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RAYS COLUMN

Brooklyn's Team Still Magical

By MARTIN FENNELLY

Published: Jun 24, 2007

ST. PETERSBURG - It didn't matter that it was slightly contrived - a turn-back-the-clock bobbleheaded salute to Don Zimmer, proud member of the 1955 World Series champion Brooklyn Dodgers.

Any excuse for magic will do.

Those baggy gray road flannels had "Brooklyn" across the chests. It made hearts under a lot of chests skip a beat, along with silver-haired men reaching back half a century until it seemed like yesterday.

"You should have seen the party," said George Stone, 70, of St. Petersburg. He was born in Brooklyn and was there when it was finally Next Year, when the Dodgers finally conquered the Yankees. "There were people in the streets, car horns honking, people crying. That's always going to be Brooklyn's day."

Stone was standing in an aisle at Tropicana Field, looking at his hero: Eighty-year-old Edwin Donald Snider - Duke - was signing autographs, amazed as ever at the love.

"People never have let us go," The Duker said.

Remembering That 1955 Magic

The Brooklyn Dodgers haven't been Brooklyn's Dodgers for 50 years. Saturday marked only the second time the Los Angeles Dodgers, as a team, have worn B for Brooklyn on their caps and Brooklyn on their jerseys.

Duke wore his No. 4.

Carl Erskine wore No. 17.

Erskine, 80, king of the overhand curve, "Oisk" in Brooklyn diction, once set a World Series strikeout record against the Yankees. He stood on the field at the Trop and looked at Duke, his road roommate for 10 seasons.

"Duke says he's still at his playing weight," Erskine said. "I'm at mine, too."

No. 45, Johnny Podres, sat in the Devil Rays dugout. His legs and back aren't so good. Fifty-two years ago, on a sunny afternoon at Yankee Stadium, 23-year-old Johnny Podres, a miner's son from upstate New York, a Dodgers fan his whole life, shut out the Yankees 2-0 in Game 7 of the Series for Brooklyn's only World Series championship.

It was 3:43 in the afternoon on Oct. 4, 1955, when Dodgers shortstop and captain Harold Reese - Pee Wee - fielded a grounder and threw to first baseman Gil Hodges for the final out. Erskine was standing on the top step of the Brooklyn dugout, holding his breath, as he was three innings earlier, when a left-handed left fielder named Sandy Amoros saved a borough by tracking down Yogi Berra's fly ball.

At Carl Erskine's elbow: Jackie Robinson.

"I think we were America's Team," Snider said.

They were white and they were black. They were city and they were country. They were East Coast, West Coast, they were Deep South, they were ghetto, they were heartland. They were brothers.

Carl Erskine can still hear the silence after that '55 Series, just as they hit the clubhouse, before a champagne cork popped. "There was a pause, momentary," he said. There was Jackie and Pee Wee, Campy and Duke. There was Billy and Carl, Gil and Newk, Clem and Oisk and Zim. And there were tears.

"I know that when the bus came back over the Brooklyn Bridge, the streets were lined with people," Snider said.

Brooklyn was a neighborhood of a borough. The Dodgers were the neighborhood team.

Erskine remembers his local deli owner, Abe Myerson, bringing groceries to his home the days after he pitched. Carl would protest. Abe would always have none of it.

"No, you guys aren't paying ... You're the team. You're in Brooklyn."

It was a time and a place.

Fifty-two years later, Duke Snider can hear Podres on the team bus to Game 7.

"Just get me one run, that's all I'm going to need today."

Duke hit four home runs in the '55 Series. He hit 407 in his Hall of Fame career. On Sept. 22, 1957, he hit the final Dodgers homer at Ebbets Field. They left after the season. Three years later, Ebbets Field was demolished.

Erskine was there. He even made home movies. With him were his old catcher Roy Campanella, Campy in his wheelchair, and Ralph Branca.

"They swung the big iron ball over and dropped it on the visitors dugout," Erskine said. "And I left. As much as I hated that visitors dugout, when they dropped that big iron ball - they had it painted like a baseball, with stitches on it - on that concrete dugout and caved it in, I got sick. I didn't want to see it."

The neighborhood never forgot.

"I always related it like when a young person dies, they leave right in the middle of their best years," Erskine said.

Fans Keep Their Legacy Alive

Saturday night was special. It was no accident that the game drew the second-largest Trop crowd of the season.

And it was no accident before the game when Rays and Dodgers made their way to Snider, Erskine and Podres to shake their hands.

And the seventh-inning stretch was beautiful. Carl Erskine pulled out a harmonica and serenaded the crowd with "Take Me Out To The Ball Game."

There are 10 living members of the '55 Dodgers. They see each other at fantasy camps, card shows, reunions - and funerals. They buried pitcher Clem Labine just this winter.

They live on. Fans keep it that way. So do writers, among them Roger Kahn, who wrote "The Boys of Summer," still the masterwork on the team. Kahn soon will turn 80. The kid in him still can't believe they're gone.

"The Pyramids were in Egypt, the Dodgers were in Brooklyn," Kahn said.

And Johnny was on the bus, telling Duker and the guys to get him a run, one run.

"We got him two," Duke Snider said.

George Stone showed you a freshly autographed black-and-white photo of the '55 Dodgers at Ebbets Field. He used to sit down the right-field line at Ebbets and yell to Carl Furillo. The stands were that close. Everything was.

"They were the team," Stone said.

They were in Brooklyn.