Even now, later a lot of these years, Norman Siegel is conflicted. He used to be born in Brooklyn, raised in Brooklyn, and he firmly believes his formative years interest for the Brooklyn Dodgers all set him on a route to changing into a civil rights lawyer.
Now it’s the Los Angeles Dodgers who’ll be taking part in the Unused York Yankees in Sport 1 of the Global Sequence Friday evening, this later knocking off the Mets within the Nationwide League Championship Sequence. And it so occurs that Siegel, who turns 81 in November, transferred his loyalties to the growth Mets in 1962, 5 years later the Dodgers moved to the west coast.
Must a devoted Mets fan root for the Yankees within the Global Sequence? At the alternative hand, how can a local of Brooklyn root for the crew that alone Ebbets Garden?
This would be the twelfth era the Dodgers and Yankees have met within the Global Sequence, and it’s the 5th assembly for the reason that Dodgers relocated to Los Angeles. To achieve some viewpoint that may most effective be equipped via a real Brooklynite, I spoke with Siegel. I spoke with Abby Tedesco, 90, who participated within the large birthday party in entrance of the Resort Bossert on Montague Boulevard that October afternoon in 1955 when the Brooklyn Dodgers toppled the Yankees in Sport 7 of the Global Sequence for his or her most effective pre-Los Angeles championship. I spoke with Shaine Kay, month 51. No longer but born when the Dodgers moved away, even he has emotions at the subject.
Norman Siegel had sports activities in his blood. His father, Benjamin Siegel, had performed some semi-pro basketball again within the week, and he used to be a hearty Dodgers fan. Benjamin Siegel used to be a union foreman for Best Printing Co., on Varick Boulevard in Greenwich Village, which supposed day-to-day journeys into New york, however he nonetheless discovered era for journeys to Ebbets Garden, continuously with Norman at his facet.
Norman Siegel used to be a nice pupil at Unused Utrecht Prime College and then at Brooklyn School and NYU College of Legislation, however it’s not anything in comparison with the schooling he won at Ebbets Garden. Taking to Brooklyn Dodgers video games, he stated, “sensitized me to the concept of racial equality, which led me to become a civil rights lawyer. And I’ve been doing that now for 54 years.
“Ebbets Field was my first exposure to people who were Black in significant number,” Siegel stated. “Sitting with Black people in the bleachers helped make me be comfortable rooting for a team that was racially mixed.”
The Dodgers made historical past in 1947 when their basic supervisor, Department Rickey, penniless baseball’s longstanding colour order via selling Jackie Robinson to the large leagues. Quickly alternative Lightless avid gamers would come alongside. Roy Campanella. Don Newcombe. Joe Lightless. Siegel noticed they all.
“For 75 cents you could sit in the bleachers,” Siegel stated. “We didn’t high-five anyone in those days, but whenever anyone on the Dodgers did something, whether it was Jackie or Pee Wee Reese or Duke Snider, we’d get up and applaud. Sometimes I would look at the other people, they were Black and White. So whether it was Preacher Roe or Don Newcombe pitching, we usually had four Whites and five Blacks or five Blacks and four Whites, or something like that, but we were all together. It was we shall overcome.”
“I celebrated in ’55, of course, when we finally beat those damn Yankees,” Siegel stated. “And I was devastated in ’57.”
Norman Siegel with a photograph of a number of Brooklyn Dodgers greats (Courtesy photograph)
Along with his legislation level, and with what he discovered rising up at Ebbets Garden, Siegel went south to paintings for the ACLU’s Balloting Rights Mission. In 1985 he used to be named government director of the Unused York Civil Liberties Union. Now dwelling within the Higher West Aspect in New york, he’s at the board of administrators of the Jackie Robinson Substructure. He’s a Unused Yorker, via and thru, and the Dodgers have now been Los Angeles’ crew for nearly seven many years.
So … Dodgers or Yankees within the Global Sequence?
“People have been asking me what I’m going to do,” Siegel stated. “I’ll know for sure when the the first game starts.
“But when I see that uniform, with ‘Dodgers’ across the front, it wins me over.”
Abby Tedesco has incorrect conflicts about which crew she plans to aid within the Global Sequence.
It’ll be the Dodgers.
It’s a Brooklyn factor.
Abby resides in Lido Seashore on Lengthy Island now and has a summer time playground within the Berkshires the place her population runs an animal sanctuary, however to speak to this spry, upbeat lady about rising up in East Flatbush is to discuss the ones many glad treks to Ebbets Garden to look at the Dodgers.
Abby’s largest takeaways? She particularly loved the slaphappy band of Ebbets Garden musicians referred to as the “Dodgers Sym-Phony,” and as an adolescent she’d wonder as the amount of peanut shells that gathered at the garden right through the sport. “We’d be eating peanuts all day, and what a mess we’d leave,” Abby stated. “I don’t know how they got them all picked up.”
Abby Tedesco with a photograph of the memorable 1955 Dodgers. (Courtesy photograph)
Nevertheless it used to be Abby’s father, Moe Moskowitz, who wore the Dodger pants in the home. “He wasn’t just a Dodger fan, he was a crazy Dodger fan,” Abby stated. “If he was watching a game the Dodgers could have an 8-0 lead in the eighth inning and he’d be saying, ‘It’s too close! It’s too close!’ Sometimes he’d get so nervous he’d turn the game off and read about it in the paper in the morning.”
