Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir

  News of Jackie Robinson’s retirement in January 1957 left me feeling empty. His career had been my childhood.

  Critics complained that Ebbets Field was too old and too cramped, situated in a neighborhood that was rapidly deteriorating as more and more middle-class families moved to the suburbs, leaving behind poorer blacks and Puerto Ricans. It was said that the new suburbanites were finding it more comfortable to watch the game on television than to venture into the city at night, and that no ballpark could survive with space for only seven hundred cars. I hated to hear talk about the deficiencies of Ebbets Field. I loved the old ballpark and couldn’t imagine the Dodgers in any other place.

  In the middle of May, 1956, I awoke to the stunning announcement that our nemesis, the feared and hated Sal Maglie, had been acquired by the Dodgers. Who could have imagined that the scowling Number 35, whose brush-back curve year after year had sent Dodger batters sprawling, would end up in a Dodger uniform? “I’ve no grudge if he has some mileage left in his arm,” said my father, chuckling. “Well, I won’t root for him,” my mother said. “How many times has he tried to bean poor Furillo, Robinson, and Campanella?” Columnist Jimmy Cannon spoke for many Dodger fans when he wrote that life would hold no more surprises for him now that Maglie was coming to Brooklyn. It was as if “the Daughters of the Confederacy are building a monument to General Grant in Richmond.”

  Before the season was done, respect for Maglie’s contributions silenced much of the initial opposition to the trade. He helped the Dodgers win the ’56 pennant and performed yeoman duty in the World Series, which the Yankees won 4-3. He went the distance for the win in Game One and gave up only two runs and five hits in Game Five, where he had the misfortune to come up against Yankee pitcher Don Larsen’s perfect game. I was grateful for the victories, but I could never bring myself to think of Maglie as one of us. Every time I saw Campanella walk out to the mound with his arm on Maglie’s shoulder, I shuddered, unable to erase the image of Campy crumpled at home plate after one of Maglie’s bean balls.

  The idea of Maglie as a Dodger was bad enough; the concept of Jackie Robinson as a Giant was unthinkable. Yet, on December 13, 1956, Brooklyn announced that Jackie Robinson had been traded to the Giants for pitcher Dick Littlefield, a journeyman whose continual moves from one team to another presaged the modern era. Robinson, seemingly stunned, asked the Giants for a few days to think things over. “After you’ve reached your peak,” Robinson said, “there’s no sentiment in baseball. You start slipping and pretty soon, they’re moving you around like a used car. You have no control over what happens to you.”

  News of the trade left me feeling saddened and empty. Jackie Robinson had entered the majors two years before I had learned how to score. His career had been my childhood. Without him I would never have cared for the Dodgers in the same way. I was not surprised when Robinson announced he would retire a Dodger rather than report to the Giants. I knew he would never wear a Giant uniform.

  The loss of Robinson seemed to accelerate the talk of moving, as if the central mast of the big top was gone, and it was time to strike the entire tent and move on. The architect Buckminster Fuller produced a design for a bizarre domed ballpark. O’Malley floated a plan to construct a new stadium on a large parcel of slum land at the junction of Atlantic and Flatbush avenues. It was an ideal location, eliminating the need for parking since it stood at the terminus of the Long Island Railroad and the meeting place for two subway lines. But the controversial plan required the support of city officials to condemn the slum, compensate property owners, and sell the land to O’Malley, something no one in a position of authority was willing to do. In the meantime, Robert Moses developed his own plan for a multipurpose stadium in Flushing, Long Island, that would accommodate thousands of cars.

  In retrospect, it can now be seen that baseball was changing. After fifty years of stability, during which fans could depend on seeing the same teams in the same cities, three major-league franchises, one after another, picked up and moved elsewhere, abandoning their fans in the hopes of securing increased revenues. The Braves of Boston were the first to go, moving in 1953 to Milwaukee. The following year, the St. Louis Browns became the Baltimore Orioles, and the year after that the Athletics of Philadelphia became the Kansas City Athletics. Though each owner was able to justify his move on economic grounds, the transactions signaled the ever-increasing intrusions of business considerations into the national pastime.

