make me a better person?
My earliest baseball recollection was hearing my elders discuss the 1941 World Series. I heard the disappointment in their voices, saw the anger in their faces. Something about Mickey Owen dropping a third strike, which I didn't completely understand — I was six at the time — but I knew it was bad.
I could have been saved right then. I could have sold out, switched my allegiance to another team; to the Yankees, heaven forbid. I didn't do it.
By 1947, I was too far gone to change. I was old enough to know better, but too dumb to do something about it. I was hooked.
In the next 10 years, the Dodgers would meet the Yankees six times in the World Series and the suffering continued.
In '47, I reveled in Cookie Lavagetto's pinch-hit, game-winning double off Bill Bevens and Al Gionfriddo's catch, but watched in agony as the Dodgers managed only one hit in the last five innings of Game 7 off Joe Page and the Yankees won again.
In 1949, I saw Allie Reynolds and Page, again, turn Dodgers bats to mush.
In 1952, the Dodgers led, three games to two, and came home to Ebbets Field for the last two games, but Billy Loes lost a ground ball in the sun and we prayed for Gil Hodges, who would go hitless in 21 at bats, and Billy Martin came out of nowhere to catch Jackie Robinson's wind-blown pop with the bases loaded just before it reached the ground, and a nobody named Bob Kuzava scared the Dodgers hitless for the final 2 2/3 innings in Game 7.
In 1953, it was Martin again, all smug and full of himself, setting a World Series record with 12 hits and the Yankees won in six games.
Then came 1955, Sandy Amoros' catch and Johnny Podres' 2-0 shutout. "Next year" finally had arrived. Truth, justice and the American way finally prevailed.
We hardly had time to savor this success, this triumph over evil, when 1956 brought us more pain, Don Larsen's Perfect Game and Yogi Berra's destruction of Don Newcombe in Game 7, an ignominious, ignoble, embarrassing, crushing, convincing 9-0 romp for the Yankees.
Once again, the rallying cry in Brooklyn was "Wait 'til next year." But there would be no next year, or year after next or year after that.
Next year, the Milwaukee Braves would beat out the Dodgers and face the Yankees in the World Series, and the year after that the Dodgers were gone and only the memories, painful as they are, would remain.
Acclaimed author Phil Pepe is a regular contributor to YES Network Online.
http://yesnetwork.com/images/talent_article/dodgers_0615.jpg
Johnny Podres is mobbed after the Dodgers' 2-0 win in Game 7 of the 1955 World Series.
Growing up a Bums fan
http://yesnetwork.com/images/talent/small/pepe_head_sm.jpgBy Phil Pepe
Special to YES Network Online
June 15 2004
I know your pain, Red Sox fans. I understand your frustration Braves, Mariners, A's and Rangers fans. I, too, know what it's like to endure the disappointment, the anguish, the helplessness of trying to overcome Yankee mystique, Yankee superiority, Yankee tradition, and, yes, we even called it Yankee luck.
I knew all of that growing up in Brooklyn, rooting passionately for my beloved Dodgers, desperately hoping that truth and honor and justice would eventually prevail and my Dodgers would rise up and topple those lordly, arrogant Yankees and their smug, spoiled fans.
To be a Dodgers fan in the 1940s and '50s, and to be surrounded by Yankees fans, even in Brooklyn, was to know true suffering, and to believe in the depths of your heart that good would ultimately triumph over evil and my Dodgers would rule the world of baseball. We kept telling ourselves, and each other, to "Wait 'til next year," only next year never came. Almost never.
How do we come to be fans of one team or another? Are we influenced by the pressure of our peers? By our fathers and grandfathers, our uncles, cousins and older brothers? Is it an accident of birth that places us in one part of the country or another, in Boston or Chicago, Seattle or Atlanta, or Brooklyn and not the Bronx? Was it some misfortune that placed me in Brooklyn in the '40s and '50s? Would my life have been different, better, more enriched if I had been placed in the Bronx? Was I being tested? Would the suffering, the deprivation, make me a better person?
My earliest baseball recollection was hearing my elders discuss the 1941 World Series. I heard the disappointment in their voices, saw the anger in their faces. Something about Mickey Owen dropping a third strike, which I didn't completely understand — I was six at the time — but I knew it was bad.
I could have been saved right then. I could have sold out, switched my allegiance to another team; to the Yankees, heaven forbid. I didn't do it.
By 1947, I was too far gone to change. I was old enough to know better, but too dumb to do something about it. I was hooked.
In the next 10 years, the Dodgers would meet the Yankees six times in the World Series and the suffering continued.
In '47, I reveled in Cookie Lavagetto's pinch-hit, game-winning double off Bill Bevens and Al Gionfriddo's catch, but watched in agony as the Dodgers managed only one hit in the last five innings of Game 7 off Joe Page and the Yankees won again.
In 1949, I saw Allie Reynolds and Page, again, turn Dodgers bats to mush.
In 1952, the Dodgers led, three games to two, and came home to Ebbets Field for the last two games, but Billy Loes lost a ground ball in the sun and we prayed for Gil Hodges, who would go hitless in 21 at bats, and Billy Martin came out of nowhere to catch Jackie Robinson's wind-blown pop with the bases loaded just before it reached the ground, and a nobody named Bob Kuzava scared the Dodgers hitless for the final 2 2/3 innings in Game 7.
In 1953, it was Martin again, all smug and full of himself, setting a World Series record with 12 hits and the Yankees won in six games.
Then came 1955, Sandy Amoros' catch and Johnny Podres' 2-0 shutout. "Next year" finally had arrived. Truth, justice and the American way finally prevailed.
We hardly had time to savor this success, this triumph over evil, when 1956 brought us more pain, Don Larsen's Perfect Game and Yogi Berra's destruction of Don Newcombe in Game 7, an ignominious, ignoble, embarrassing, crushing, convincing 9-0 romp for the Yankees.
Once again, the rallying cry in Brooklyn was "Wait 'til next year." But there would be no next year, or year after next or year after that.
Next year, the Milwaukee Braves would beat out the Dodgers and face the Yankees in the World Series, and the year after that the Dodgers were gone and only the memories, painful as they are, would remain.
Acclaimed author Phil Pepe is a regular contributor to YES Network Online.
http://yesnetwork.com/images/talent_article/dodgers_0615.jpg
Johnny Podres is mobbed after the Dodgers' 2-0 win in Game 7 of the 1955 World Series.