#2 baseball.....

 Before I start on #2, I remind myself to expand upon 18 Sep 47 and seeing Robinson......

OK.  Here we come to 1955.  I became aware of baseball in 1947 and by 1951 I was going to Ebbetts Field by myself during summer weekday afternoons, sitting in the bleachers for $0.50 - yeah - tickets cost 50 cents!  And it seemed that each and every year we had the same lamentation:  'Wait 'til next year!' as their final games each year turned out to be losses.

We moved in 1953 and I remember hanging out with neighbors Eliot Feinberg, Louie Palermo and Steve Brownstein.  While 1954 saw the Giants and Indians (It's difficult to get used to the Guardians name change), 1955 turned out to be next year and while there were no World Series parades that we new of, the thrill of finally winning meant that we, the four 13 year-old neighbors were marching and cheering from our East 53rd Street homes to the intersection of Utica and Church Avenues where like-minded other 13 year-olds from the neighborhood did our own makeshift carnival that night....it was distinct enough for me to have remembered it.

Disaster of epic proportions hit Brooklyn in 1957 as the Dodgers and the Giants moved west.  Books, books and more books have been written about New York land 'czar' Robert Moses who simply did not want the downtown Brooklyn stadium that Walter O'Malley wanted and during these 'battles', a gutsy, young L.A. City Councilperson, Roz Wyman,  got Walter O to see the light of the sun setting over the Pacific and the Dodger future out west.  

The New York Giants baseball team played ball at the Polo Grounds, the playing field right and left field lines were 250 feet from home.  There was no center field footage as this park was as oddly shaped as one can envision.  And then the Dodgers found a home field in L.A. even odder than the Polo Grounds:  the Los Angeles Coliseum where a 50 foot high fence separated the left field line from the fans in the football seat configured stands.  Left fielder Wally Moon developed the art of catching balls off of that 50 foot high wall and returning the ball to play with an uncanny accuracy that simply befuddled the Dodger opponents who had no idea how to play a hit ball off of a chain link fence.

And I remember driving up to Chavez Ravine and watching Dodger Stadium being built.  Eric Nusbaum wrote a brilliant book, 'Stealing Home', about the community that was 'kicked out' in order to complete building and transferring ownership of the land of the Dodgers to the O'Malley family.  Hey, That's Los Angeles - it got to be what it is through privatization, corruption and water rights and the powers that were then seem to be still silently in control......such is life.......

Anyway, one more Dodger/Dodger Stadium story before going into more World Series stuff.....

My mother saw her mother for the last time around 1 September 1965 in New York.  Mom returned to L.A.. knowing that her mother's death was imminent.  Grandma died on 9 September 1965.  My father had tickets for the Dodgers-Cubs game that night and we convince Mom not to stay home alone that night but to go with us to the game........Sandy Koufax's perfect game with Bob Henley, pitching a 1 hitter.  The Dodgers won, 1-0.   Lets face it, without that game (for which we have a framed ticket - best seats at $3.65 - I paid $200+ for tickets to the one game I went to this year) is something I will remember the rest of my life.  Linked to that is Grandma's death - ain't no way I'd remember her passing without that link!