Well, I’ve been on a baseball book-reading frenzy lately. I’d never really gone near all those baseball classics that everyone else read ages ago (like Moneyball, which I finished last week), so I’ve decided to use this offseason to catch up, as it were. (Also: I’m too broke to go out and have fun like a normal person.) I’m using as my guide this piece by Rob Neyer, with a few of my own picks, as well.
I just finished Wait Till Next Year, by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I appreciated it for two reasons. First of all, it’s an easy introduction to 1950s baseball. Since I have a hard time working up an interest in non-Cardinal baseball history, her chatty reminiscences were a great first step into to the world of the the Brooklyn Dodgers and that whole era. Secondly, I enjoyed reading the book because her experiences growing up in 1950s Long Island were, in fact, quite similar to my own childhood in Webster Groves. A conservative Catholic upbringing, sisters she admired, an absolute obsession with her baseball team… You get the picture. (My biggest quibble is that Ms. Goodwin didn’t grow up in Brooklyn proper - I mean, who wants to read about Long Island? Gypped!)
And I got so interested in the Brooklyn Dodgers that I decided to go see the former site of Ebbets Field. It’s only a twenty-minute walk across beautiful Prospect Park from my apartment, but I’d never been over there. Flatbush isn’t what I’d call a typical Brooklyn neighborhood - it pretty much exemplifies the ugly vision of New York City I had as a little kid. Enormous apartment buildings, fenced in playgrounds, grafitti everywhere - that sort of thing.
No matter, though: History beckoned! I wandered over without any exact sense of where the field was. I knew there’s an apartment building there now, and I figured there would be enough signs around to let me know about where the ballpark used to be. Actually, though, I was halfway around the area in question before I came upon the sign that said “Ebbets Field Apartments�. Whaaa? I forgot to bring a camera, so just imagine a massive, blocklong apartment building that towers over everything else in the neighborhood. I was pathetically trying to think of excuses as to why this couldn’t possibly be it, and I settled on the fact that the block didn’t seem big enough for a whole stadium (growing up with Busch will affect you that way, I suppose).
Two minutes later, though, I saw this sign and there was no more denying it. Ebbets Field is now the ugliest, most charmless building in Flatbush. I think, at one point, the building was public housing, but I don’t think that’s the case any longer (I’m saying this because of the nice cars in the gated lot and satellite dishes attached to many of the balconies - it’s not a very nice building, but it doesn’t reek of poverty, either).
After a trip to the Brooklyn Central Library (which, by the way, has a great baseball collection and a nice Dodgers exhibition), I came home to a debate with my roommate about whether or not we’d be secret Dodgers fans if they still played nearby. On the one hand, it would be buckets of fun to be able to walk to the ballpark on a summer evening. And the Dodgers have such a rich history, just like the Cardinals do. Based on history alone, I’d be much more likely to root for them than the Yankees or Mets. On the other hand, all this romanticism is fine in theory, until you consider the fact that the Mets took the place of the Dodgers. So the Dodgers would be just like the Mets are to me.
You know. Despicable.
