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I’ve got a real treat for everyone today. Michael Tymn returns and shares with us reminisces from his early years as a Dodger fan in the late 1940s, seventy-five years ago. There’s just something about personal stories like this that I always find interesting and fun to read…and this one is no exception. Let’s face it, we all have our own story about how we became fans of this great game and why we cheer for the team that we do. I hope you’ll enjoy Mike’s story as much as I did. 

On Being Obsessed with the Brooklyn Dodgers!

With a dozen or so schoolmates at St. Joseph’s Grammar School in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area city of Alameda, California, I was in a tight huddle around the window of a priest’s bedroom bordering our schoolyard one week in October 1947.  The priest, whose name escapes me, left the radio on his window sill so that we could listen to the play-by-play of the World Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees during our recesses and lunch breaks.  All of my classmates were rooting for the Yankees, who were led by Joe DiMaggio, a Bay Area hero.  They seemed to see the Yankees as the “All-American good guys,” while the Dodgers were the dirty “Bums.”  Since my father was born and raised in Brooklyn and my grandfather still lived there, I felt it only proper to root for the Dodgers. That World Series was the beginning of my obsession with the Dodgers.

Even though the Yankees won the series in seven games, the defining moment for me was on October 3, when Cookie Lavagetto, pinch-hitting for the Dodgers in the bottom of the ninth of the fourth game, broke up Bill Bevens’s no-hitter with a double off the right-field wall, winning the game for the Dodgers (See featured photo above). At age 10 then, I had already become a big fan of the Oakland Oaks of the Pacific Coast League, but my interest in the Dodgers would, by 1949, be primary among all my interests.  I would bike to the grocery store eight blocks away from my home most evenings to check the late (6 p.m.) edition of the Oakland Tribune for the final scores of those eastern games, and I kept a composition book in which I updated the batting averages of each player. By 1950, my bedroom wall was decorated with 8 x 10 framed photos of the Dodgers’ best players, including Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges (all now in the Hall of Fame), Carl Furillo, Don Newcombe, Preacher Roe, and Carl Erskine. The only other framed picture was of the mighty Citation, the great thoroughbred of that era.  That picture hangs above my computer screen as I write this.

With my parents and two brothers, I visited my paternal grandfather in Brooklyn in July 1949.  The Dodgers didn’t have any home games during our week-long visit, but they were playing the Giants at the Polo Grounds. With my seven-year-old brother in tow, I took the subway from Marcy Ave. in Brooklyn to the game and sat in deep centerfield, right next to the entrance to the clubhouses.  Newcombe was pitching in his second or third game with the Dodgers and was relieved in about the seventh inning. When pitchers left the game, they had to walk through the centerfield exit. I still have a very vivid mental picture of Newcombe walking a few feet below me with an extremely disgruntled expression. I recall thinking, “What a big, mean-looking guy.”

That mental snapshot would occasionally enter my conscious mind over the years, and then, in 1994, Newcombe was being escorted around Honolulu by a friend during a visit to give a talk to an Alcoholics Anonymous group, and the friend remembered that I was an old Dodgers fan. He brought Newcombe to my office and we talked for over an hour about the old Dodgers. He visited again a second time a year or so later and we continued our discussion.  I have wondered if that recurring vivid snapshot of Newk walking below me at the Polo Grounds was some kind of premonition of a future meeting.

Before the 1951 season started, the Jackie Robinson All-Stars, a team of Black players featuring Robinson, came to Oakland and played a pick-up team of Bay Area ballplayers, mostly Oaks, as I recall, in an exhibition game. My friend Bill Delaney and I arrived early and waited outside the dressing room for Robinson to show up so that we could get his autograph. I still have a vivid mental picture of that experience.  Robinson entered where we had expected and was wearing a heavy brown and white checkered overcoat.  I handed him my autograph book and fountain pen, but as he started the “J” in his name, my pen ran out of ink.  Bill handed him his pen and Robinson patiently completed the autograph.  A small gap in the “J” today is a reminder of that experience. 

Later in 1951, I experienced my worst day as a Dodgers fan.  It was during my modern history class at Alameda High School.  Surprisingly, the school principal was a big baseball fan and had the last inning of the third playoff game between the Dodgers and Giants piped over the loud-speaker system to all classes. It was obvious that Miss Powers, our teacher, was not happy about that. Then came Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard around the world,” which won the pennant for the Giants. It took a while to get over that one.

Jumping ahead two years to 1953 and another visit to my grandfather.  This time I took in three games at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn and I was like a young kid visiting Disneyland for the first time. I was in hog heaven. As I stood by my father who was taking home movies during batting practice, Robinson, while returning from the batting cage, no more than twenty feet from us, noticed my father pointing his movie camera at him and gave us a quick wave and salute.

 

In 1955, I was in my sophomore year at San Francisco State and somewhat more subdued in my passions. Nevertheless, I was still an ardent Dodgers fan. I was listening to the seventh game of the World Series as I drove to school in my 1941 Chevrolet. With Johnny Podres on the mound for the Dodgers, it was the bottom of the ninth, the Dodgers leading 2-0 and the Yankees were coming to bat as I arrived in the school parking lot. There was no way I was going to class and miss the final out.  When Elston Howard grounded out to end the game, I sat back in my car as if I had just won the lottery.  The Dodgers had finally won the World Series.  Nothing else mattered.   

In 1958, while in the Marine Corps and stationed at Quantico, I took the train up to New York at Thanksgiving to visit my grandfather in Brooklyn. Since the Dodgers had deserted Brooklyn for Los Angeles the prior year, I recall feeling very melancholy during that trip.  It was an existential loss for me. Brooklyn just wasn’t the same place I had remembered from earlier years.  It seemed like the river of life that once flowed through it had dried up.  Then again, it may be that I was just awakening to the realities of life and discarding its fantasies.  

Michael Tymn 

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