  In 1957, the auguries of Brooklyn’s betrayal began to multiply. For the first time we heard that O’Malley might actually leave New York for Los Angeles. We learned that Baseball Commissioner Warren Giles had told O’Malley that he could not move to California unless another team went with him in order to make the long trip to the West Coast more economical for the rest of the league. O’Malley, it was reported, had begun talking with Horace Stoneham, owner of the Giants, about moving his team to San Francisco. Every day, a new piece was added to the dismal puzzle.

  That summer, I joined thousands of fans signing petitions imploring O’Malley, city officials, and anyone who might help to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn. I attended a clamorous “Keep the Dodgers” rally in the city. And I wrote a long, personal letter to O’Malley, begging him to consider what the move would do to the community and all the fans. On more than one occasion, I daydreamed of going to O’Malley’s office to make the case for Brooklyn. I pictured a brown velvet couch in the middle of the room with its back to the drapes, two leather chairs encircling a small table, the floor covered with a large patterned rug. O’Malley was seated behind a cluttered desk, his thick eyebrows casting a diabolical shadow on his florid face. I was wearing my favorite dress, a black-and-brown-striped sheath, with black stockings and black high heels that gave me an extra three inches in height. He did not rise when I entered, but as I started to talk, his face softened, and when I finished my monologue, a perfect blend of logic and emotion, he threw his arms around me and promised to stay at Ebbets Field. I had saved the Dodgers for Brooklyn!

  It was, of course, only a fantasy. No flow of petitions, no appeal to loyalty or tradition could stop O’Malley once it became clear that Los Angeles was prepared to give him three hundred acres of prime land and five million city dollars to create new roads and improve access to the site. On August 19, 1957, Horace Stoneham announced that the Giants were moving to San Francisco at the end of the 1957 season. “We’re sorry to disappoint the kids of New York,” Stoneham said, “but we didn’t see many of their parents out there at the Polo Grounds in recent years.” Attendance at the Polo Grounds had been falling steadily each year. Indeed, without the eleven home games against the Dodgers, which accounted for nearly one-third of the box-office receipts for the entire year, the Giants could not possibly survive. The two teams were inextricably linked. On the day Stoneham made it official that the Giants were leaving, we knew that the Dodgers were also gone.

  THE DODGERS played their last game at Ebbets Field on Tuesday night, September 24, 1957. Though everybody knew the Dodgers were playing there for the last time, the Dodger management had deliberately refrained from staging an official farewell. Consequently, fewer than seven thousand fans showed up, lending an even more forlorn quality to the evening. Duke Snider later recalled that it seemed as if the lights weren’t working correctly, as if the game were played in twilight.

  Pee Wee Reese led his teammates onto the field for the last time. Though the Dodgers won 2-0, there was no pleasure in the victory. We were in third place, ten games behind the pennant-winning Milwaukee Braves. The organist, Gladys Gooding, tried to honor the occasion with her own defiant ceremony, providing a medley of nostalgic tunes. After the Dodgers scored their first run, she played “Are You Blue,” and “After You’re Gone.” The second run was accompanied by “Don’t Ask Me Why I’m Leaving.” As the game reached the final innings, she played “Thanks for the Memories,” “When the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day,” and “Que Sera Sera.” After the last
out was recorded, she started playing “May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You.” Yet even this small gesture toward the feelings of the fans was interrupted when some Dodger official turned on the record always played at the end of Dodger games, “Follow the Dodgers.” Nevertheless, Miss Gooding had the last say. For nineteen years her organ music had accompanied the Dodgers and she was determined to close out the program in her own way. As the opening notes of “Auld Lang Syne” drifted across the field, fans stood in clusters, arms around one another, many openly crying. Then, slowly, one by one or in small groups, the last fans left the stadium. Behind them, Ebbets Field closed its doors forever.