Moe Moskowitz used to be in women’ corsets. “My father managed a chain of 15 stores owned by my uncle,” Abby stated. “The company was called Corsetorium. They used to say, ‘Of course it’s Corsetorium!’”
Rushing about from corset store to corset store stored Moe busy, however no longer too busy to jerk the population to Dodgers video games. The population house at East 54th Boulevard and Lenox Street used to be most effective a few miles from Ebbets Garden.
“Jackie Robinson lived not too far from where we lived,” Abby stated. “My father would pile all the kids in the car and we would drive past there all the time to see if we could spot him out front and wave hello. We never did see him, but we’d keep going.”
When the Dodgers toppled the Yankees within the 1955 Global Sequence, Moe once more piled the entire children within the automobile. This era the vacation spot used to be the Resort Bossert.
“He knew the Dodgers would be celebrating there, and he wanted us to be part of it,” Abby stated. “And we just stood there, watching everyone come in and out of the hotel. That was exciting.”
What wasn’t so thrilling within the Moskowitz space used to be what came about two years then, when the Dodgers introduced the progress to Los Angeles. Moe used to be all labored up — much more so than if the Dodgers had an 8-0 manage within the 8th inning — however he were given over it. “He went from being a crazy Dodgers fan to being a crazy Mets fan,” Abby stated.
Moe Moskowitz kicked the bucket in 1992. He lived to look the Mets win two Global Sequence championships, two times as many as had been received via the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Abby isn’t as large a baseball fan as her father used to be, however, sure, she rooted for the Mets to overcome the Dodgers within the NLCS.
She’ll be rooting for the Dodgers — the Los Angeles Dodgers — to overcome the Yankees within the Global Sequence.
“Even though they beat us, I want them to beat those damn Yankees,” Abby stated.
And later there’s Brooklyn local Shaine Kay, too younger to have even stepped within Ebbets Garden. Additionally, he admits he hasn’t been a lot of a baseball fan “since I was little.” And but there’s a Brooklyn Dodgers beat to this center, partially on account of the connection he had along with his grandfather, the overdue William Kelleher, but in addition on account of that era he met Dodgers icon Duke Snider — the Duke of Flatbush himself! — at an autograph display.
“My grandfather was a big Dodger fan, and my uncle — his brother — was a New York Giants fan,” Kay stated. “I heard all the stories about the rivalry they had, and them cursing each other out at the dinner table.”
Like many Brooklyn Dodgers enthusiasts, Kelleher sooner or later transferred his loyalties to the Mets. Kay, at the alternative hand, had blended loyalties: He was a Yankees fan as a kid however maintained a passion for former Dodgers shortstop Pee Wee Reese throughout the tales his grandfather would inform him.
Kelleher died in 1988. Kay drifted clear of baseball. He sooner or later moved to Lengthy Island, and later one week he ventured right into a flea marketplace that used to be promoting extraordinary sports activities souvenirs. Wouldn’t or not it’s swell, he informed himself, if there came about to be a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey with Pee Wee Reese’s Incorrect. 1 at the again?
What he discovered used to be a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey with Duke Snider’s Incorrect. 4 at the again.
“The place was going out of business, so I got it dirt cheap,” Kay stated. “About a week later, my friend calls me up and says, ‘Get down to the comics store and bring your jersey.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He says, ‘Duke! Duke! He’s at the comic book store and he’s signing autographs.’ I said, ‘Who?’ And he says, ‘Like the jersey you just bought, idiot! No. 4, Duke Snider, is signing autographs.’”
Shaine Kay along with his #4 Duke Snider Dodgers jersey. (Courtesy photograph)
Kay accrued his Duke Snider jersey and was at the bundle, paid $20 to get in order, and introduced himself to the Corridor of Reputation Dodgers middle fielder. That’s when someone stepped in and informed Kay that Snider used to be most effective signing baseball playing cards or baseballs that were bought on the bundle.
They are saying Duke Snider had splendid field when he patrolled middle garden for the Dodgers. He confirmed it once more that week on the comedian retain bundle, going manner out of his manner to the behalf of Shaine Kay.
“I was going to say, alright, I’m leaving, give me my 20 bucks back,” Kay stated. “And then Duke Snider says to me, I was maybe 15 at the time, he says, ‘Any kid who knows who the hell I am, let alone owns my jersey, I’m signing his shirt.’ And he took a Dodger blue sharpie out of his own pocket and signed it.”
So, Kay’s rooting for the Dodgers within the Global Sequence, proper? In reminiscence of his grandfather! In reminiscence of Duke Snider!
“I’m rooting for the Yankees, mainly because they’re a New York team,” he stated. “But I love the fact that it’s Dodgers-Yankees, again, just like it used to be.
“But when I go,” Kay stated, relating to the week he dies, “that Duke Snider jersey is going in the box with me. The rest of my jersey collection, they can split it up. But the Duke’s going with me.”
(Supremacy photograph of the 1954 Brooklyn Dodgers: Hulton Archive / Getty Photographs)