  The following Sunday, the Giants held a special ceremony for their last game at the Polo Grounds, which at least provided a graceful opportunity for farewell. All the old Giant greats were on hand, and the crowd stood and cheered as Russ Hodges introduced each one: Rube Marquand, who had set a record in 1912 with nineteen straight victories, Carl Hubbell, Billy Jurges, Monte Irvin, Sal Maglie. The cheers continued as the starting lineup was announced: Whitey Lockman, Bobby Thomson, Willie Mays, Dusty Rhodes, Don Mueller. The last fan to leave was Mrs. John McGraw, widow of the celebrated Giant manager whose Giants had captured ten pennants earlier in the century. “I still can’t believe I’ll never see the Polo Grounds again,” she said. “New York can never be the same to me.”

  The Dodgers officially announced their move a few days later in a terse statement that took no account of our feelings. Even the Yankees had the courtesy to issue a statement of regret that New York was losing the Dodgers and the Giants. In the hearts of Brooklyn fans, O’Malley had secured his place in a line of infamy which now crossed the centuries from Judas Iscariot to Benedict Arnold to Walter F. O’Malley. Effigies of the Dodger owner were burned on the streets of Brooklyn. It was all over. Never again would the streets of New York be filled with passionate arguments about which of the city’s three teams had the best center fielder, the best shortstop, the best catcher.

  In the butcher shop, we held our own farewell ceremony. Max put two pegs on the door that led into the giant freezer. On one peg he hung the black Giant cap I had given him in 1951; on the other I hung my blue Dodger hat. “Well,” he said sadly, holding out his hand, “it’s been something, Ragmop.” We started to shake hands, and then clumsily broke off, so we could give each other a hug. “It sure has been something,” I answered.

  THAT SAME SEPTEMBER, my mother’s health took a decided turn for the worse. The pain in her back and legs intensified, making it hard for her to sleep at night. Her eyes sank into dark hollows, and her already pallid cheeks took on a bluish tone. More than ever before, the slightest exertion left her exhausted. She complained of difficulty breathing until finally the doctors recommended hospitalization. The previous spring she had been hospitalized for two weeks; this time she would remain at Lenox Hill for nearly a month.

  While she was in the hospital she suffered a stroke. Late one afternoon, she woke from a nap without sensation in her right foot and leg, and so dizzy she feared falling out of bed. Speech required great effort, and her words were slurred and difficult to understand. The doctors told us she had experienced a thrombotic stroke in the left side of her brain, causing partial paralysis on her right side. Apparently a blood clot had formed in one of her diseased arteries, blocking the flow of blood to the brain. Only time would tell if the damage was permanent.

  Though the doctors assured us that most stroke survivors recovered fully and eventually regained use of their paralyzed limbs through physical therapy, I wondered if she had the energy or the will to recover. There was a frightened look in her eyes, and her weight had dropped to eighty-eight pounds, giving her tall frame an emaciated appearance. The war with her body over the previous decade had taken a terrible toll.

  Slowly, however, she began to fight her way back. She gained some motion in her arm and then in her leg. A week after the stroke, she was up in a wheelchair; a week after that, leaning on an attendant’s arm, she walked slowly down the hospital corridor, slightly dragging her leg. Her slurred speech had still not improved, but the doctors said she could go home if a hospital bed was set up on the first floor so she wouldn’t have to climb stairs.

  The bed was delivered and arranged in our living room a few hours before my mother came home. We had to roll up the rug and push all the furniture against the walls to make space for it. When my mother returned and saw the disarray caused by the giant bed, her eyes closed with weary disgust. The treasured order of her home had been disrupted, and she announced that she would practice going up and down the steps every day until “that thing, that intruder,” as she called it, could be removed from her living room. Four weeks after arriving home, she had learned to negotiate the stairs, and the bed was carried away.

  To celebrate the removal of the hospital bed, my father decided they should go out to dinner. She wore her favorite blue dress, the one my dad had so admired the night of the Red and Blue banquet six years earlier. I sat in their room, helping her get ready, uttering cheerful banalities, and, at the same time, wondering how she felt as she looked in the mirror and saw the partially paralyzed cheek, the deepened lines, the wrinkled skin that hung down from her upper arms. Then my father walked into the room and told her she looked wonderful. She responded with a smile so bright it seemed to me that she might believe him, that, in the reflected gaze of his steady admiration, she saw the face of the girl he had fallen in love with.

  My mother’s speech proved the most frustrating part of her rehabilitation. Though she never lost the ability to comprehend language, she had trouble finding the words she wanted, and her diction was indistinct. When the doctors suggested that it would be useful for her to read aloud, my father turned to me. Since my mother had come home from the hospital, I had stayed in school on many afternoons and spent an inordinate amount of time at the homes of my friends. I just wanted to escape, to pretend that nothing had changed. My fear of her illness had estranged us. Yet I could not witness my mother’s ferocious effort to climb the stairs or prepare a meal without feeling ashamed. Now there was something I could do to help. I went to the library for an old friend we both loved—Dickens’ David Copperfield.

  “It’s been a long time since we’ve taken turns reading to one another,” I prodded her. She resisted at first, but once we got started, it became part of a routine we looked forward to each day. I remember her halting manner, reading the scene where Copperfield’s aunt bursts out of the house because David Copperfield is a boy and not the “Betsey” she had confidently awaited. My mother paused when the scene was done, and suddenly we both started laughing. As the days and weeks passed, her voice and control grew stronger until, by way of Peggotty, Mr. Micawber, treacherous Steerforth, and loathsome Uriah Heep, all traces of a slur were gone from her speech.

  Reading books together had once been a very significant part of my relationship with my mother. Now reading David Copperfield gave impetus to her rehabilitation, entertained us, dissipated my anxieties, and drew us closer than we had been in many, many months.

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  As MUCH as I loved Dickens, however, there was nothing in his vivid portrayals of nineteenth-century London to prepare my mind for the disturbing events of mid-century America. As I stood in school to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or rose with the crowd at the ball park when “The Star-Spangled Banner” was played, it had never occurred to me to question, or even to think about, the words of the ritual I was reciting. I only knew that I was an American. And to be an American was a wonderful thing. I was aware, of course, that mistakes could be made, injustices committed. I had absorbed at least that much through my contacts with McCarthyism. But that could no more lead me to question the country itself than the acts of a renegade priest would cause me to question my Catholic faith.

  The beginnings of doubt came through events which took place more than eleven hundred miles away. On the morning of September 4, 1957, armed troops of the Arkansas National Guar
d took up positions in front of Central High School in Little Rock. Governor Orville Faubus had ordered them to prevent the enrollment of nine black schoolchildren whose registration had been ordered by a federal court, pursuant to the landmark decision of the Supreme Court which declared school segregation unconstitutional. Since Faubus had made his intentions known in advance, reporters from television stations and newspapers across the country were there to witness the confrontation. Eight of the nine children arrived together, accompanied by a group of black and white ministers. Through a failure of communications, the ninth child, Elizabeth Eckford, proceeded on her own.

  Many hundreds of people shouted abuse as the small band of eight children moved toward the entrance. The Arkansas Guards, claiming they were acting under the orders of Governor Faubus, raised their bayonets to block the children’s entrance. “What are your orders?” one of the ministers asked. “To keep the niggers out,” a soldier responded. Unable to make their way through the phalanx of soldiers, the eight children and the ministers were forced to retreat.

  On September 4, 1957, the Little Rock Nine were to begin classes at Central High School. At the sight of young Elizabeth Eckford standing alone, the irate mob descended. “Lynch her, lynch her,” someone yelled. Two weeks later, the National Guard safely escorted the students into the school.